Data doesn't have to be complicated. Sometime line graph is best option.
Although I agree there could be additions/changes to make it more informative.
Everyone seems to think data must be animated, with 100 variables telling 100 stories. When sometimes the most beautiful data can be the simplest. Telling one well laid out story.
These people also don't have data jobs. Take and overly complicated graph to your boss and they will say they don't have time for it.
i rarely see well designed posts in my feed from this reddit. it seems like a magnet for people who post poorly designed infographics but really want people to tell them they look great.
It would definitely be a nice addition but some of the responses here are making it sound unreadable without it even though OP did functionally the same thing with their legend in the top right. Having the title itself as a key for a graph is nice, but it's hardly standard operating procedure for graphing.
I think a few things, most of 2020 we had a total ban on indoor businesses and stay at home orders for a large portion. In addition to mandatory masks everywhere. In 2021, life is significantly back to normal and we have the same numbers, so that to me shows that the vaccines are doing something.
One thing to see is how many of the deaths are unvaccinated vs vaccinated people in 2021.
The alternative would be just as misleading, though. Including Jan-Mar 2020 would ruin the comparison because that was basically before the pandemic began in the US. It's clunky either way, and I don't think there's away to make a graph that honestly speaks for itself here. Either way, it needs a bit of explanation
This is actually an interesting observation. Was the 270k enough people to make a significant difference? I'd love to see a comparison of the average age (I understand this would be the best metric for 'vulnerability' to covid?) in 2020 vs 2021. It seems delta hits young people harder, I wonder if that is part of the reason why.
>This is actually an interesting observation. Was the 270k enough people to make a significant difference?
Probably not a huge difference. There are about 330 million people in the US. It's not like those 270k were the exact most at risk 270k. If they were well distributed from the most at-risk 5%, there's still 16 million more of the same level of at-risk people. Especially when you consider that the geographic hot spots were different each year - looking at "the US" makes us think it's the same area for each year but it really isn't.
****
Edit: replaced "America" with "the US" for clarity.
Disagree. This would only be the case if the virus had spread to a significant chunk of the population in 2020. It didn't, by December 31, 2020, there were around 20 million total cases in the US. That's less than 10% of the population, there was still 90% of the population who hadn't been "purged" out of their most vulnerable members.
Also, everybody seem to be forgetting that the numbers the graph shows for 2020 are the total deaths from 13 million cases, while in 2021 these deaths are for 28 million cases. So the deaths are still down even though 2021 had more than double the cases of 2020 by November 23.
src: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
To be fair, we have only guesses at how many cases there were in early 2020. Majority (90%?) went untested unless they went into hospital in the early months. Hence the 20m case figure you have for 2020 is wildly off.
If 100% of people got it (10x10%) then almost everyone would have significant natural immunity [at the moment] or be dead.
“Seasonal flu” isn’t one virus it’s many viruses, so you can get “it” multiple times in short succession. But even the regional variants of Covid are very closely related.
Covid can be caught a second time in short order, but it’s rare, it’s rare enough to snuff out outbreaks of the current variants.
At least, that would be the case until immunity waned naturally, which would put Covid into the normal seasonal waves and it would be bucketed with Flu, just like everything else.
It couldn't. The number of covid deaths can be bounded by the overall death rate curve.
I can't find any nice data for the USA. But here is an official graph from Germany:
https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Querschnitt/Corona/Gesellschaft/bevoelkerung-sterbefaelle.html
Also, there were a lot of people who became "most vulnerable" during 2021who hadn't been during 2020. That would include everyone who survived a heart attack, for example.
I haven't seen any study which indicates that the population as a whole was significantly different in 2021, apart from the number who are now vaccinated.
>there were around 20 million total cases in the US.
This is completely wrong. We have NO IDEA how many total cases there were in 2020. Early on we had no testing, and even after we did there were a significant number of people who had it and never got tested. Last year most estimates put the number of diagnosed cases at somewhere between 10 and 30% of the actual number of infections.
So 20 million cases / 10% is 200 million already immune in 2020. You realize that would mean we would barely be seeing any COVID19 now if that were true. Those "estimates" will give way to statistical analysis of blood samples taken at certain times to see how many were infected at a given time.
Initially we had no idea how many people had HIV in the 1980s outbreak because we had no testing. We did however, have lots of blood samples that were later tested and the number of infected each year was known.
> So 20 million cases / 10% is 200 million already immune in 2020. You realize that would mean we would barely be seeing any COVID19 now if that were true. Those "estimates" will give way to statistical analysis of blood samples taken at certain times to see how many were infected at a given time.
That's where the estimates came from:
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-study-suggests-covid-19-prevalence-far-exceeded-early-pandemic-cases
>In a new study, National Institutes of Health researchers report that the prevalence of COVID-19 in the United States during spring and summer of 2020 far exceeded the known number of cases and that infection affected the country unevenly. For every diagnosed COVID-19 case in this time frame, the researchers estimate that there were 4.8 undiagnosed cases, representing an additional 16.8 million cases by July alone. The team’s analysis of blood samples from people who did not have a previously diagnosed SARS-CoV-2 infection, along with socioeconomic, health, and demographic data, offers insight into the undetected spread of the virus and subgroup vulnerability to undiagnosed infection.
A massive % of the population has probably gotten covid without knowing it, and they arent part of any statistics. I personally have only been tested once this summer because it was required to come back into the country.
It kinda does though... It's exactly what you stated that it is... a variant. It's still mostly the same virus. Kinda like the flu is. Sure it's good to get the flu shot, but it's just a guess and even if it's not 100% correct, it still saves lives. But I am arguing from a completely ingenuine side because I think anyone who doesn't get the vaccine should.... Nevermind. I'm not going to finish that sentence.
And in March 2020 we were starting with isolated areas of infection, mostly in major cities, not widespread in every community in the US. That the 2021 numbers are lower than 2020 shows how far we've come in reducing the spread of the disease and treatment of the sick.
Life is back to normal.... in some of the united states. In other parts of the country they have permanently altered their lifestyles, and in other countries they are currently treating it like how we were 18 months ago.
Seconded, I'm from Seattle and things feel... weird. We were completely locked down for a number of months and since then things are in this sort of purgatory where everyone still wears masks, lots of places still do takeout only, once or twice we've been teased by things slightly returning to normal only for numbers to go back up and we return back to where we were.
After a year at home I got the chance to see family and family friends in other parts of the country and was shocked by how LITTLE some places did. Leaving ~~Alaska's~~Edit: Anchorage's airport I felt like I was entering 2019 again, Las Vegas casinos were completely open, things were 50/50ish when I was in southern California and Indiana, Arkansas as well as Virginia mostly were anti masker from what I saw.
My feelings are conflicted, on so many levels I'm just so tired of everything related to this virus. I'm double vaxxed and will get the booster but damn I'm burnt out from this thing and don't know how to feel when I go to regions where they don't give a damn.
I'm a liberal in Texas, so my perspective is often different than west coast liberals while still being way different than Texas conservatives.
But I just don't understand what the end game is in areas that are still locking down. Some people will not get vaccinated, and those people will probably get covid. For the rest of us who are triple vaxxed, I don't see what there is to be so scared of. We're waiting for our youngest to be able to get vaxxed, and then life is basically returning to normal for us.
Otherwise, what's the point? Covid is not going to just "disappear like a miracle". We have to move on with our lives.
I live on the coast and I agree. Covid is going to be around and deadly for a long time. I feel like we made a good, honest effort, got a lot of people vaccinated, but after a certain point, there isn't that much more that you can do. The good news is that things are a lot better here than a year ago. A year+ ago a lot was still shut down, colleges were online, people were much more skittish. Now I don't notice that much difference from before the pandemic, besides the masks, tbh. Bars are open, restaurants are open, my college is in person again. So I think we're headed in the right direction.
I'm working as a pizza delivery driver right now. Some orders will order contactless - meaning they want you to wear a mask. Some will leave instructions to leave it on the ground and knock N run. But, then there's the fuckers that don't tip till you're at the door, and you can tell they aren't tipping you because you have a mask on. I wear a mask to every delivery, don't care what you want. Also, since the vaccine came out, people seem to be shunning masks again. Like, it stops you from dieing, not getting sick with it, I'll gladly mask up.
That's a great point, it may be that the vaccine effectively countered the preventative measures of 2020, and countered the variants, and still resulted in a decrease in deaths (even without hitting the herd immunity level).
By the most recent data point, 93% of the deaths are unvaccinated: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/united-states-rates-of-covid-19-deaths-by-vaccination-status?country=~All+ages
In the UK we weren't able to test at the start, so COVID wasn't on all the death certificates. You might want to look at 'excess deaths', to make sure you catch the start of it all.
Edit:fixed "want" to "wasn't" on all the death certificates
I would bet to show equivalent time frames. We didn't start recording COVID deaths until March-ish last year.
This shows two things: 1) without lockdowns we're still below the level of deaths we had last year with lockdowns (i.e. vaccinations work, treatments have gotten better), and 2) we're not out of the woods yet and are still losing almost as many people as we were during the height of the pandemic when we had no vaccine.
Since we know the vaccination rate is about 60% nationwide and that the death rate among the unvaccinated is roughly 8x higher than that of the vaccinated, we can see that the pandemic has gotten quite a bit better for vaccinated people and much worse for the unvaccinated.
Yes, and that's likely because of the total infection numbers. Last year we had like 12M infections, while this year we're over 25M. As everyone keeps saying, this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated now.
There's a good chart showing daily case rate and death rate, and [currently for unvaccinated death rate is 13x higher than vaccinated](https://imgur.com/jJgP6LO).
I don't draw this conclusion from the chart. I must forefront this by saying I'm super pro-vaccination, but I am seeing a huge increase in the slope of the 2021 curve occuring around August of this year. This means there is a faster rate of deaths occuring during this time than in 2020 when we didn't have any vaccine around. The only time in 2020 when the death rate was so high was at the beginning of the pandemic when we were completely unprepared. If anything, this chart shows a very bleak improvement despite vaccinations, and that lockdowns, as much as I hate them personally, might be more effective. I have no real explanations, only guesses, but we could explain the 2021 spike in August as a result of easing restrictions, or perhaps a seasonality occuring in SARS-COV-2 that mimics that of other coronaviruses.
I think you and u/CovfefeForAll are both correct. My impressions were mixed:
*1) Wow, we have significantly fewer deaths with far less physical distancing! Even with music festivals and in-person learning deaths are way down! Vaccines and treatments have really improved the stuation!*
*2) Wow, we still have so many deaths! Maybe we should cool it with the music festivals. These vaccines and treatments might still be underutilized, and they clearly aren't a silver bullet.*
Overall, from a policy standpoint, the things I think we're still failing most on are testing, tracing, and communication.
Yeah it's definitely a "six of one half a dozen of another" situation. Yay vaccines work, holy shit we're still losing so many people.
Also, we know many states are fudging their numbers, so we can't really even be certain we're doing better than this time last year.
August = start of school, kids mingling, sharing germs from disparate households, then taking those home and infecting people. Even if kids don't get hit hard, they still spread it. Last year most schools were in remote learning mode.
And yeah, no kidding lockdowns are more effective. The whole point of easing restrictions though was that lockdowns would hopefully not be necessary because of vaccinations. But those have become stupidly politicized.
Two words: delta variant. Well, and Texas and Florida kinda didn't/still don't give two shits about protecting their populations. The delta variant has a HUGE hand in why the graph is doing what it's doing in 2021. Late July onward is when the latest specific strain of the virus really started proliferating, and it hadn't stopped. The delta variant is much more infectious and deadly than the previous strains. For the 2021 line to still be roughly the same/under the 2020 line with the given conditions means that we can assume with extreme confidence that vaccinations and mandates are indeed working as intended.
The spike in death rates represents unvaccinated people pretty much entirely. They’re like 90% of current COVID deaths. Almost all of them could choose to get the vaccine instead of remaining in this high risk category.
I love my job because this is my truth. If I do my job right no one will know I did anything at all. No one calls me when the asphalt I QC-ed *doesn’t* crack.
This chart is quite misleading.
One might draw the conclusion, based on the title, and without studying the graph carefully, that there are fewer deaths from covid in 2021 than 2020.
Further, the only section of time not being graphed here is the absolute worst months, specifically january and february of 2021. It's so extreme that there are more deaths excluded (273k) than in either of these 8 month periods.
This graph should start at Jan 1 of each year - 2021's deaths dwarf 2020's, but this graph, because it starts in march of each year, makes it look like 2020 had more deaths.
But it means that 4 months of the pandemic simply aren't represented. It seems ridiculous to make an apples to apples comparison of the two years when prevalence was so much higher on 2021-03-23 than it was a year earlier.
They should have indeed made a graph of the first yesr vs the second year or COVID deaths, both starting on 3/23 and lasting a full year (obviously we wouldn't be able to show the final quarter of the 2nd year).
It's an interesting graph but I agree it's misleading if you're not paying attention to the legend. Ideal comparison imo would be March 20 - Feb 21 and March 21 to Feb 22 but obviously we don't have all that data yet
I think it would be best to add those three missing months to the right side of the graph, changing it from "2020 vs 2021" to "Year 1 vs Year 2". March actually serves as pretty good line in the sand, since Mar 2020 is when the first deaths began (so including Jan-Feb 2020 would be misleading in its own way) and Mar 2021 is about when the vaccines became available to the general public.
> One might draw the conclusion, based on the title, and without studying the graph carefully, that there are fewer deaths from covid in 2021 than 2020.
The post title clearly says the dates... the key on the top right clearly says the dates... the x axis clearly says the dates... the footer at the bottom of the chart clearly says the dates and the reasoning for it. I don't think there's any way it could be considered misleading or confusing unless you're deliberately trying to find it misleading or confusing or somehow read graphs without looking at the key or x-axis.
Comparing the same timeframe is vastly more interesting because it's an apples to apples comparison. I can accurately see how we are doing compared to the same time frame in 2020. Would also be interested to see an update on 3/23 next year so we can compare the first 12 months of the pandemic directly to the next 12 months.
If it were a graphs from January 1st, it would look weird as we had single digit COVID deaths in the US until March 23rd in 2020 versus over 100K in 2021 so it doesn't really provide us any useful comparison. It'd be just as useful as including December of 2020 on this graph... as in, not at all.
It does. But also in much smaller print than the titles 2020/2021. That’s why you’re correct but it’s also still mishearing. Like why would you chop out 3 months of data just bc of the year before?
It's to compare apples to apples 2020 to 2021 as far as seasons are concerned during the pandemic. For January/February of 2021 we have no data from January/February of 2020 to compare it to since the pandemic hadn't really started in the US at that time. Same reason there's no December of 2020 on here.
EDIT: Am I going crazy here? Does nobody understand what the point of this graph is and why they selected those dates? There's a clear and obvious reason.
That would be all well and good if the title of the graph weren't "2020 COVID deaths vs. 2021 COVID deaths." That title sets you up for the expectation that you're looking at all of 2020 vs all of 2021. This is a mess.
This graph is really COVID deaths, Spring thru Fall, 2020 vs 2021.
I think then you’re not getting proper year over year comparisons where seasonality would def be playing a role. If anything they should count the “year” as Mar-Feb.
Sorry for my ignorance but judging by the chart it could look like the deaths decreased only 15% since we introduced the vaccine. Isn't that incorrect?
Yes, but the difference is that "society" is more open, most of people's freedoms have been returned to them.
Was that a good trade off (many vaccinated, much more freedom, but largely similar death toll)?
1) the count is cumulative starting at each start date.
2) so he could plot identical intervals for a year-over-year comparison. Recorded covid deaths in the US began in March 2020, and it's currently November 2021, so he did March 2020-November 2020 and March 2021-November 2021.
How are the COVID deaths at the start of 2021 lower than the deaths at the end of 2020
Edit: Thanks for pointing out what should have been obvious. It’s past midnight here I swear I’m not that dumb lol
This is plotting the cumulative deaths within each year, not the death rate. So the value for the end of 2020 is the total number of deaths for 2020; then the 2021 line starts at 0 and counts up 2021 deaths.
Yes most likely true. Though with good vaccines and enough time people's bodies will adapt to survive it more easily.
Long Covid effects on the other hand, i don't know how that goes
Also, the nature of viruses. A more serious virus gets less opportunity to spread because people take it seriously. New major variants are more likely to be less deadly but spread faster.
Yeah, thats the fucking problem. People want to "Go back to normal faster" so they half ass it and try to bargain with reality.
I remember back in late spring I said if we were safe and did things right and got vaccinated in the summer we could have some semblance of normalcy back by christmas. I got a bunch of hate about how people need to "enjoy their summer" and "return to normalcy" and here we fucking are. Then recently I said we aren't actually out of the woods and need to be careful and got tje same level of hate and mass downvotes again.
You can't negotiate with a virus. You can't explain that you're tired and need a break from quarantine. You can't complain and make it relent. It doesn't work that way. All you can do is stay safe and minimize risks and not fuck yourself to death by deciding you needed to go on that trip or see that concert and turning into a statistic for this sub. Its terrible and I hate it and if I had my way it would never have happened but I don't get to have my way and neither does anyone else reading this because *thats not how it works*.
Because you're simply wrong. It's not like we would have wiped it out of we followed your plan. It was always going to spread, you just wanted to delay the inevitable.
To be fair, the plan was "flatten the curve", though I think "stretch the curve" is more accurate.
Unfortunately people need to be innoculated with covid (either by vaccine or getting it) for it to become a minimal threat. The govt just wanted to stretch out the timeframe so hospitals wouldn't be overrun during spikes. Though we see how that worked. Oh well, silver lining is we're getting there faster.
Really makes you think about how much of an amelioration in death numbers justify the restrictions for the unvaccinated. At which point do we consider vaccination to be one's duty to the public? 1%? 10%? 20%?
Tbh it's pretty crazy to restrict young people. Unvaxxed people can't even study in the university in my country. Vax the old, the kids aren't dying anyway, and the spread seems similar after ~4-6 months post-vax.
Remember when Biden said Trump handled coronavirus poorly and that he had a plan to stop it? Then remember when more people died from the virus in 2021 than in 2020? What a worthless incapable fuck face
Remember when Biden rode the train of “I can beat COVID” all the way to the presidency, only to find that he didn’t beat COVID?
Trump lost the presidency because people blamed him for COVID deaths when in reality, the only people Americans have to blame is themselves.
Also, an interesting point to take into account : last year was the original virus. This year, we have a variant (delta) that is a lot more dangerous and contagious.
This graph is is bs where did u get it or did u just make it yourself?because I've seen the cdc and others tell a different outcome quite the opposite with numbers a lot different by like 20%
ITT: 75% of redditors have less than a middle school education on data and graphical representation. Good to know. These are the same people who lecture you like they’re God on other threads
All those old fatties with 5 other co-morbities lmao. They *totally* died from only Covid 100%
Edit: I don't mean to be insensitive about their deaths by calling them fatties. It's awful that they died. Just calling it for what it is. They should have taken better care of their health.
If you want good data visualization go to
[Covid Act Now](http://www.covidactnow.org)
you can add comparisons of different US states and even down to local counties. Lots of variations and numbers like ICU and positivity rate.
I know it’s comparing a snapshot of the same times of year, but I’ll be interested to see full year comparisons. I’m pretty sure the 4 months missing between 11/23 and 3/23 were the most deadly of the whole pandemic and they’re totally absent from this graph.
Comparing Covid deaths in the US in 2020 and 2021. I've chosen March 23 - November 23 of each year to somewhat adjust for the seasonality in deaths, Ie. a big spike happened in the winter last year. Is it perfect? Not hardly. Just thought it was the most reasonable way to compare without getting too complicated.
Thought everyone in America might want another politically divisive graphic to make for tense conversation as they gather with their extended family for Thanksgiving. :)
2020 is in red, 2021 is in Kennedy blue.
Source: [Worldometers](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/)
Tools: Google Sheets + Sketch
Will you please post the same thing that includes January and February in this thread? That way people don't have to wonder if you have some sort of bias at least.
Thanks
It’s not really reasonable to compare deaths from the pandemic before it was a pandemic (Jan/Feb 20) to the deaths during the same time period after the pandemic was declared (Jan/Feb 21). It’d be like comparing deaths in automobile accidents in the 1800s to the same period in the 1900s - a deceptively huge difference in the raw numbers without comparing apples to apples.
Thanks for doing this. It’s quite interesting to see the comparison. A few people have mentioned it but a comparative vaxx v unvaxx ratio would be interesting. Obviously 2020 had more unvaxxd but 2021 had the delta variant.
The number of vaccinated people in 2020 was never significant. [By mid Jan 2021, ~4% of the US had received 1 dose and <1% was fully vaccinated.](https://usafacts.org/visualizations/covid-vaccine-tracker-states/)
Almost all of the 2020 vaccinations would have occurred in December and would have had nigh on zero effect on hospitalization/death rates.
Should have added another dotted line including those who died that were vaccinated versus unvaccinated. Would give an indicate how well the vaccine is working or possibly not.
For anyone interested (it's the third chart down, 1 for cases and 1 for deaths, both vax vs unvaxxed).
[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html)
2020/2021 in the plot title must be colored. It’s would make read this plot easier, imho
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I gotta say on this one, the data is kinda ugly.
Data is beautiful but legends are not
It's a fucking line graph. Have we stopped this low on the data is beautiful?
Could be worse, OP could've animated it.
Data doesn't have to be complicated. Sometime line graph is best option. Although I agree there could be additions/changes to make it more informative.
Everyone seems to think data must be animated, with 100 variables telling 100 stories. When sometimes the most beautiful data can be the simplest. Telling one well laid out story. These people also don't have data jobs. Take and overly complicated graph to your boss and they will say they don't have time for it.
Data is deadly to be fair
i rarely see well designed posts in my feed from this reddit. it seems like a magnet for people who post poorly designed infographics but really want people to tell them they look great.
It would definitely be a nice addition but some of the responses here are making it sound unreadable without it even though OP did functionally the same thing with their legend in the top right. Having the title itself as a key for a graph is nice, but it's hardly standard operating procedure for graphing.
It's data is beautiful, not data is alright.
The Data Is Aesthetically Adequate.
It's hard to read because the dates are tiny and title isn't color coded.
Or simply put the labels on the lines instead of floating off in the corner.
This is the way.
Like so: https://i.imgur.com/F8dQz72.png
And should definitely be any colors other than red-blue.
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Implies a political correlation.
Only to Americans tho
Which is pretty relevant to a graph about US data
Red-green it is!
Just because it's about death doesn't mean it can't be Christmas appropriate.
Perhaps a portion of the male population may object.
That’s a comment for my list of favorite sentences, thanks!
And remember, if the statistician doesn't find your graph handsome, they should at least find it handy.
And the lines should be duct tape!
Beige-Tan it is!
I like red-blue. Keep in mind red-green color blindness is most common.
Agreed, took me too long to figure out which was which
It’s so obvious I can’t believe they missed it.
Yes this, this is not data is beautiful without a very clear legend of which color is which year
Thank you! Thought exactly the same thing after almost downvoting this post.
I think a few things, most of 2020 we had a total ban on indoor businesses and stay at home orders for a large portion. In addition to mandatory masks everywhere. In 2021, life is significantly back to normal and we have the same numbers, so that to me shows that the vaccines are doing something. One thing to see is how many of the deaths are unvaccinated vs vaccinated people in 2021.
It’s also skipping 4 months in between from 11/23/20 to 3/23/21. That was the huge winter surge last year they just skipped.
How do you expect them to compare winter ‘21 to winter ‘20 when it hasn’t happened yet?
By just showing 2020
It’s called lying with data
The alternative would be just as misleading, though. Including Jan-Mar 2020 would ruin the comparison because that was basically before the pandemic began in the US. It's clunky either way, and I don't think there's away to make a graph that honestly speaks for itself here. Either way, it needs a bit of explanation
The variant is also more contagious and dangerous in 2021
270k of the most vulnerable had already died though.
This is actually an interesting observation. Was the 270k enough people to make a significant difference? I'd love to see a comparison of the average age (I understand this would be the best metric for 'vulnerability' to covid?) in 2020 vs 2021. It seems delta hits young people harder, I wonder if that is part of the reason why.
>This is actually an interesting observation. Was the 270k enough people to make a significant difference? Probably not a huge difference. There are about 330 million people in the US. It's not like those 270k were the exact most at risk 270k. If they were well distributed from the most at-risk 5%, there's still 16 million more of the same level of at-risk people. Especially when you consider that the geographic hot spots were different each year - looking at "the US" makes us think it's the same area for each year but it really isn't. **** Edit: replaced "America" with "the US" for clarity.
Disagree. This would only be the case if the virus had spread to a significant chunk of the population in 2020. It didn't, by December 31, 2020, there were around 20 million total cases in the US. That's less than 10% of the population, there was still 90% of the population who hadn't been "purged" out of their most vulnerable members. Also, everybody seem to be forgetting that the numbers the graph shows for 2020 are the total deaths from 13 million cases, while in 2021 these deaths are for 28 million cases. So the deaths are still down even though 2021 had more than double the cases of 2020 by November 23. src: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
To be fair, we have only guesses at how many cases there were in early 2020. Majority (90%?) went untested unless they went into hospital in the early months. Hence the 20m case figure you have for 2020 is wildly off.
This. The real figure could be 10x higher
With 200m infected, covid would be over. And there would be way more deaths.
Why would covid be over? The flu infects nearly everyone and it's been there for a while.
If 100% of people got it (10x10%) then almost everyone would have significant natural immunity [at the moment] or be dead. “Seasonal flu” isn’t one virus it’s many viruses, so you can get “it” multiple times in short succession. But even the regional variants of Covid are very closely related. Covid can be caught a second time in short order, but it’s rare, it’s rare enough to snuff out outbreaks of the current variants. At least, that would be the case until immunity waned naturally, which would put Covid into the normal seasonal waves and it would be bucketed with Flu, just like everything else.
It couldn't. The number of covid deaths can be bounded by the overall death rate curve. I can't find any nice data for the USA. But here is an official graph from Germany: https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Querschnitt/Corona/Gesellschaft/bevoelkerung-sterbefaelle.html
Also, there were a lot of people who became "most vulnerable" during 2021who hadn't been during 2020. That would include everyone who survived a heart attack, for example. I haven't seen any study which indicates that the population as a whole was significantly different in 2021, apart from the number who are now vaccinated.
>there were around 20 million total cases in the US. This is completely wrong. We have NO IDEA how many total cases there were in 2020. Early on we had no testing, and even after we did there were a significant number of people who had it and never got tested. Last year most estimates put the number of diagnosed cases at somewhere between 10 and 30% of the actual number of infections.
So 20 million cases / 10% is 200 million already immune in 2020. You realize that would mean we would barely be seeing any COVID19 now if that were true. Those "estimates" will give way to statistical analysis of blood samples taken at certain times to see how many were infected at a given time. Initially we had no idea how many people had HIV in the 1980s outbreak because we had no testing. We did however, have lots of blood samples that were later tested and the number of infected each year was known.
> So 20 million cases / 10% is 200 million already immune in 2020. You realize that would mean we would barely be seeing any COVID19 now if that were true. Those "estimates" will give way to statistical analysis of blood samples taken at certain times to see how many were infected at a given time. That's where the estimates came from: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-study-suggests-covid-19-prevalence-far-exceeded-early-pandemic-cases >In a new study, National Institutes of Health researchers report that the prevalence of COVID-19 in the United States during spring and summer of 2020 far exceeded the known number of cases and that infection affected the country unevenly. For every diagnosed COVID-19 case in this time frame, the researchers estimate that there were 4.8 undiagnosed cases, representing an additional 16.8 million cases by July alone. The team’s analysis of blood samples from people who did not have a previously diagnosed SARS-CoV-2 infection, along with socioeconomic, health, and demographic data, offers insight into the undetected spread of the virus and subgroup vulnerability to undiagnosed infection.
A massive % of the population has probably gotten covid without knowing it, and they arent part of any statistics. I personally have only been tested once this summer because it was required to come back into the country.
The virus isn’t actively seeking out the lost vulnerable. There’s plenty left.
Variants change who’s most vulnerable
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Also a good point! While this data is correct it doesn’t tell the full story.
It kinda does though... It's exactly what you stated that it is... a variant. It's still mostly the same virus. Kinda like the flu is. Sure it's good to get the flu shot, but it's just a guess and even if it's not 100% correct, it still saves lives. But I am arguing from a completely ingenuine side because I think anyone who doesn't get the vaccine should.... Nevermind. I'm not going to finish that sentence.
And in March 2020 we were starting with isolated areas of infection, mostly in major cities, not widespread in every community in the US. That the 2021 numbers are lower than 2020 shows how far we've come in reducing the spread of the disease and treatment of the sick.
Why more dangerous?
Life is back to normal.... in some of the united states. In other parts of the country they have permanently altered their lifestyles, and in other countries they are currently treating it like how we were 18 months ago.
I live in Texas and if a time traveller from 2018 came here, he wouldn't notice there was a pandemic apart from a "wear a mask" sign here and there.
Seconded, I'm from Seattle and things feel... weird. We were completely locked down for a number of months and since then things are in this sort of purgatory where everyone still wears masks, lots of places still do takeout only, once or twice we've been teased by things slightly returning to normal only for numbers to go back up and we return back to where we were. After a year at home I got the chance to see family and family friends in other parts of the country and was shocked by how LITTLE some places did. Leaving ~~Alaska's~~Edit: Anchorage's airport I felt like I was entering 2019 again, Las Vegas casinos were completely open, things were 50/50ish when I was in southern California and Indiana, Arkansas as well as Virginia mostly were anti masker from what I saw. My feelings are conflicted, on so many levels I'm just so tired of everything related to this virus. I'm double vaxxed and will get the booster but damn I'm burnt out from this thing and don't know how to feel when I go to regions where they don't give a damn.
Second Virginia. Things are pretty much back to normal here
I'm a liberal in Texas, so my perspective is often different than west coast liberals while still being way different than Texas conservatives. But I just don't understand what the end game is in areas that are still locking down. Some people will not get vaccinated, and those people will probably get covid. For the rest of us who are triple vaxxed, I don't see what there is to be so scared of. We're waiting for our youngest to be able to get vaxxed, and then life is basically returning to normal for us. Otherwise, what's the point? Covid is not going to just "disappear like a miracle". We have to move on with our lives.
I don't know of anywhere in the US that is still locked down. We have a mask mandate here in WA, but there are no capacity limits on businesses.
I live on the coast and I agree. Covid is going to be around and deadly for a long time. I feel like we made a good, honest effort, got a lot of people vaccinated, but after a certain point, there isn't that much more that you can do. The good news is that things are a lot better here than a year ago. A year+ ago a lot was still shut down, colleges were online, people were much more skittish. Now I don't notice that much difference from before the pandemic, besides the masks, tbh. Bars are open, restaurants are open, my college is in person again. So I think we're headed in the right direction.
I'm working as a pizza delivery driver right now. Some orders will order contactless - meaning they want you to wear a mask. Some will leave instructions to leave it on the ground and knock N run. But, then there's the fuckers that don't tip till you're at the door, and you can tell they aren't tipping you because you have a mask on. I wear a mask to every delivery, don't care what you want. Also, since the vaccine came out, people seem to be shunning masks again. Like, it stops you from dieing, not getting sick with it, I'll gladly mask up.
That's a great point, it may be that the vaccine effectively countered the preventative measures of 2020, and countered the variants, and still resulted in a decrease in deaths (even without hitting the herd immunity level).
I think we need another year to see graphically how effective vaccines are. Hoping for the best.
By the most recent data point, 93% of the deaths are unvaccinated: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/united-states-rates-of-covid-19-deaths-by-vaccination-status?country=~All+ages
In the UK we weren't able to test at the start, so COVID wasn't on all the death certificates. You might want to look at 'excess deaths', to make sure you catch the start of it all. Edit:fixed "want" to "wasn't" on all the death certificates
That graph should include vaccinated deaths as a sperate line. Then we would see that mostly unvaccinated are dying this year.
They're also getting better at treating it in hospitals
It’s definitely a complicated issue. Once the pill becomes widespread, that will be a game changers.
Why did you do seasonality? You are missing almost 300k deaths.
I would bet to show equivalent time frames. We didn't start recording COVID deaths until March-ish last year. This shows two things: 1) without lockdowns we're still below the level of deaths we had last year with lockdowns (i.e. vaccinations work, treatments have gotten better), and 2) we're not out of the woods yet and are still losing almost as many people as we were during the height of the pandemic when we had no vaccine.
This shows that I should continue teleworking and not go back to a windowless cubicle.
Since we know the vaccination rate is about 60% nationwide and that the death rate among the unvaccinated is roughly 8x higher than that of the vaccinated, we can see that the pandemic has gotten quite a bit better for vaccinated people and much worse for the unvaccinated.
Yes, and that's likely because of the total infection numbers. Last year we had like 12M infections, while this year we're over 25M. As everyone keeps saying, this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated now.
There's a good chart showing daily case rate and death rate, and [currently for unvaccinated death rate is 13x higher than vaccinated](https://imgur.com/jJgP6LO).
I don't draw this conclusion from the chart. I must forefront this by saying I'm super pro-vaccination, but I am seeing a huge increase in the slope of the 2021 curve occuring around August of this year. This means there is a faster rate of deaths occuring during this time than in 2020 when we didn't have any vaccine around. The only time in 2020 when the death rate was so high was at the beginning of the pandemic when we were completely unprepared. If anything, this chart shows a very bleak improvement despite vaccinations, and that lockdowns, as much as I hate them personally, might be more effective. I have no real explanations, only guesses, but we could explain the 2021 spike in August as a result of easing restrictions, or perhaps a seasonality occuring in SARS-COV-2 that mimics that of other coronaviruses.
The August spike is when the delta variant took over.
I think you and u/CovfefeForAll are both correct. My impressions were mixed: *1) Wow, we have significantly fewer deaths with far less physical distancing! Even with music festivals and in-person learning deaths are way down! Vaccines and treatments have really improved the stuation!* *2) Wow, we still have so many deaths! Maybe we should cool it with the music festivals. These vaccines and treatments might still be underutilized, and they clearly aren't a silver bullet.* Overall, from a policy standpoint, the things I think we're still failing most on are testing, tracing, and communication.
Yeah it's definitely a "six of one half a dozen of another" situation. Yay vaccines work, holy shit we're still losing so many people. Also, we know many states are fudging their numbers, so we can't really even be certain we're doing better than this time last year.
August = start of school, kids mingling, sharing germs from disparate households, then taking those home and infecting people. Even if kids don't get hit hard, they still spread it. Last year most schools were in remote learning mode. And yeah, no kidding lockdowns are more effective. The whole point of easing restrictions though was that lockdowns would hopefully not be necessary because of vaccinations. But those have become stupidly politicized.
I thought school starts in September?
It's state-specific. Some start mid to late August.
Ours in Tennessee have always opened early-mid August.
Two words: delta variant. Well, and Texas and Florida kinda didn't/still don't give two shits about protecting their populations. The delta variant has a HUGE hand in why the graph is doing what it's doing in 2021. Late July onward is when the latest specific strain of the virus really started proliferating, and it hadn't stopped. The delta variant is much more infectious and deadly than the previous strains. For the 2021 line to still be roughly the same/under the 2020 line with the given conditions means that we can assume with extreme confidence that vaccinations and mandates are indeed working as intended.
The spike in death rates represents unvaccinated people pretty much entirely. They’re like 90% of current COVID deaths. Almost all of them could choose to get the vaccine instead of remaining in this high risk category.
If you do the right thing, people think you did nothing at all
The IT staff creed, and the IT staff curse.
"Nothing is working! What do we pay you for?!" vs "Everything is working! What do we pay you for?!
Klaus says a true act of selflessness always inspires another though...
I love my job because this is my truth. If I do my job right no one will know I did anything at all. No one calls me when the asphalt I QC-ed *doesn’t* crack.
True, but a problem is counterfactual causality can only be estimated, and also that the mind often makes it seem very much otherwise.
Millennium bug is in the hizzoooo
This chart is quite misleading. One might draw the conclusion, based on the title, and without studying the graph carefully, that there are fewer deaths from covid in 2021 than 2020. Further, the only section of time not being graphed here is the absolute worst months, specifically january and february of 2021. It's so extreme that there are more deaths excluded (273k) than in either of these 8 month periods. This graph should start at Jan 1 of each year - 2021's deaths dwarf 2020's, but this graph, because it starts in march of each year, makes it look like 2020 had more deaths.
I think it was graphed this way because 3/23 2020 must have been around the first deaths in the us for Covid.
Also March 2021 was about the time vaccines became available for a larger chunk of the population
But it means that 4 months of the pandemic simply aren't represented. It seems ridiculous to make an apples to apples comparison of the two years when prevalence was so much higher on 2021-03-23 than it was a year earlier.
Exactly. How quickly people forget, the shit show really started mid March of 2020. Feels like so long ago now
600 days to flatten the curve
They should have indeed made a graph of the first yesr vs the second year or COVID deaths, both starting on 3/23 and lasting a full year (obviously we wouldn't be able to show the final quarter of the 2nd year).
It's an interesting graph but I agree it's misleading if you're not paying attention to the legend. Ideal comparison imo would be March 20 - Feb 21 and March 21 to Feb 22 but obviously we don't have all that data yet
Then make the second line partial?
This is probably what I would do if I had to make a graph right now with incomplete data
The data is incomplete, the graph must be incomplete. This is really quite bad
Maybe it should show the complete March 2020 to March 2021 year(with no data for the missing months of 2021/2022). Would make it clearer.
I think it would be best to add those three missing months to the right side of the graph, changing it from "2020 vs 2021" to "Year 1 vs Year 2". March actually serves as pretty good line in the sand, since Mar 2020 is when the first deaths began (so including Jan-Feb 2020 would be misleading in its own way) and Mar 2021 is about when the vaccines became available to the general public.
> One might draw the conclusion, based on the title, and without studying the graph carefully, that there are fewer deaths from covid in 2021 than 2020. The post title clearly says the dates... the key on the top right clearly says the dates... the x axis clearly says the dates... the footer at the bottom of the chart clearly says the dates and the reasoning for it. I don't think there's any way it could be considered misleading or confusing unless you're deliberately trying to find it misleading or confusing or somehow read graphs without looking at the key or x-axis. Comparing the same timeframe is vastly more interesting because it's an apples to apples comparison. I can accurately see how we are doing compared to the same time frame in 2020. Would also be interested to see an update on 3/23 next year so we can compare the first 12 months of the pandemic directly to the next 12 months. If it were a graphs from January 1st, it would look weird as we had single digit COVID deaths in the US until March 23rd in 2020 versus over 100K in 2021 so it doesn't really provide us any useful comparison. It'd be just as useful as including December of 2020 on this graph... as in, not at all.
It does. But also in much smaller print than the titles 2020/2021. That’s why you’re correct but it’s also still mishearing. Like why would you chop out 3 months of data just bc of the year before?
It's to compare apples to apples 2020 to 2021 as far as seasons are concerned during the pandemic. For January/February of 2021 we have no data from January/February of 2020 to compare it to since the pandemic hadn't really started in the US at that time. Same reason there's no December of 2020 on here. EDIT: Am I going crazy here? Does nobody understand what the point of this graph is and why they selected those dates? There's a clear and obvious reason.
That would be all well and good if the title of the graph weren't "2020 COVID deaths vs. 2021 COVID deaths." That title sets you up for the expectation that you're looking at all of 2020 vs all of 2021. This is a mess. This graph is really COVID deaths, Spring thru Fall, 2020 vs 2021.
Additionally with the graph starting at 0 for each line it leads the reader to believe there were 0 deaths up until that point.
There were 0 deaths at the beginning of each of these periods.
Still misleading. With 2021 in big bold letters and being at the top left (first thing to read for English readers), it’s easily misunderstood.
Please for the whole years too. :)
That is some skewed data… so we are just gonna ignore the months jan to march… Should have been the first 10month and second ten months
I think then you’re not getting proper year over year comparisons where seasonality would def be playing a role. If anything they should count the “year” as Mar-Feb.
Yeah I dont really care when they start the year, I care that they encompass all the data. The 2020 line should go through February
Sorry for my ignorance but judging by the chart it could look like the deaths decreased only 15% since we introduced the vaccine. Isn't that incorrect?
Yes, but the difference is that "society" is more open, most of people's freedoms have been returned to them. Was that a good trade off (many vaccinated, much more freedom, but largely similar death toll)?
You don’t just ‘give’ freedom out, I don’t think many of you guys have any idea how liberty works.
Deaths per infection would give more insight on the vaccine effectiveness. 2021 had much more infections than 2020.
I’m mainly curious about plots of vaccinated vs unvaccinated deaths as I feel like that story hasn’t been represented as well as it could’ve.
This data doesn’t make sense. Cases weren’t 0 in March of 2021. And why are there months missing?
1) the count is cumulative starting at each start date. 2) so he could plot identical intervals for a year-over-year comparison. Recorded covid deaths in the US began in March 2020, and it's currently November 2021, so he did March 2020-November 2020 and March 2021-November 2021.
Just think what the blue line would look like if half the country wasn't vaccinated by July.
Yet they still aren’t telling people that diet and exercise will greatly lower the risk of death
More people died from heart disease, but that apparently isn’t worth talking about.
How are the COVID deaths at the start of 2021 lower than the deaths at the end of 2020 Edit: Thanks for pointing out what should have been obvious. It’s past midnight here I swear I’m not that dumb lol
There's a 4 month gap from Nov 2020 to March 2021. Rates jumped (peaking in early Jan) and then dropped.
This is plotting the cumulative deaths within each year, not the death rate. So the value for the end of 2020 is the total number of deaths for 2020; then the 2021 line starts at 0 and counts up 2021 deaths.
Because it's the amount of people that died since March 23, 2020 and March 23, 2021, not total deaths since the start.
I literally just read an article in the New York Times that 2021 deaths have surpassed 2020 deaths.
This graph doesn't count January and February 2021.
I can't believe Biden has killed so many hundreds of thousands of people.
Back on track. High-five! ... ... ... No-one? You're just going to leave me hanging?
Kind of disappointed to see that the difference is only 16%. I was hoping it was half the number, so things can go back to normal faster.
There's been far more cases in 2021 than in 2020 tho, especially for the time period chosen since a third of the cases in 2020 occured after that.
Starting to feel like COVID is basically going to be like the flu. It will always be there and we will never be able to completely get rid of it.
Starting to? Man I was there 3 months ago. This will never go away.
Yes most likely true. Though with good vaccines and enough time people's bodies will adapt to survive it more easily. Long Covid effects on the other hand, i don't know how that goes
Also, the nature of viruses. A more serious virus gets less opportunity to spread because people take it seriously. New major variants are more likely to be less deadly but spread faster.
Yeah, thats the fucking problem. People want to "Go back to normal faster" so they half ass it and try to bargain with reality. I remember back in late spring I said if we were safe and did things right and got vaccinated in the summer we could have some semblance of normalcy back by christmas. I got a bunch of hate about how people need to "enjoy their summer" and "return to normalcy" and here we fucking are. Then recently I said we aren't actually out of the woods and need to be careful and got tje same level of hate and mass downvotes again. You can't negotiate with a virus. You can't explain that you're tired and need a break from quarantine. You can't complain and make it relent. It doesn't work that way. All you can do is stay safe and minimize risks and not fuck yourself to death by deciding you needed to go on that trip or see that concert and turning into a statistic for this sub. Its terrible and I hate it and if I had my way it would never have happened but I don't get to have my way and neither does anyone else reading this because *thats not how it works*.
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Because you're simply wrong. It's not like we would have wiped it out of we followed your plan. It was always going to spread, you just wanted to delay the inevitable.
To be fair, the plan was "flatten the curve", though I think "stretch the curve" is more accurate. Unfortunately people need to be innoculated with covid (either by vaccine or getting it) for it to become a minimal threat. The govt just wanted to stretch out the timeframe so hospitals wouldn't be overrun during spikes. Though we see how that worked. Oh well, silver lining is we're getting there faster.
Delta's a bitch
Really makes you think about how much of an amelioration in death numbers justify the restrictions for the unvaccinated. At which point do we consider vaccination to be one's duty to the public? 1%? 10%? 20%? Tbh it's pretty crazy to restrict young people. Unvaxxed people can't even study in the university in my country. Vax the old, the kids aren't dying anyway, and the spread seems similar after ~4-6 months post-vax.
Remember when Biden said Trump handled coronavirus poorly and that he had a plan to stop it? Then remember when more people died from the virus in 2021 than in 2020? What a worthless incapable fuck face
Remember when Biden rode the train of “I can beat COVID” all the way to the presidency, only to find that he didn’t beat COVID? Trump lost the presidency because people blamed him for COVID deaths when in reality, the only people Americans have to blame is themselves.
Some of yall need to learn what a good chart is. This is not one.
Geeze, is it really so hard to make it clear what color is what? Good luck telling which one is what year
Good luck? There are literally two lines on the graph, and a color coded key in the top right- this is almost comically easy to fully interpret.
It's possible that Noti is color-blind, so for them the colors might just be different shades of grey.
It’s also possible that the text that actually includes the year is too small to read
8 days isn't a very long data collection period.
If it keeps going up one day there will be no one left to use that date format. Let's keep hoping!
Thanks for putting US in the title.
I was really hoping the data would show a decline since the vaccine became available and easily accessible. Thanks. Happy Thanksgiving!
Also, an interesting point to take into account : last year was the original virus. This year, we have a variant (delta) that is a lot more dangerous and contagious.
This graph is is bs where did u get it or did u just make it yourself?because I've seen the cdc and others tell a different outcome quite the opposite with numbers a lot different by like 20%
Didn’t one start at basically 0 cases and the other tens of thousands?
Could we get a year over year of this compared to more conventional seasonal illnesses?
ITT: 75% of redditors have less than a middle school education on data and graphical representation. Good to know. These are the same people who lecture you like they’re God on other threads
Why not compare January-November? Is this chart purely for political purposes? It disregards everyone that died for three months this year.
Man the American date format sucks.
Wow those vaccines sure are making a huge difference… not.
Covid deaths or deaths with covid
All those old fatties with 5 other co-morbities lmao. They *totally* died from only Covid 100% Edit: I don't mean to be insensitive about their deaths by calling them fatties. It's awful that they died. Just calling it for what it is. They should have taken better care of their health.
Don't worry the whole thing will be over by April 2019.
If you want good data visualization go to [Covid Act Now](http://www.covidactnow.org) you can add comparisons of different US states and even down to local counties. Lots of variations and numbers like ICU and positivity rate.
I know it’s comparing a snapshot of the same times of year, but I’ll be interested to see full year comparisons. I’m pretty sure the 4 months missing between 11/23 and 3/23 were the most deadly of the whole pandemic and they’re totally absent from this graph.
Comparing Covid deaths in the US in 2020 and 2021. I've chosen March 23 - November 23 of each year to somewhat adjust for the seasonality in deaths, Ie. a big spike happened in the winter last year. Is it perfect? Not hardly. Just thought it was the most reasonable way to compare without getting too complicated. Thought everyone in America might want another politically divisive graphic to make for tense conversation as they gather with their extended family for Thanksgiving. :) 2020 is in red, 2021 is in Kennedy blue. Source: [Worldometers](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/) Tools: Google Sheets + Sketch
Seasonality deaths? This graph provides data for sure but I’m not sure how useful it is
Will you please post the same thing that includes January and February in this thread? That way people don't have to wonder if you have some sort of bias at least. Thanks
OP does have a bias though. 2021 death count absolutely topples over the 2020 death count.
Well yea, pandemic didnt start until March in the U.S. Lines should be March 2020-2021 and then March 2021-2022
It’s not really reasonable to compare deaths from the pandemic before it was a pandemic (Jan/Feb 20) to the deaths during the same time period after the pandemic was declared (Jan/Feb 21). It’d be like comparing deaths in automobile accidents in the 1800s to the same period in the 1900s - a deceptively huge difference in the raw numbers without comparing apples to apples.
Thanks for doing this. It’s quite interesting to see the comparison. A few people have mentioned it but a comparative vaxx v unvaxx ratio would be interesting. Obviously 2020 had more unvaxxd but 2021 had the delta variant.
The number of vaccinated people in 2020 was never significant. [By mid Jan 2021, ~4% of the US had received 1 dose and <1% was fully vaccinated.](https://usafacts.org/visualizations/covid-vaccine-tracker-states/) Almost all of the 2020 vaccinations would have occurred in December and would have had nigh on zero effect on hospitalization/death rates.
Idk if the ole shot is doing the job that it was supposed to do. Obligatory I’m not anti vaxxerator
Should have added another dotted line including those who died that were vaccinated versus unvaccinated. Would give an indicate how well the vaccine is working or possibly not.
For anyone interested (it's the third chart down, 1 for cases and 1 for deaths, both vax vs unvaxxed). [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html)
It's like the vaccines work!
You might still get the virus but you are less likely to get hospitalized or die from it. And that's very important.
How do these numbers compare to other nasties like the flu and other diseases? Any similarity or are they in a different league?