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> We looked at each country’s trajectory in “phase space” – where we looked at the evolution of the daily case growth rate as a function of the number of cases (rather than as a function of time). Each country has followed a very similar trajectory in this space, where the disease begins on a theoretical SIR curve but then veers off course and decelerates after government intervention.

This has also been done here: https://aatishb.com/covidtrends/

Accompanying minutephysics video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54XLXg4fYsc

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22715920

This page provides results by country rather than by US state.

⬐ pranade

Great references -- thanks!

⬐ shawnz

No problem. Thank you for working on this.

Just in case you haven't seen it, I'm a big fan of this [0] chart, which plots new weekly cases against cumulative total, both axes on a log scale. It has a whole video explanation [1] if you're interested in the logic behind it.

[0]: https://aatishb.com/covidtrends/

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54XLXg4fYsc

⬐ contravariant

I'm not too fond of that chart because all you can really see clearly on it is when the increase stops being exponential. It is pretty hard to see the base of the exponential (in most countries the increase in confirmed infections has been slowing down, relatively speaking, but that is incredibly hard to spot from that graph, which makes the situations seem worse than it already is).

Here's a quick video explaining those graphs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54XLXg4fYsc

Log-Log graphs of new cases vs confirmed cases (which that graphs) is by far the best way to represent the data that I've seen.

⬐ arcticbull

Agreed that's much better, and addresses all the concerns in my sister post. Thanks for sharing!

The graph doesn't make much sense without a bit of explanation. (It certainly didn't to me, anyway.) The minutephysics video linked to from cptroot's comment, and also here [1] for your convenience, does a great job of that.

In short, you're right it's not surprising that the lines are log-log linear for uncontrolled growth of the virus, and that it's similar for lot of countries. What's interesting is the few (so far) cases where it drops below that log-log linear line, which indicates a containment strategy that's starting to work.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54XLXg4fYsc

⬐ heavenlyblue

But that containment strategy isn't working for Italy at all.

⬐ fxj

It takes at least 2 weeks until the number of deaths starts to decrease. Look at the graph in the weeks to come and you will notice the difference.

⬐ heavenlyblue

They’ve started containment 9th March, how is that now two weeks ago?

There is also explanatory video about that graph on minutephysics Youtube channel: https://youtu.be/54XLXg4fYsc

There's a nice video about this on the minutephysics channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54XLXg4fYsc

⬐ drivers99

Yes! That’s where I saw it, so I started making my own graphs like that for the US states that I and my relatives live in. In excel you have to use a scatter plot and then set both axes to logarithmic. But it doesn’t let you use more than one data series on the same graph. (At least, not in the Mac version which tends to be inferior.) And it’s not animated so I was thinking of throwing something together in Python.

⬐ gooseus

Interactive charts from the video: https://aatishb.com/covidtrends/