Re:Show HN: Log-Scale Covid-19 Plots
by arcticbull on Saturday April 04, 2020 @03:26AM
(#22776801)
Yeah I came by to say the same thing. I understand that "cumulative" and "dead" are super sensationalist, but what really matters isn't how many people have had it, but how many people have it right now and how that number's changing day by day. It's impossible to figure out and it makes this chart very misleading.
For instance, China's hovering around 10e5 cases on the chart, but they have 2e3. That's three orders of magnitude misleading, especially when 95-100% of people recover completely and are quite unlikely to get it again.
tl;dr: China features prominently on those graphs but their outbreak is contained and finished, they've re-opened internally and pollution (hence factory output) is returning to normal. The graph doesn't reflect that in a meaningful way. [1]
For instance, China's hovering around 10e5 cases on the chart, but they have 2e3. That's three orders of magnitude misleading, especially when 95-100% of people recover completely and are quite unlikely to get it again.
tl;dr: China features prominently on those graphs but their outbreak is contained and finished, they've re-opened internally and pollution (hence factory output) is returning to normal. The graph doesn't reflect that in a meaningful way. [1]
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2020/03/22/video-wa...