This is a valuable source of information about the occurrence and consequences of the coronavirus and governments’ response to it.
It is called Worldometers.
It provides excellent graphs about the spread and intensity of the virus.
Most interesting to me are the country figures (their accuracy depends on reporting, and I suspect some nations may undercount occurrences and fatality rates).
Consider the proportion of tests given per million people. Iceland leads the world, having tested almost 14% of its people. The U.S. has tested fewer than 2%.
The U.S. leads the world by far in the number of infections and deaths, but the country with the highest death rate is Belgium, followed by Spain, Italy, France, and the UK.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Thank You. This really is a remarkable effort.
“Our global data website Worldometers has been voted as best online reference website by the American Library Association (ALA) and our statistics are referenced in over 400 published books and more than 150 professional journal articles.”
I check this site frequently. I think that China is understating its numbers, as they haven’t changed in days. Like everything else, the account overall relies on honest reporting.
Not just under reporting in China. Thirteen states in the US are not reporting deaths in assisted living and long term care facilities. I am sure there are also states that are not reporting anything about Covid-19 in prisons, in immigrant holding facilities, in specific industries including meat-packing facilities.
I think this underreporting will increase insofar as businesses open and find their risk of liability for employee and customer infection increases. Even if Congress authorizes a blanket immunity from legal liability, an item on the wish lists of the business community, under-reporting is likely to continue insofar as those reports may compromise profits.
https://www.kff.org/medicaid/issue-brief/state-reporting-of-cases-and-deaths-due-to-covid-19-in-long-term-care-facilities/
The more testing we do, the more cases of COVID will be reported.
actually you can sort by info in a specific column, If u click twice on column it ranks countries from highest to lowest. If u do that for death rates / million Belgium is actualy 2nd behind San Marino (yes it is a country) and ahead of Andorra (another country)
Belgium counts any death that is thought to be COVID-19 related as a COVID-19 death. Other countries, including the US, use different standards, so the numbers across countries are not really comparable. See https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/22/841005901/why-belgiums-death-rate-is-so-high-it-counts-lots-of-suspected-covid-19-cases
For a general discussion of the issues of looking at cross country comparisons, there is this: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p08bf1kd
I wondered why Belgium’s numbers were so high.
I wonder why deaths in eastern Europe is so much lower than western Europe? Czechia, Romania, Hungary, and Poland are quite low.
Here is an article speculating on the reasons: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/05/why-has-eastern-europe-suffered-less-from-coronavirus-than-the-west
Mate W. explains in a comment posted after yours.
Both my husband and I use Worldometer.
We are tracking infections and deaths and have graphs of all this information. It’s STARK.
We noticed that there were infection upticks after Spring Break, Easter, Easter Orthodox in the United States.
We are waiting for the uptick in infections re: Ramadan and May 1st.
Grand Reopening! Everyone must go!
Today, I’m told, is the birthday of Dianetics, created by L. Ron Hubbard, who was King of the Con before Don. But Trump, ofc, puts even Hubbard’s conman cult leadership to shame. A very important point that Diane has made repeatedly on this blog: we really don’t know what the numbers are in the U.S. because so little testing has been done.
Diane: What happened to Mate W.’s comment, as you mentioned, above, as posted after Teachingeconomist’s?
Mate’s comment was posted at 12:12 pm
I am confused as well. There is no visible post made at 12:12 pm.
I didn’t post anything at 12:12 pm.
Mate W. posted a comment at 12:12 pm.
There are no visible posts here at 12:12 pm. There is no post by Mate W. visible.
There was no post by Mate. There was a comment he left at 12:12 pm.
Still don’t see Mate W.’s post from 12:12 PM.
Mate Wierdl posted this comment at 12:12 p.m. It is a comment, not a post.
We see the disastrous effect of this craze about saving money everywhere now: not enough hospital beds, not enough doctors, not enough tests, not enough masks, not enough ventilators. Poor Eastern European countries have multiple times more hospital beds, doctors and other equipment than in the US.
What if Nature would learn from us and would become this scrooge? We’d have only “useful” animals in the zoo: cows, pigs, chickens, and nothing would be running around wastefully in the wild. We’d have only pine tree forests, and the trees would not grow taller than 6 feet since that’s what we need for Christmas. No more bird-chirping in the morning by useless little creatures flying around, making a mess in our backyards. We’d have only salmon and tuna fish in the oceans, since other fish, sharks, chorals are frivolous excesses.
According to Darwin,, none of this would last long. While we admire the beauty of the abundance of life, this crazy diversity is also necessary for survival of life. Whatever disaster hits Earth, some species surely will live through it.
So let’s get all these unhappy scrooges out of politics and economic departments, and let’s spend some serious $ on frivolous stuff, like free healthcare, higher ed, arts, parks, wildlife preserves. We’d see that we’d take the next pandemic in stride. People who want to spend their whole lives saving money can move to Kansas, and have endless miserable conversations with the remaining Koch about how to make their own pile of money grow to the Moon and beyond.
This comment by Mate W would seem to have little to do with why reported COVID-19 death rates are lower in eastern Europe than western Europe. That is the subject of the comment here: https://dianeravitch.net/2020/05/09/excellent-source-of-information-about-spread-of-covid-19-worldometer/comment-page-1/#comment-3034435. It also does not appear in this thread.
Mate said that poor Eastern European countries were better prepared for the pandemic than we were. More hospital beds, more supplies. Possibly because their hospitals had not been taken over by for-profit corporate chains trying to squeeze a profit by cutting costs.
I have read that Sweden’s “herd immunity” isn’t going so well, for either the virus (rapid + #s growth) or the economy, & the scientist who recommended this course of action is rethinking it. Meanwhile, other Scandanavian countries have been keeping it in check & doing well.
I am surprised at Sweden: have always thought highly of their no-nonsense product reliability: I’d owned 4 fantastic Volvos, & had always said they should havw done a commercial, “I want a car I can swear by, not swear at.” And I was in a terrible accident w/my “boxy” 1993 (last year they made them) Volvo 240–& survived w/o even a scratch.
Sweden’s official adopted theory was that the virus would not mutate and it was homogeneous, therefore it was predictable. The most recent experience and research (as a domestic example, see the new manifestations of the disease in children) suggests—suggest means, we think, but we’re not sure—that it may mutate and is more unpredictable, heterogeneous ways than was assumed two weeks ago. It may prove, as the anonymous quote in the NYT article says about the rosy economic scenarios developed by White House “economists,” “a catastrophic miss” of a false assumption. This is yet another example of the one consistent experience about COVID—the best state of knowledge today upon which we base our assumptions may prove to be completely wrong in two weeks.
The most knowledgeable scientists I know, have spoken to or corresponded with, or have read about, all agree on this. The reason for caution, or as has been most succinctly conveyed to me is: “social distancing is working!” That’s why I get so upset with anyone who speaks with certainty or uses uncertainty as a reason to ignore it. It will be interesting what the experiences in Sweden will be in two weeks. I’m betting the opinions that exist today will seem like ancient history.
I also read “somewhere” that half of Swedes live alone, which would tend to slow the spread.