In these difficult times in Europe and across the world, we’re all looking for confirmation that the social distancing measures start to have an impact. The report below can be helpful in spotting the first signs of a “flattening of the curve”, or identifying where additional measures are still needed.
Regarding the charts, I’d like to highlight the following:
(1) the X-axis shows # of days since the start of the outbreak (the 1st day that confirmed cases were >=20, or deaths were >=3). This allows comparison between countries where the outbreak started earlier, like Italy, and those that saw the first cases only 1-4 weeks later.
(2) The Y-axis has a logarithmic scale by default. As a virus outbreak is characterized by exponential growth, showing figures on a linear scale does not illustrate the development so well, and can be even depressing (as the numbers are just skyrocketing!).
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