Can't believe I'm defending @dpfdpf. Not about Australia's "success" as you need to be careful to compare NZ to like regions rather than Australia as a whole and also recognise that state governments were a lot more competent with their responses than the national govt, but...

the per capita comparison here is fine.

Firstly, the amount of tests you can generate as a country is obviously related to the amount of resource, including people, you have.

Second, not making the comparison per capita would make NZ look comparatively worse (because, you know, we're smaller than Australia), not comparatively better.

Third, everyone's God, Ashley Bloomfield always talks about tests per capita.

Fourth, per capita should be used generally absent a better measure as an indicator of how close we are to pressuring the system. https://twitter.com/Economissive/status/1249492517029990400

Of course, if it's not deaths you're worried about, and instead some abstract growth rate from a hypothetical single individual, by all means stick to your log graphs!