One of the more interesting and troubling news stories occurring right now is the Coronavirus outbreak occurring in China and across the world. Data visualization and disease have a history together starting with the famous Cholorea map by John Snow. So I used Tableau to create a Coronavirus dashboard. To see the dashboard in tableau and not just a screenshot, click here.
On December 31st, 2019 in Wuhan China, reported its first case of the novel Coronavirus. Since then there have been a total of 77,270 recorded cases. A conservative number that is lower than the true count of cases due to testing difficulties in China. Total Deaths attributed to the coronavirus have risen to 2,250 which leads to a death rate of around 2.91%. The death rate calculation is the total deaths over the total cases. Because the official count of cases is lower than the actual count the death rate number is slightly elevated.
China has seen the vast majority of the cases with 75,892 total cases. The rapidity and ease of spread have led to countrywide quarantines with entire multi-million population cities brought to a standstill.
There is good news. Looking at the total cases time series in the bottom left the total reported cases are beginning to level-off. While the total deaths have not leveled-off, the hope is that it will in the coming week. by its very nature, death is the last thing to happen to a person, so it has a habit of lagging behind other metrics.
Looking at the age ranges with the most deaths, the Coronavirus is particularly lethal to the elderly. Eighty-year-olds having a death rate of almost 15%. Interestingly, there’s not even a death rate of above 1% until the age of fifty. Perhaps the best news about this pandemic is children are not overly affected.
It does appear that China through its extensive/drastic/draconian measures has contained the disease. The next question is whether the countries this virus has spread to will have the ability to corral the disease. While China may have slowed it down, it is still very possible for a resurgence to occur in a country that’s not as “capable” as China.
So just remember, wash your hands you filthy animals.
If you’d like to see another depressing dashboard may I recommend this one about the poverty in Venezuela?