Martin Fitzpatrick: Is it getting better yet? An optimistic visual guide to the Coronavirus pandemic

As the apocalypse rumbles on, I found myself wondering "Is it getting any better?"

Daily updates of spiralling case numbers (and worse, deaths) does little to give a sense of whether we're getting to, or already past, the worst of it — at least from a medical point of view.

To answer that question for myself and you, I put together Is it getting better yet? an optimistic visual guide to the pandemic.

The colours indicate the current status of each country, ranging from green indicating cases are falling, through yellow (early indications of slowing of cases), red (cases are increasing) to purple which indicates early signs of a rebound (a return to increasing cases). Many countries have too few registered cases to make an estimation, and these are shown in grey.

Things are getting better in Italy (and have been for a while).

"Maybe" is an optimistic indicator of a slowing down in case numbers and is triggered as the rate slope begins to trend back towards zero (no daily increase or decrease). This is based on the pattern that cases will tend to slow before they begin to decrease.

The pattern of recovering countries is for the daily change in case numbers to fall into negative numbers (fewer cases per day) and then correct back towards zero as the number of cases fall and the daily decrease shrinks. The rebound in the line upwards doesn't indicate things are getting worse, just that the daily decrease in case numbers is slowing. This is normal, as the number of daily cases falls, the absolute change will shrink.

In an ideal situation the line should trend towards zero and stop there, indicating there is no daily increase/decrease, because nobody has the virus.

In a less than ideal situation the line will trend towards zero and then rebound over it, as a second (or third) wave of cases hits, as in China below.

This coincides with China reporting the highest number of new cases in 5 weeks. This pattern of retreating and rebounding may well happen elsewhere as lockdowns are lifted or people return home in the coming weeks-months. The question is whether that blip is short or long-lived.

Still, if all goes to plan, the map will gradually turn green (and a bit grey) all over. Let's look forward to that.

The source code used to generate the site is available, suggestions and additions welcome.

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