
Coronavirus Country Comparator - j4yav
https://boogheta.github.io/coronavirus-countries/#deceased&ratio&places=Belgium,France,Germany,Italy,Spain,USA,United%20Kingdom&alignTo=deceased
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lettergram
I’d recommend not using “cases”, but rather deaths. Most countries don’t have
the testing capacity. In fact, if you look at places like the USA testing
capacity is effectively flat. Yet 20% of the tests are coming back positive...

Italy on the other hand has seen a decrease in positive rate as they are
increasing testing. That’s what happens as you’re nearing Or over a peak.

All countries seem to have some method of testing / adding suspect cases of
people who died. As such, that’s probably the most accurate (albeit lagging)
method of comparison.

[https://github.com/lettergram/covid19-analysis](https://github.com/lettergram/covid19-analysis)

~~~
chvid
Deaths are also counted differently.

~~~
dilap
Death _attribution_ can vary; I think deaths themselves -- as in, how many
people have died, from any cause -- should be fairly reliable and comparable.

So for the clearest, most unbiased picture of COVID impact, calculate %
increase over normal death rate by country, and then compare that.

(I guess. Just spitballing.)

~~~
DarthGhandi
Deaths even within the US have wildly different criteria for being counted:

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/which-
deaths-c...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/which-deaths-count-
toward-the-covid-19-death-toll-it-depends-on-the-
state/2020/04/16/bca84ae0-7991-11ea-a130-df573469f094_story.html)

~~~
arwineap
The suggestion you are responding to is not suggesting counting covid deaths.

It's suggesting we track all deaths/ Then we look at the increase in average
deaths. Based on the trends we should be able to estimate how many additional
(likely covid) deaths we have incurred during the crisis

~~~
spydum
The obvious problem there is the safer at home laws and lack of socializing
would have an impact on your average deaths in the opposite direction. So
comparing average deaths in the past to now are apples and oranges.

~~~
dilap
Yes, the unadjusted number you get will be a lower-bound. You could then try
to get closer to the real number by noticing, e.g., how much car crashes were
reduced and adjusting for that.

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ekianjo
Nice, but such comparisons are kind of useless since the testing and reporting
varies widely by country, so there's nothing you can compare when you look
down into details.

~~~
tomgaga
Yeah, I really don't understand why people are still comparing these numbers
like this. It's much more objective to just compare "excess number of deaths
compared to last year per million". Like the New York times did:
[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronav...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronavirus-
missing-deaths.html)

~~~
ferzul
the answer is simple: the data is there. you can't compare vietnam and germany
on that page - if you can access it. (if i have to signup to read or buy, i'm
not really interested. anonymous access used to be possible with paper, and
it's still possible today)

~~~
acdha
Open it in a private browsing window and anonymity still is possible

~~~
ignoramous
Private browsing doesn't provide any form of anonymity:
[https://panopticlick.eff.org/](https://panopticlick.eff.org/)

Heck, it is tricky to remain anonymous even over the Tor Browser.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(anonymity_network)#Weak...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_\(anonymity_network\)#Weakness)

~~~
acdha
It does in the sense that the comment which I replied to meant it: access
without being logged in to an account.

------
arcticbull
This is incredibly pretty and deserves a serious round of applause.

The UI is gorgeous and very usable, the only thing that threw me is when you
hover over a line, I wish it would show which country it corresponds to.

With that said I still find a log-log plot much easier to interpret, and so
far, the gold standard on trend clarity visualization remains Aatish Bhatia's
([https://aatishb.com/covidtrends/](https://aatishb.com/covidtrends/)). Maybe
a way to switch to a similar log/log scale? Otherwise it's very difficult to
figure out when a given country approaches the knee.

~~~
amelius
Btw, the prettiest presentation I've seen so far is this one:
[https://www.covid.is/data](https://www.covid.is/data)

(though only for Iceland)

~~~
tabs_masterrace
Looks nice and clean, not sure about the bouncy animations though. I mean
these are charts of people dying, it doesn't fell all that appropriate. Simple
ease out would be more fitting.

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mrtksn
Isn't it interesting that there isn't much of interest for the most successful
major European-Asian country out there?

I am talking about Turkey, where death rates are even lower than Germany and
the curfews are partial. There's an abundance of IC units despite the 100K
cases and the spread curve is already going down and the country is in a
position to offer substantial help to other major countries.

There have been some CNN[0] and BBC reporting on this but with the numbers
THAT good, I would have expected much higher interest. I know about the
democracy and free speech situation but the country is not North Korea, Turkey
is actually doing that good in managing the situation.

Just switch Turkey on in this website and you'll see how much better Turkey is
doing.

I am beginning to suspect that the Eurocentric mindset is literally killing
Europeans at this time. There's a hugely successful country that is integrated
with Europe, has some of its territory in Europe, it has a population of a
large European country and yet nobody seems to think about looking at Turkey
for an example.

As a quick note, Turkey manages to do this through aggressive contact tracing
through thousands of tracking teams around the country. It was revealed that
in Istanbul alone there are 1200 contact tracing teams consisting of doctors,
nurses and etc. that track down every infection. It's not as cool as having
Tech giants make an app but it works. According to the health ministry, these
teams use purpose built apps to coordinate and the entire health system is
well integrated and they monitor every single patients status - be it at home
or in the hospital and have very good picture of the situation.

Turkey has many problems but the health system is not one of them and maybe
it's worth taking a look at.

[0]: [https://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2020/04/21/inside-
turke...](https://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2020/04/21/inside-turkey-icu-
coronavirus-arwa-damon-pkg-cnni-vpx.cnn/video/playlists/coronavirus-intl/)

~~~
lm28469
Turkey is essentially a dictatorship, if you want to believe in their numbers
feel free to do so but I'm very skeptical about the accuracy of their reports.

~~~
mrtksn
You are right to be sceptical, it is indeed a dictatorship but it's not the
kind of dictatorship that makes doctors disappear. There is no indication
about any major cover-ups, the country is not insulated from the west, has
visa-free travel with many Western countries, is part of many western
institutions and has many wester journalists based in Turkey.

"I don't like Erdogan and his policies" is not good enough to dismiss Turkey
as a closed society, the country is NOT like DPRK or Iran. Turkey is
financially and institutionally integrated with Europe and the USA.

This(dismissing the country solely on its current political situation or lack
of awareness beyond the stereotype and prejudice) is exactly the mentality
that I am talking about and I suspect that it is killing many people in the
west.

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
I agree it's unrealistic to propose they're hiding bodies. But the death count
could be suppressed by merely implementing unreasonable standards for what's
reported as a coronavirus death. Articles I've read suggest that Turkey isn't
doing particularly well when measured by excess deaths over the historical
baseline.

(I agree with the obvious followup, that we should check to see if other
countries we believe are doing well look good in the same metric.)

~~~
mrtksn
I suspect that too, the death rates in Istanbul are higher than usual and
people are asking questions.

That said, it's no different than what's happening some other western
countries. There are reports about the UK numbers being higher too,
essentially the idea is that some deaths are not reported as COVID-19 deaths
if it happens out of hospital or pre-testing.

People are not dying en masse. The mortality is increased and maybe the real
numbers are %50 more than the official numbers but even then it's much better
than most places.

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
No, Turkey's official mortality numbers are worse than most places. It's only
in comparison to Western numbers that they look good. I checked Mexico (as a
good country the US could more easily learn from) and they have over 3x fewer
deaths per 100,000.

I don't say that to knock on Turkey, just to explain the perspective. People
aren't ignoring Turkey because they don't trust Turkey specifically; it's
because they don't trust any of these numbers. The idea that there's some core
competency of pandemic response possessed by almost every country in the world
but absent in most of the West seems... implausible.

~~~
mrtksn
I am a European citizen currently in Turkey, I have perspective on the UK, on
Germany and some other EU countries as I lived in those.

I don't know about Mexico, I cannot comment about them but if they are doing
even better than Turkey, good for them but I cannot comment on that, I don't
know the reality on the ground.

------
zelphirkalt
The one thing I find to criticize is, that if you don't want to be tracked on
that website, and disable Google fonts, the whole UI for the left side panel
is messed up. This should have been tested and alternatives should have been
provided. It is a classical and very common UI and usability mistake to simply
assume that everyone will load Google fonts.

Aside from that, the visualization looks very nice.

------
MiguelVieira
I prefer this one. Use "New Deaths, 1 Wk. Avg." Plots US states as well as
countries.

[http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-
visualization/](http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/)

------
Fiahil
Your data source is compromised. France's confirmed case count is 124k not
161k. You're off by 40k.

Source:
[https://dashboard.covid19.data.gouv.fr/](https://dashboard.covid19.data.gouv.fr/)

------
amelius
Some missing features (imho):

\- overlaying the graphs from the moment of the first case (shifting the data
in time)

\- ICU beds available/used

\- overlay of measures taken (e.g. when did social distancing start)

\- easily showing differences in time (e.g. dragging between two dates shows
the number of days between them)

~~~
the8472
_> \- overlaying the graphs from the moment of the first case (shifting the
data in time)_

That's available in the bottom left. You can align to either deaths or
confirmed cases.

------
doodlebugging
Sweden has an interesting pattern with a period of about one week. It appears
that they have some activity that occurs weekly that results in new cases.
There is a persistent 2-3 day plateau before the next caseload increase.

~~~
detaro
You can see that for some other places too, e.g. Germany. I suspect it's just
the weekend and reporting chains being slower then (it certainly plays a role
in German data). The data then appears over the next week, but if you just
daily calculate the difference between the numbers announced on that day for
your graphs, you don't see that it is being backfilled in the new week, even
if the country releases that detail.

------
pjc50
What went wrong with Belgium??

~~~
DanBC
Belgium counts confirmed deaths in hospitals, but also counts suspected deaths
outside hospitals -- so it's including care homes and nursing homes.

These deaths can be about 50% of the total deaths.

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/24/is-
comparing-c...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/24/is-comparing-
covid-19-death-rates-across-europe-helpful-?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other)

> But such comparisons can be misleading. Unlike the UK, Italy or Spain,
> Belgium counts all coronavirus deaths outside hospitals in its daily
> statistics: deaths in care homes account for 53% of the total. Belgium’s
> official toll also includes people suspected of having died of coronavirus,
> without a confirmed diagnosis. Nearly all deaths in care homes (94%) are
> suspected Covid-19 cases, rather than confirmed – an approach that has led
> some to complain Belgium is overestimating the number of fatalities.

(They probably aren't over counting. Covid-19 is devastating for nursing homes
and care homes).

~~~
Luc
In some measure they have _less_ excess deaths than an average of the last
years (after subtracting the counted Covid-19 cases), which would be an
indication that they are over-counting.

~~~
Lewton
Are you looking at the correct demographics? We’re seeing a pretty big drop in
all cause mortality outside risk groups due to lockdowns

------
stillbourne
Can this also be weighted by number of tests per million?

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catchmilk
UI is gorgeous. Anyone happen to know if they're using a charting library?

~~~
sk0g
Vue.JS/ Ruby/ _D3_ is what Wappalyzer picks up for this.

D3 is very powerful, but there's a lot to learn too!

~~~
catchmilk
Much appreciated. Any D3 learning resources you would personally recommend?

~~~
sk0g
I never got fully through it, but Amelia Wattenberger's book [0] on it is very
good! There's a fairly soft ramp up in complexity, and the later chapters are
complex enough that even the previews make you excited to reach and implement
them.

If you just want to dip your toes in though, the official website's linked
gallery [1] is a pretty cool resource. No set up or data loading required!

[0] [https://www.newline.co/fullstack-d3](https://www.newline.co/fullstack-d3)
[1]
[https://observablehq.com/@d3/gallery](https://observablehq.com/@d3/gallery)

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ghego1
Very nice UI indeed, although the data does not seem to be up to date

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cvladan
covidly.com ?

