UPDATE: I don’t think these charts are correct. I’ve replicated them here through March 13 and they don’t seem to show any unusual behavior for the United States.
Based on data from the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Data Repository, here is how the outbreak has progressed in six Western countries:
The charts are all done using a log scale on the y-axis, which means that exponential growth shows up as a straight line. So far, every country has shown the same growth rate except for one: the United States. We are 11 days behind Italy, but our caseload has suddenly started ticking up past normal. Note that the Trump Tick might look small, but this is because it, too, is on a log scale. That small tick indicates that we have about 2x or 3x more cases than you’d expect at this stage.
Why? Probably because the federal government refuses to act with the seriousness it should. Because that might be bad for Donald Trump’s reelection chances.
