Should People Still Be Concerned About COVID-19?
COVID-19 Data Provides Insights On Trends Associated With COVID-19
COVID-19 has affected everyone. The COVID-19 disease incited a global pandemic and changed the entire livelihood of the world. People must wear masks in public and practice staying safe distances away from one another outside of a home environment. Many people now work solely from home or work in public job situations where there is risk for disease contraction while helping people both affected by the COVID-19 disease and people unaffected by the COVID-19 disease. COVID-19 is not a disease to be handled lightly. Coronavirus disease, also known as COVID-19, is an infectious disease that is caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The World Health Organization states: “Most people infected with the (COVID-19) virus will experience mild to moderate respiratory illness and recover without requiring special treatment. However, some will become seriously ill and require medical attention. Older people and those with underlying medical conditions like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, chronic respiratory disease, or cancer are more likely to develop serious illness. Anyone can get sick with COVID-19 and become seriously ill or die at any age” (taken from https://www.who.int/health-topics/coronavirus#tab=tab_1). From all the information I provided: should people still worry today about COVID-19 and its effects?
In this blog, I plan to discuss how COVID-19 has changed from January 2020 to present day to deliver an awareness of the nature of COVID-19 and determine what statistics reveal relating to if COVID-19 is still a highly infectious disease to be concerned with in the present. To report my discussion, I constructed a dashboard on COVID-19 that displays graphs about confirmed new COVID-19 cases and new COVID-19 deaths by day between January 2020-present, a scatterplot diagram about the general relationship between new COVID-19 cases and new COVID-19 deaths between January 2020-present, and a graph of the percent of total COVID-19 deaths compared to total cases of COVID-19 by day between March 2020-present. The dashboard is available to follow along (and hover over points or select a date) at https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/james.stipanowich/viz/COVID19Exploration_16354551053330/CoronavirusStatisticsFromJanuary2020-October2021#1.
The data for my blog and dashboard came from an “Our World in Data” github repository at https://github.com/owid/covid-19-data/tree/master/public/data. From January 2020-present there have been approximately 45.7 million total COVID-19 cases and 742,000 total COVID-19-related deaths in the United States.
What Trends Exist with Confirmed New COVID-19 Cases and
COVID-19 Deaths By Day Between January 2020-October 2021?
Every day there are new confirmed COVID-19 cases and COVID-19 deaths. This data on new cases and deaths has changed from January 2020 (when the pandemic started to take place) to present day (October 2021). On my dashboard I included a sheet titled “Confirmed New Cases and New Deaths By Day” that shows the fluctuations of new COVID-19 cases and COVID-19 deaths to provide conclusions about the life of COVID-19 and the dangers it instills. The dashboard sheet is shown below:
By viewing the “Confirmed New Cases and New Deaths By Day” dashboard sheet, confirmed new COVID-19 cases and confirmed new COVID-19 deaths display strong parallel trends. The COVID-19 pandemic was worst around the beginning of January 2021 with the highest numbers of confirmed new COVID-19 cases and confirmed COVID-19 deaths. Currently, the confirmed new COVID-19 cases and confirmed COVID-19 deaths peaked out again with a smaller value around the middle to the end of September 2021, but have generally decreased since then.
Note: There was one period near the beginning of April 2020 when confirmed new COVID-19 deaths really grew by a much larger amount than new confirmed COVID-19 cases and represents an important time of great concern for life within the COVID-19 pandemic.
What Is the General Relationship Between New COVID-19 Cases and New COVID-19 Deaths Between January 2020-October 2021?
To offer an overall look at the relationship between new COVID-19 cases and new COVID-19 deaths between January 2020-October 2021, I created a scatterplot diagram on my dashboard with a reference line. These analyses provide the ultimate comparison of how new COVID-19 cases have related to new COVID-19 deaths over time. The “Relationship Between New Deaths and New Cases” sheet from my dashboard is shown below:
The “Relationship Between New Deaths and New Cases” sheet shows the relationship between new COVID-19 cases and new COVID-19 deaths is a fairly normal positive linear line. That is to be expected. More COVID-19 cases lead to more COVID-19 deaths and vice versa. The r2 value for the reference line was 0.47, which represents that there is 47 percent variability or medium variability with how accurate the reference line is from representing the actual data points.
However, I did highlight a section of the scatterplot diagram above where there were fewer new COVID-cases, but a lot of new COVID-19 deaths. These data points go against the trend line from the scatterplot exhibiting new COVID-19 case and COVID-19 death values. This cluster of data probably pertains to the beginning of April 2020 when confirmed COVID-19 deaths grew by a larger amount than confirmed COVID-19 cases. While COVID-19 cases generally paralleled COVID-19 deaths, there was a time when new COVID-19 deaths were more extreme. This outlier data expresses the worrisome idea that the COVID-19 cases can turn over to COVID-19 deaths quickly at times.
How Did the Percent of Total COVID-19 Deaths Related To Total
COVID-19 Cases Evolve By Day From March 2020-Present?
The percent of total COVID-19 deaths out of total COVID-19 cases per day is an interesting statistic to understand COVID-19 progression and demonstrates the way that treatment of COVID-19 has changed over time. The third sheet on my Dashboard is titled “Percent of Confirmed Deaths From Confirmed Cases By Day” and shows the values for the percent of total confirmed COVID-19 deaths out of total COVID-19 cases per day below:
The percent of total COVID-19 deaths out of total COVID-19 cases per day was highest with a value of 10.909 percent on March 2, 2020. Also, another peak time when the percent of total COVID-19 deaths out of total COVID-19 cases per day was extremely high was on May 15, 2020 with a value of 6.253 percent. Many COVID-19 cases ended in death from late winter to early spring of 2020.
Most recently the percent of total COVID-19 deaths out of total COVID-19 cases per day has reached an all-time low of 1.619 percent on October 25, 2021. Currently, there is a a lot fewer total COVID-19-related deaths compared with total COVID-19 cases by day than ever before.
What Does COVID-19 Data Project About the Level of Concern People Should Have in Relation to the COVID-19 Pandemic?
COVID-19 has transformed the world. Maybe forever. But how much thought and time should be spent focusing on whether the world will survive this disease pandemic? There are already vaccinations to be taken to lessen the chances of contracting COVID-19 and new regulations in place for the protection of society as a whole against COVID-19 among other progressive measures. The world is working together to ensure a future for the planet without COVID-19. Should there be concern about COVID-19 in the present? Here are my thoughts based off the analyses I obtained while exploring COVID-19 data on a dashboard:
- Confirmed new COVID-19 cases and COVID-19 deaths had a peak period around the beginning of January 2021. Another smaller peak period of confirmed new COVID-19 cases and COVID-19 deaths was around the middle to the end of September 2021. Most recently there is hope for the gradual disintegration of new COVID-19 cases and COVID-19 deaths with their general decline after September 2021. COVID-19 is appearing to be less of a concern than it was about a year ago and in the more recent past.
- The relationship between new COVID-19 cases and new COVID-19 deaths is a fairly normal positive line. That data is to be expected. With more new COVID-19 cases there is great potential for more new COVID-19 deaths and vice versa. With that being said, there is a cluster of data points that probably pertain to the beginning of April 2020 where there was a low number of new COVID-19 cases with a high number of new COVID-19 deaths. This data suggests that COVID-19 cases can swiftly lead to death and there is some lack of ability to control or predict the Coronavirus disease. That fact is worrisome.
- The percent of total COVID-19 deaths out of total COVID-9 cases by day peaked out on March 2, 2020 and May 15, 2020 with values of 10.909 percent and 6.253 percent respectively. Currently the percent of total COVID-19 deaths from total COVID-9 cases reached an unprecedented low of 1.619 percent on October 25, 2021. The percent of total COVID-19 deaths out of total COVID-19 cases was high in the past, but there is a lot of promise that vaccines and COVID-19 protocol of more recent times are mitigating the control of the COVID-19 disease with the daily record low percentage of total COVID-19 deaths out of total COVID-19 cases reaching 1.619 percent on October 25,2021. The future elimination of COVID-19 is optimistic.
Should there be concern about COVID-19 in the present? The answer is debatable, but I believe the world will be strong enough to fight the COVID-19 pandemic however long it lasts, and a bright future is more probable than a depressing one.
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