Here’s a Dashboard That Compares How Countries Are Doing on COVID-19

Here’s another estimate of the evolution of R0. It’s from Simas Kucinskas, a finance professor in Berlin:

As always, I’ll warn that this is guesswork at best since it’s based on unreliable data. Still, it’s the only data we have, and perhaps a rough idea is better than nothing.

You can make a chart from your own collection of countries here. To the extent that this stuff is believable, I find Sweden the most interesting curve. They allegedly pushed their real-time value of R from 4 to 2 in the space of a single week. Impressive! On the downside, they haven’t pushed it very much farther down since then.

My expectation is that you’d normally see the value of R start high, and then there would be an inflection point when lockdowns and social distancing started taking effect. In these curves, you see that for Sweden and the US. But for the other three countries you don’t: there’s just a smooth downward slope. Why is that?

I can’t pretend to know how good these estimates are. But we’re all bored and everyone loves a dashboard that allows you to play around with different countries. So have fun, but don’t take any of it too seriously.

Keep us relentless, independent, and free to read.

This past week was our Spring Membership Drive, and we had an ambitious goal of raising 1,000 new donations to fund journalism that doesn’t hold back. We missed that goal. So we’re extending the drive, and we need your help.

For 50 years, Mother Jones has offered honest, investigative reporting you can rely on:

    • Relentless in the pursuit of truth, unafraid to hold the powerful to account

    • Independent from influence or agenda from oligarchs and corporations

    • Freely accessible to every reader, never behind a paywall

But we can’t do any of this without you. Reader support powers our newsroom to stay nimble and fearless, ready for whatever story comes next. If you can, make a donation today.

Keep us relentless, independent, and free to read.

This past week was our Spring Membership Drive, and we had an ambitious goal of raising 1,000 new donations to fund journalism that doesn’t hold back. We missed that goal. So we’re extending the drive, and we need your help.

For 50 years, Mother Jones has offered honest, investigative reporting you can rely on:

    • Relentless in the pursuit of truth, unafraid to hold the powerful to account

    • Independent from influence or agenda from oligarchs and corporations

    • Freely accessible to every reader, never behind a paywall

But we can’t do any of this without you. Reader support powers our newsroom to stay nimble and fearless, ready for whatever story comes next. If you can, make a donation today.

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate