March 16, 2020

Charts That Will Convince You to Stay Home

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One bright side of the coronavirus crisis has been the use of data visualization to convince people of the merits of social distancing. As a data nerd, it makes me incredibly happy to see a sizable chunk of the non-nerdy population talking about “flattening the curve.”

If you understood this chart, you’ve understood normal distribution, standard deviation, and variance, three foundational statistical concepts. The idea behind social distancing is to stay at home or away from people (whether you have the virus or not) so you can slow the spread of the virus and not overburden the healthcare system. The flatter the curve, the higher the standard deviation, which in this case means fewer people are infected at the same time.

If you’re not still not convinced that social distancing would help, here’s a series of simulations by the Washington Post that go through various hypothetical scenarios from forced quarantine (as China did in some provinces) to moderate self-imposed social distancing. The interactive charts clearly show that when fewer people are out and about, the virus takes much longer to spread. 

This chart from Datawrapper shows some countries have been able to slow down the spread of the virus by visualizing how long it takes for the number of COVID-19 cases to double. Turns out that many European countries and the U.S. are still seeing cases double every 2-3 days, but South Korea and China have been able to slow the number of cases doubling to much longer, thus flattening the curve.

Last, but not the least, this positive chart from epidemiologist Britta Jewell shows how one person can make a huge difference. According to her estimates, your choice to socially distance yourself today can prevent 2,400 people from being infected over a month. Yet if you wait another week to hole up, you’ll only avert 600 infections. The coronavirus may spread exponentially, but so do the benefits of staying home and checking out cool charts. 

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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