Covid-19 Deaths: Victoria vs. US States

Data: Johns Hopkins University - Covid-19 Data

You can access the data here: Link. The key feature of this data is the fact that it reports the case and death numbers for Australia and US at the state level.

You can visit our Covid-World App here and our Covid-Australia App here.

Before I start…

Comparing Covid-19 numbers across different jurisdications comes with major caveats. The way that cases and deaths are defined or counted, the testing patterns, and many other factors contribute to potential inconsistencies. However, despite all these issues, there are still learnings when this is done taking into account all those factors. Moreover, I have not made any conclusions in this post, I have only presented the available data.

To view the plots in higher quality, right click and open them in a new page or tab.

Victoria vs. US states

In the first plot, you can see Victoria along with all US states since the start of the pandemic. The y-axis on this plot is logged so it better presents the dynamics of these trends, however, it is still very hard figure out what is going on there.

Just to give you a sense of the actual scale, here is the same plot if I use a linear scale.

The population size across these states is very different, so here I have corrected for the population and have moved back to the logged plot so you can better follow Victoria, which is again not very helpful as it is hard to follow other trends.

A better way to present this is to use the cumulative data instead of daily numbers. As you can see, only a few US states have done better than Victoria in terms of total deaths per capita. Please notice that the y-axis is logged.

This plot gives you a better idea of how Victoria is positioned in that regard and I have removed the logged axis so the difference is more realistic and easier to interpret.

Ok, let’s look at this from a different perspective. Rather than using the per capita measure, here I have only included the states that have a population between five to seven million. They are: Colorado, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Wisconsin, and of course Victoria in Australia. I have moved Victoria’s trend by 110 days for this plot to match the second wave in Victoria to early March for the US.

Now, let’s simplify this figure so we can compare the trends a bit better. For the next plot, I have calculated the average number of daily deaths for those selected states in the US and have plotted that along with Victoria.

and finally this one: How would the trajectory of total deaths would have looked like if Victoria has a trend similar to the average trend of US states with a population between five to seven million.