Presenting data to compare how some western countries fight with coronavirus
The worldometers site presents COVID19 data for virtually all countries of the world.
However data are separately presented for each country and it is difficult to compare what happens in a country with the next.
So, I took the data from several western countries and reported them on a single graph. I have aligned the data of each of the countries with the respective departure day of the infection. I also normalized the data with the population of each country, obtaining the graph below. The countries considered are Spain, Italy, France, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the United States and Germany.
The graph above represents for each country the daily number of deaths per million inhabitants. The X-axis shows the number of days that have elapsed since the start of the infection in each country.
As we can see, the daily deaths of Spain are almost always greater than the others, while those of Germany are almost always lower than the others. For other countries it is difficult to judge who has been less affected than another. An attempt at a numerical ranking can be made by taking the most significant parameters of the data. The choosed parameters are:
- total deaths per million throughout the period;
- peak value of daily deaths;
- total duration of the crisis period.
With some calculations the ranking that we find is the following:
- Germany 60
- USA 46
- Sweden 38
- France 25
- UK 24
- Italy 16
- Spain 10
Please note that you can find a detailed description of the procedure used in COVID19 evaluation , together with the spreadsheet used, in the LibreOffice .ods version and Excel .xlsx version.
When I started this job I believed that I would find a relationship between the measures taken by the various governments and the position of the country in the ranking. Now I have to say:
- Italy carried out the most drastic measures first, followed them well, and finds itself penultimate;
- Sweden refused to apply restrictive measures, however it is far better than Spain, Italy, France and the United Kingdom;
- The USA of the reviled Trump is better than all the others above, a few points from Germany;
- Germany is the best, however the measures it has taken have not been the hardest at all.
I am perplexed and ask for help: is there something I can't see?
Any comment is welcomed.
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