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Visualizing Covid-19

This is a fascinating interactive visualization of Covid-19 by state over time, created by Dan Goodspeed. The color of the bar indicates whether the state is “blue” or “red” (based on the Cook Partisan Voting Index). The length of each bar shows the number of Covid-19 cases per million people in each state. For example, a value of 10,000 means that 1% of the population of that state has contracted Covid-19 (10,000 divided by 1 million equals 0.01, which is 1%) .

Note how over time the states that have the highest percentage of infection shift from blue states to red states. Initially blue states bore the brunt of the pandemic because of their large urban populations and busy airports with flight connections to sources of Covid-19. Later, these early states took measures to combat the pandemic, but red states did not (even believing Donald Trump’s claims that the pandemic was a hoax and consequently refusing to wear masks or socially distance).

Goodspeed’s website has other visualizations, including for Covid-19 deaths.

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4 Comments

  1. notycoon22 wrote:

    Great graphic presentation.

    Wednesday, October 14, 2020 at 10:39 am | Permalink
  2. rk wrote:

    I would like to see the full graph, or at least what’s happening at the bottom as well. Does it have the same bias?

    Another variant that might be telling is disease against education level, or maybe against religious levels.

    Wednesday, October 14, 2020 at 11:00 am | Permalink
  3. Mike Liveright wrote:

    I agree with notycoon22 and R.K. and would like to see the entire graph.

    The other suggestion I’d make is to see the charts that he generates document their color-coding.

    Finally, with respect to the suggestion of seeing other state variables, It might be possible for Dan Goodspeed to extend his code to accept a “vector” with 51 numbers representing: The type of COVID variable, 50 Alphabetically ordered variables, finally a string that identifies what this variable represents, and then be able to run his program to show the time development of the COVID-19 variable with the ordering and color coding using instead to the state’s polarization, etc. That way if I wanted to see the dynamic plot against the state’ average temperature, it would be up to me to generate the Variable, Temperature table, and Goodspeed would show the Dynamic graph. Even better Goodspeed could accept the Variable,State as a URL, (of the form?
    https://dangoodspeed.com/covid/&Parm?”…”, p.s. I don’t know HTML, so an just guessing how the table can be entered via the URL
    that way a user who identified an interesting correlation could publish it.

    Wednesday, October 14, 2020 at 3:41 pm | Permalink
  4. William wrote:

    The creator of the graph does offer a number of additional visualizations on his web site. Here’s one with weekly deaths per million, by state, with arbitrary colors:
    https://dangoodspeed.com/covid/state-by-state-new-deaths-by-date

    You can see the selections he offers here:
    https://dangoodspeed.com/covid/

    Thursday, October 15, 2020 at 7:00 pm | Permalink

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  1. […] discovers an interactive visualization, with moving graphs from June 1 to this week, showing the spread of COVID state by state, with each color coded by predominant party. […]