A Visual Overview of America's Battle Against the Coronavirus as of 03/25/2020
INTRODUCTION
As of March 25, 2020, the world is tackling a coronavirus pandemic that is indiscriminate to rich and poor alike. Misinformation is rampant and normally trusted news outlets and politicians are providing conflicting accounts during a time when clarity is needed most.
The purpose of this project is to present to you an interactive overview of the current state of the pandemic in America as well as suggestions for actions to take. To do this, I’ve provided data visuals for a range of potentially pertinent items related to the pandemic’s spread, such as each state’s obesity percentage, political affiliation, median age, current cases and deaths, number of hospital beds, and average hospital ratings.
I’ll reiterate that while this project is by no means related to statistical inference, it’s intended to clarify what kind of danger Americans are facing so that you can better inform the broader public through your own media for as long as this pandemic continues.
SELECT A GRAPH TYPE
Maps
Includes info on hospital quality, income, active cases, enplanement, and populations
Scatterplots
Details politics, obesity, age, mortality rate, percent infected, and hospital beds
Bar Charts
Covers politics, types of hospitals, hospital capacity, and hospital effectiveness
Tree Maps
Provides insight on the coronavirus mortality rate versus the number of active cases
MAPS
Unsurprisingly, states with higher air traffic, such as New York, California, and Illinois appear to have more cases than those with less, like Wyoming, and South Dakota. Remote states would therefore serve as candidates for safe havens. More about that below.
As seen from the map regarding air traffic, population density serves as a major factor for the spread of the coronavirus. Heavier air traffic can result in a higher probability that the spread of the coronavirus will not only begin in that particular state but be extremely difficult to contain once the outbreak has started. In this case, we can see that New York state’s most popular cities are extremely dense in population, eventually becoming the epicenter of America’s outbreak.
States such as West Virginia and Wyoming were spared an early outbreak and likely won’t experience the severity of a crisis New York is facing because of its population sparsity and low air traffic. If resources are limited, these states should not receive priority in federal aid.
According to medicare.gov, the average overall rating of hospital quality ranges from 2.29 to 4.031, with New York having the lowest hospital ratings in the country. These ratings are based off of timeliness of care, readmission rates, patient experience, effectiveness of care, and efficiency of medical imaging.
Furthermore, age reportedly plays a large role in determining the mortality rate of afflicted people. For those who reside within one of the older states should take heed on social distancing as there’s a greater risk that a person infected will have a higher mortality rate.
Texas and California appear to have the greatest number of hospitals in America. Poorer states likely employ more blue collared workers, resulting in more people in need of a congressional stimulus bill to be willing to quarantine.
SCATTERPLOTS
Alongside age, obesity is a factor that could further endanger an infected individual. Although we would expect to see a higher mortality rate for states with a higher median age and obesity percentage rate, we don’t necessarily see that here – likely because the pandemic is still spreading and the data still developing.
The scatterplot above represents the coronavirus mortality rate against the number of hospital beds per state. We would expect the mortality rate to be lower for states with a greater number of hospital beds as that would mean more patients would be able to receive treatment. Instead, we see that the mortality rate is higher for states with a greater number of hospital beds; however, the scatterplot is randomly scattered with no clear indications of correlation, so we cannot take away any strong conclusions from this particular graph.
BAR CHARTS
From the above bar chart, we can see that states with densely populated cities and its neighbors are more prone to higher rates of infection. Conservative states don’t appear to have too many active cases likely as a result of their population density. Interestingly, Georgia suffers far fewer cases than the most infected liberal states even though Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport is considered a national airport hub.
Midwestern states have the greatest number of hospital beds per person while New Hampshire has about half that amount. In other words, this means that a person living in South Dakota has over double the access to intensive health care than New Hampshire.
As of March 25th, 2020, New York has filled up around half of its hospitals bed capacities with the number of active cases growing exponentially. Should beds run out, the mortality rates for coronavirus and other ailments are expected to surge to an even greater extent. This should be a clear indication as to how grim the situation in New York is and why it desperately needs additional beds and ventilators from the federal government. There’s not enough time for the state to fill up the gap on its own.
In terms of timeliness and readmission, we can paint a clearer picture as to how efficient hospitals are to responding to medical crises. A score of “-1” represents a hospital that is below the national average; “0” represents average; and “1” indicates a hospital that is above average.
TREE MAPS
Vermont and Washington have the highest mortality rates, while New York has the highest number of cases by far. In fact, it appears that New York has around the same number of active cases as all the other states combined.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Western and Eastern coasts are getting hammered by the coronavirus: hospital quality for states hit hardest aren’t up to par and the number of cases is growing with each passing day. The good news is that while there’s still a good supply of beds for every state, that could change if people aren’t adhering to social distancing and quarantine procedures. There are also few obvious signs that median age should take priority over states running low on supplies.
The Midwestern states generally have sparser populations and above average hospital ratings on top of having a comfortable supply of hospital beds. These are the states that have the least to worry about, but they should, of course, exercise caution during this time period.
That being said, New York is in particularly serious trouble, and if it’s not given the appropriate resources soon, such as beds and ventilators, it’ll only be a matter of time before hospitals are overwhelmed and more lives are lost. In fact, states with the potential to have the fewest resources available, such as those with fewer hospital beds or are more densely populated, should receive care first over states with higher obesity, median age, and/or income as the number of people expected to die takes precedence over percentage.
DATA SOURCES
I performed all my scraping through Google Chrome's Web Scraper extension and data wrangled using OpenRefine, Tableau Prep, and Microsoft Excel.
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Below is the full list of data sources I used to create this project.