Each American state and European country was presented with its own unique pandemic challenge. How well did each area respond? — An underappreciated aspect of the pandemic is the point at which each state and country started. Some areas began with low infection rates and relatively small problems to solve; other areas started with astronomical infection rates that implied once-in-a-lifetime challenges. …

Europe’s management of the pandemic has been a disaster, and it’s getting worse. — Every day I hear someone say, “We should have managed the pandemic the way Europe did.” No we shouldn’t have. Europe is having a total pandemic meltdown, and the data shows it. The graph below shows the number of Covid-19 deaths per million people during the past 2 weeks on…

The risk to Trump and Biden is different than you probably think — I wrote a series of much longer articles on Covid-19 fatality rates, including one on the effect of comorbidities. Here’s a graph that summarizes the conclusions of that article: The full article provides details and explains some of the ifs, ands, or buts about the numbers on this graph. But…

Much of Covid-19's data analysis is based on flawed smoothing techniques — You might think that raw data is more accurate than smoothed data. But in the case of the Covid-19 pandemic, smoothed data reduces reporting anomalies and is a more accurate representation of timing than the raw data is. But only if the smoothing is done correctly. Wrong Way #1: Not Using Smoothed Data to Expose Trends Raw state-level data is…

The right graphs can be tremendously revealing — if you know what to look for — As one of the contributors to the CDC’s Covid-19 “Ensemble” forecast model, I update a set of state and national graphs several times a week on my Covid-19 Spin Free Data Center. I include the charts that I personally find useful in understanding the status and trends of the pandemic. National Graphs …

IHME is miserably misleading us about where the pandemic is heading. See if you agree the data proves it. — On Friday, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) released three new fatality forecasts. Their most likely scenario stated that 410,000 people will die from Covid-19 in the US by January 1. …

The presence or absence of comorbidities is not just a big deal. It’s a Godzilla-eating-a-major-city size deal. Why hasn’t anyone quantified how it affects risk to individuals? — A comorbidity is a condition that a person already has before they contract Covid-19. This is also known as a preexisting condition. Common comorbidities include diabetes, obesity, heart disease, hypertension, dementia, and cancer.

With a heavy emphasis on graphs and forecasting, and no politics. — These data presentations grew out of my frustration at not being able to find accessible data without heavy doses of political commentary. Just let me see the data! I’ll make up my own mind about the politics. I know others want that too. The data used to create the graphs…

Age-based risk factors for Covid-19 have been reported in 10–20 year age bands. We can do better than that. It’s easy to estimate age-specific risks to the individual year, which allows people to assess their personal risk levels more accurately. — TL;DR We now have reasonably good data on risks associated with Covid-19, but it isn’t being presented in ways that make it easy for people to understand or use. …