Visualizing data and making data understandable to the reader or audience is a key area of expertise and interest for me. Data visualization can bring data to life and present it in meaningful, useful bits of intelligence.
I have been particularly impressed by the use of data visualization during the COVID-19 pandemic. Friends and family members, without a scientific or data background, would often phone me – or Skype or Zoom – to discuss the latest trends from IHME, Johns Hopkins, CDC or other tracking sites.
Where I live in New York City, Queens, was one of the most affected hot spots in the early days of the pandemic. The otherwise eerily quiet NYC streets were now filled with frequent ambulance sirens driving by, likely to Elmhurst Hospital which I can see from my apartment windows. When we would occasionally go outside of the house for exercise or grocery shopping, we’d walk by the hospital and see long lines of people in queue out front, hoping to get in, awaiting their turn in the triage tents.
Local and National COVID Data
Nationally, we frequently were warned about the coming wave of COVID-cases. A first wave, then second, then third. Many people began monitoring data daily, looking at number of new cases, deaths and people who recovered. In NY, we’d await daily news updates from Governor Cuomo.
Cuomo used several visuals and metrics that became part of each of our daily vocabulary – number of new cases, number of tests done, number of negative tests, positivity rates. He used visuals to inform us on New York’s change in numbers of daily hospital admissions, ICU admissions, and numbers of patients intubated. These visuals included individual bars on a graph, with each bar being a single day, and a yellow line representing a 7-day average.
As of today, June 2, 2021, the US has had 33 million cases of COVID-19 and 595,000 deaths. Globally, there have been more than 3.5 million reported deaths due to COVID-19. You have to be careful and understand how news outlets, or politicians, may present data.
As of today, the ten largest number of reported COVID deaths are in the United States, Brazil, India, Mexico, United Kingdom, Italy, Russia, France, Colombia, and Germany. Some people have, instead, emphasized the COVID death-rate, that is number of deaths divided by the size of the population(deaths per 100,000).
When COVID deaths are looked at per 100,000 people in the population, the top 10 countries are Brazil, Peru, Italy, Poland, United States, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, France, and Chile. You’ll note that several countries are on one list, but not the other. Some countries are on both lists, but their ranking has shifted.
Take the US as an example. The US tops the list of the number of COVID deaths, but is 5th on the listof COVID deaths-per 100,000 population. One must be careful in how data is shown, and interpreted. All 595,000+ individual in the US who have lost their life due to COVID are important and sad reality of this pandemic. Each life matters. Each loss of life due to COVID, is a soul departed too early, and major impact for family, friends and loved ones, and society.