Coronavirus Growth in Western Countries: May 19 Update

Here’s the coronavirus death toll through May 19. France apparently had some kind of data reporting problem over the past couple of days and corrected it by reporting negative deaths today. So their recent upward blip was just a counting mistake. Sweden is looking a little odd: the official figures (gray line) have diverged considerably from the Johns Hopkins figures (blue/yellow dots). The official figures are based on actual date of death, so it’s no surprise they’re a little different from the JH figures, which are based on the day the death is reported. But now they’re a lot different. Maybe everything will catch up over the next few days.

And Switzerland made a big leap downward to 0.4 deaths per million while Germany was treading water at 0.6 deaths per million. So Switzerland is the first country to finally get its death rate below 0.5 per million. Ausgezeichnet!

The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here. The Public Health Agency of Sweden is here.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

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So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

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