Corona: cijfers per land vergelijken

Registration and reporting problematic in coaster comparisons

There are several methods by which countries have tackled the coronavirus. Unfortunately, comparing them is almost impossible because each country reports differently. (Certainly no kudos to the work of WHO, EU, ministries and institutes of health: nothing done since mers, sars, bird flu...).

It starts with the fact that we just don't know anything about infection rates yet. There are no representative samples as is done in elections, for example.

"Bring in the nerd", I would say.

Mortality rates, you can't ignore that, can you?

Which does provide a somewhat harsh figure: the corona deaths per country. But there are also rules of interpretation here:

• Reporting discrepancies. This can vary from "any death that could possibly be corona-related" to "only patients who have died from the corona symptoms and have also tested positive".
• Size of the country. As the disease continues to spread, a large country obviously has more potential corona victims than a small country. However, the initial stages can be compared well: almost every country country starts with 1 source of infection. After spreading, you have to take into account the population size and, for example, calculate per million inhabitants.
• There is no daily precision. In Sweden you see a plateau in every weekend. Then there will certainly not be fewer patients; These are only administratively processed in the following week. Relaxed people, those Swedes. Daily jumps or dips are therefore irrelevant.
• The absolute numbers are therefore not reliable in the sense that you cannot simply compare them. What you can look at are the growth percentages: How curved is a curve and which way to go. Even if there is under- or over-reporting, if this is done consistently, it can say something about the total development in a region.

Weird differences

Do you see unlikely differences? Immerse yourself not only in the approach of the countries in question, but also in the reporting method there. (A good overview of that would be nice.)

Several sites provide key data per country, but the graph below is the most informative (and entertaining) I've seen so far.

Use

1. Pull the blue slider at the bottom to the right, to the second week of March.
2. Click on "Add Country" in the top right corner and select the countries you want to compare.
3. Click on the closing cross to see the new selection. You don't need to attach or save anything.