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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We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

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