[Interactive] How to visualise 'flattening the curve'

 
How to use this visualisation:

• Use the slider at the top to select a timeframe, beginning on February 1st.
• Click on a line, or a name of a country on the legend, to highlight that country. Ctrl-click to highlight multiple countries.
• Hover over any point on the graph to see exact data about case numbers. 

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Which countries are getting COVID-19 under control?

It's a simple question, but surprisingly difficult to answer. Looking at the number of cases can be misleading, as exponential growth makes it tricky to see when the spread is speeding up or slowing down relative to normal.

Here's a data visualisation that can help us out here - but we're going to have to plot it in a slightly unusual way. Here, each country is a separate line plotted against total COVID-19 cases and the number of new COVID-19 cases over the past week (growth) on logarithmic (rather than linear) scales.

What's more, it's interactive whaaaat 😮 have a play around and see what you can find/learn! #audienceparticipation

This plot has a couple of key benefits. For one, it means the normal spread of the disease looks like a straight diagonal, making it easier to see which countries break away from it. Secondly, removing time as a variable means we can compare the course of the outbreak in countries which had their outbreak begin at different times - for example, China and the US.

For me, it's fascinating to see how countries like China, South Korea, and Taiwan seem to 'drop off' this diagonal as the spread starts to slow. Some countries such as Iran, Japan, and Norway have little 'dips' in their curve before continuing to trend upward with the rest of the pack. Some countries, like the US, show (worryingly) no slowing of growth at all.

It's by no means perfect. But thoughtful data visualisation is essential to understanding what parts of our response to the pandemic are working, and what we can do better.

Tool: Tableau 
 Data source: John Hopkins University Center for Systems Sciences and Engineering

For me personally, it was buckets of fun learning to use a new tool (Tableau) for making interactive infographics. I'm still new to the software, so expect it to be a bit janky - but I look forward to doing more stuff with it soon!

This visualisation was inspired by the awesome work of Aatish Batiah and Henry from MinutePhysics - check out their original animation at https://aatishb.com/ :)