
WHO: Novel Coronavirus (Covid-19) Situation Dashboard - pintxo
https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/685d0ace521648f8a5beeeee1b9125cd
======
woutr_be
Not to start a political conversation, but why are Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau
not listed as separate countries? All 3 have their own measurements and cases,
surely that shouldn't be included with data from China...

Not only that, it gives a false perception of what's going on in those areas.
Macau only has 10 confirmed cases, with everyone recovered. Hong Kong and
Taiwan both have less than 200 cases, definitely a much different situation
than in Mainland China.

EDIT: I see they have a separate option to show by province / autonomous
region, specifically for China.

~~~
cltsang
It's just sad that when we point out the obvious, the pro-dictatorship camp
just dismisses it by saying "don't politicize science". But this data is in
fact the result of politicized science.

By bootlicking China, WHO is just expensing her own credibility. Many no
longer follow the authority of WHO. For example, many countries started
restricting travel from China[0] to give themselves more time to prepare when
WHO opposed it[1]. Experts had long questioned WHO's decision to refuse to
declare it a pandemic[2], before WHO's late announcement yesterday.

There are some efforts to stop the ripple of this China political power play,
particularly by Taiwanese and Hong Kongers[3]. We should all be more alert.

[0] [https://fortune.com/2020/02/06/countries-china-travel-
restri...](https://fortune.com/2020/02/06/countries-china-travel-restrictions-
coronavirus)

[1] page 5 of [https://www.who.int/docs/default-
source/coronaviruse/transcr...](https://www.who.int/docs/default-
source/coronaviruse/transcripts/ihr-emergency-committee-for-pneumonia-due-to-
the-novel-coronavirus-2019-ncov-press-briefing-transcript-30012020.pdf)

[2] [https://time.com/5798797/un-who-coronavirus-outbreak-
classif...](https://time.com/5798797/un-who-coronavirus-outbreak-
classification)

[3]
[https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19/pull/418](https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19/pull/418)

~~~
woutr_be
Almost every other data source lists Macau, Taiwan and Hong Kong as separate
countries, and for good reason.

China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan all publish their own individual
statistics, why would the WHO aggregate them into one.

>
> [https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19/pull/418](https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19/pull/418)
> I hate to disagree, but they should be listed as separate countries.

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pintxo
Can we discuss the impact of visualization parameters on perception?

On first look it seems Europe is way worse than China regarding case numbers.
But actually checking the scale for the bubbles shows that they are
categorical and the largest bucket is ">12,000 cases" thereby putting China
(80k) and Italy (12k) into the same visual bucket.

Why would you do this?

~~~
squiggleblaz
Two possibilities:

\- the goal isn't to convey information, it's to appear to convey information
so they can defend themselves later on

\- we tend to hire artists who are concerned with appearance into roles that
require visual engineers

The former seems to be something that the UN struggles with. For instance,
they can't indicate how many people have coronavirus in Taiwan because they
need to consider the feelings of their member states. And they can call one
recent coronavirus "Middle East respiratory syndrome", whereas another has to
be called "SARS-COV-2" to avoid racist implications of a geographic name.

The latter is a widespread problem. For instance, once upon a time, software
design gave consideration to making it easy to approach and use, especially by
people who might be using computers for the first time. Nowadays, it's
primarily about making sure the software looks fashionable.

My trust for international organisations has gone down the loo thanks to this
outbreak. I am sad.

~~~
sails
This article has some decent thoughts on the quality of data-viz, which has
been pretty shocking [1]. ArcGis seems to have pretty bad scaling generally

[https://www.futurehealth.live/blog/2020/2/10/coronavirus-
dat...](https://www.futurehealth.live/blog/2020/2/10/coronavirus-dataviz-
sucks)

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34679
This version shows cases by state in the US:

[https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h...](https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6)

~~~
SkyPuncher
I'd recommend everyone use this one over the parent articles.

1\. This one is supposedly maintained by John Hopkins. I'd expect at least
some level of quality control.

2\. The parent link seems to be a copy of JHU's dashboard.

3\. The parent link does not break out smaller regions (mainly the US).

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conanite
I have found the worldometer page easier to use than the others :
[https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/)

~~~
squiggleblaz
What I don't like about that page is the way they hide the active cases graph,
and when you show it it's tiny. I would like a graph that shows the active
cases as its most important figure. Total cases is interesting from an
immunity standpoint, but active cases is important from a "will i catch it"
standpoint.

~~~
DyslexicAtheist
I'd prefer a graph that shows exactly how many tests are done by each country
per day. All other extrapolation hinges on that. If the data is not available
in a country (e.g. US), then everything for that country should come with a
warning that says "we have no clue what is happening because we don't test"

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Buttons840
Amusing technical flaw: If you select the dot representing US cases, then
click the plus symbol, it zooms straight to a field in Kansas, and makes it
appear as though all cases are in that field.

~~~
chrbr
Surprised it isn't Lebanon! [https://www.kcur.org/post/kansas-town-being-
geographic-cente...](https://www.kcur.org/post/kansas-town-being-geographic-
center-us-may-be-lifeline#stream/0)

------
LandR
I heard an interesting comment on the Recovered figure, this doesn't mean the
patient has recovered and can go back to their life. I heard it just means
they don't have a fever and have passed two tests for not having the virus.
They might still be fighting for their life on a ventilator.

Is this true?

~~~
fps_doug
At least for China, the requirement is no fever for 10 days and two negative
swabs. Only then they can get discharged. I'm not a doctor but I'd be
surprised if you still need oxygen by then. You probably won't run a marathon
either.

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chupa-chups
If you're interested just in the numbers with the option to show the
development over time with logarithmic axes, i found this site quite
interesting:

[https://coronavirus.arik.io](https://coronavirus.arik.io)

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yread
They're showing 987 for USA. Surely, that's a bit outdated?

~~~
brrrrr1
Same for other countries - this seems to be lagging.

~~~
tsherr
Yes, it's been lagging for days. Worldometers is up to date.

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mg74
This is old data, Iceland is already up to 90 cases

