The election in the United States has had us all preoccupied for the last week or two. Meanwhile, Covid-19 is raging all over the world. We all thought March and April were bad. Right now it’s much, much worse.
Here are a number of charts I pulled for the industrialized nations that took drastic measures early on and made huge sacrifices throughout the year 2020. Yet, it was all for nothing. The virus is now spreading more than ever before, and more people are dying. We are not even close to getting better. It’s not just an problem in the United States, even though we have the worst numbers, it’s all over the world, as you can see from the charts below.
Please note that they are not to scale. You have to read the number of cases on the Y-axis to get the true scale of each country.
Data Credit: Johns Hopkins University.
I attribute this problem to the time of year. It’s now cold outside in the northern hemisphere, and people can’t be outside anymore. They gather more inside, and we have learned that this virus spreads through aerosols. It all makes sense.
I feel fortunate that in Southern California we happen to live in a warm climate where it’s still over 25 to 30 degrees Celsius outside during the day and we can eat at restaurants outside. Most people in the world are not so lucky.
This pandemic is obviously far from over.