Thread

Here’s the problem with per-capita stats for coronavirus:
• Switzerland has seen ~same pace of outbreak as everywhere else, but its per-cap figure is higher coz it has a low population
• Note "major country" in tweet. Include all countries? Iceland & Luxembourg go top https://twitter.com/adamparsons/status/1242854891447599111

• If comparing prevalence of cancer between countries, you’d adjust per capita, because it’s not a transmissible disease: it comes from lifestyle, genes, pure chance, so if per-capita rate is higher in A than B, that’s because of something happening in that country.

• Covid spreads from person to person; it’s not like cancer. It’s exogenous. Generally, and especially early in outbreak (first few weeks), higher per-capita numbers just mean smaller country, not anything different about how that country’s dealing with covid.

• There are absolutely exceptions here. The best way to track this would be absolute numbers by *outbreak* rather than by country. e.g China essentially had one epicentre: Wuhan. Korea [initially] had Daegu. Italy: Lombardia; UK: London.

• The US will likely end up above China both for cases and deaths (both in absolute numbers and per cap). Part of this will be because US is dealing with multiple outbreaks, not just one epicentre. NY cases didn’t necessarily come from contact with WA etc.

• So having one line per outbreak would better show my central point about the inevitability of covid trajectories where it’s not tackled early like in HK, SGP, KOR, JPN etc. We may yet do that on our charts, but for now we stick with absolute numbers and per-country.

• Another point: when you switch to per-capita, you add a layer of abstraction that makes the story less visceral, less human, less powerful.

We can all picture the tragedy of 500 new coffins in one day. It’s harder and less powerful to picture e.g 0.00001 coffins per capita.

• Key of dataviz is communicating a message. Never more important than w/ public health. With per capita, we add little-to-no *meaningful* info; we make the numbers less easy to grasp; we make small countries look worse more coz they’re small than coz they’ve done anything wrong

• Fin. I think.