Coronavirus Growth in Western Countries: June 8 Update

Here’s the coronavirus death toll through June 8. I mentioned yesterday that I was going to boot Brazil off the daily charts since it’s pretty obvious they have no intention of reporting honest numbers. But what country should replace them? For reasons I don’t really want to fess up to, swapping one country for another in my spreadsheet is a huge pain unless it’s in the same alphabetical order as the old country. I’m a little tired of all the messing around I’ve been doing on these charts lately, so I made it my goal to pick a country that was alphabetically before Canada and could slide right into Brazil’s place.

So say hello to Argentina! It’s an interesting country because (a) it’s pretty big and (b) it has a remarkably low rate of COVID-19 infection. This is largely because they moved fast: their first death was recorded on March 7 and they announced a full countrywide lockdown less than two weeks later, on March 19. This is faster than Italy or any other country I’m aware of. They are now in the stage of loosening the lockdown except in Buenos Aires, and it will be interesting to see what happens.

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

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