Talk:COVID-19 pandemic

Main table all wrong

The table is presenting a false (and bleak) picture of the virus. You can't even correct it! For example, in New Zealand, there are 5 (five) cases, and most have recovered. The table shows no recoveries. The first person recovered on 1st Mar [1]. I mean, that's almost two weeks ago!! There are references for the others too, but I can't be bothered supplying them. I know they reported on the others, for example case 2 of the 5, a woman, is definitely recovered also. I'm sure that most if not all the other countries are wrong too. Please someone supplying this table - correct it, or remove it! It is wrong wrong wrong. Thank you. Wallie (talk) 09:31, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

The WHO reported yesterday no recoveries for New Zealand. Sun Creator^(talk) 10:35, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

The source you gave said "on the mend" which does not mean fully recovered. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:47, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

Been added anyway, without source so far. Sun Creator^(talk) 12:00, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

What part of "New Zealand coronavirus patient recovers but concern about pandemic spreads" is unclear? The second case has been released and that is documented also. It is plain silly to give references to every single case. As stated, that is over 200,000 references. Wallie (talk) 12:06, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

Another aspect of the table I find odd is the discrepancy between the number of countries listed at the top and the actual number by count. At the present moment the summary at the top says 132 countries/territories. An actual count comes to 125. Where are the other 7 countries or territories? If they are included in a mother country (e.g. French Guiana in France), then they should not be counted separately as a country. Or if they are counted then they should be listed separately. Lack of accuracy/clarity on this verifiable point leads to doubt about the other less readily verifiable figures. In addition, there is a disconnect between the table and the map. The map shows at least 3 countries affected which are not in the table: Guinea, Sudan, and Cayman Islands. Ptilinopus (talk) 14:56, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

The table discrepancy continues. At this time the total countries at the top of table totals says 145 countries. An actual count of countries in the table is 136 plus 1 ship. Where are the missing 8? Ptilinopus (talk) 02:14, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

Again. Actual count of countries on the table is 137. The total at the top summary has jumped to 150! The source seems to be the dubious Worldometer. How about some consistency?! Incidentally there are 3 countries on the list that were not there 4 hours ago (Rwanda, Namibia, Antigua & Barbuda) - and 3 that have disappeared (since the count remains 137). I notice that Aruba and Curaçao have been deleted - though they are separate countries, equal to the Netherlands. Even so, their details have not been included with the Netherlands. I see Puerto Rico is listed though it much more part of the US than Aruba etc are of the Netherlands! I note the disappearance of Jersey and Guernsey too - even though they are not part of the United Kingdom. Nor have their data been added to that of the UK. Can we have consistency please? Ptilinopus (talk) 12:23, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

Before you go and denigrate Worldometer, maybe you should compare the countries and find out why there are more in Worldometer than in the main table. Cayman Islands, for example is reported in Worldometer, but not in the main table. It is an autonomous British Overseas Territory, which definitely makes it a "country or territory." And yes, Caymen Islands has a case, as reported in the Miami Herald.DrHenley (talk) 02:18, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

While I would personally agree that it would be better to report geographically rather than politically, my biggest issue is consistency. At least now the table has adopted a consistent approach: dependencies are included in the main country. So as the footnotes to the table say, Gibraltar, Jersey, Guernsey and Cayman Islands are included under U.K., the French dependencies etc are under France, Aruba, Curaçao etc under Netherlands, Faeroe Is and Greenland under Denmark, Guam, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Is under USA etc. Previously, it was some one way, some the other. Arguing over definitions of countries is unprofitable. What has not changed is the totals versus the list. Overnight 4 more countries were added - Benin, Tanzania, Somalia and Liberia, but the total remains at 143. Actual count says 147. Ptilinopus (talk) 19:31, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

I had gone and separated Puerto Rico because I thought I had seen it separated on this site but as of March 15, 2020 Puerto Rico has been deleted and re-included with the US count on Wikipedia. I'm not sure why a Wikipedian has done that. Check out the table... There must be a method to the wikipedians madness. Maybe it's okay for Puerto Rico to be included with the US count.Check this out... https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html?fbclid=IwAR0jYwvytu-1e4jh6ujShnxAjxytKn8kgypxeW9s5eE5Ar88AjJlDGiJBmc#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6 --The Eloquent Peasant (talk) 17:03, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

See my comment just above. Puerto Rico is not independent. I would like the table and map to reflect geographical spread - dependencies remote from the main country listed and shown separately. But for consistency, they are included in the main country. Regardless of preferences, consistency is better. Ptilinopus (talk) 19:31, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Despite the protocol which had begun to be consistent, someone has again split out Jersey and Guernsey. Even though I would prefer to see such entities separated out to give a better view of the geographical spread, the adopted protocol has been that dependent territories/countries be included under the main country. Either Jersey and Guernsey should remain under the UK, or we should also separate out the French, Dutch, Danish, US and the rest of the British territories. Jersey and Guernsey are no more independent than are Faeroe Is, Greenland, Curaçao, Aruba, Cayman Is, Puerto Rico etc. Consistency please!!! Ptilinopus (talk) 00:12, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

Someone keeps putting incorrect country totals at the top of the table. As of now, by actual count, there are 149 countries and one ship - an increase of 2 (Gambia and Barbados) from yesterday. But the number given is 165. How does +2 become +18? Ptilinopus (talk) 02:25, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

You are right, I have changed to 149. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 02:50, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks Graeme Bartlett! I noted just now it had jumped again to 171, but someone has again just corrected it back to the current 153! However, I have transcribed the table into a spreadsheet so I could check the data, I find the total cases and total deaths are also incorrect and inflated. Can’t the table contain a formula to generate correct SUM of columns? Total Cases is given as 206,845; it is actually 204,698. And total Deaths is given as 8,272; the actual sum is 8,251. Ptilinopus (talk) 14:55, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

"Misconceptions are circulating about how to prevent infection, for example: rinsing the nose, gargling with mouthwash and eating garlic are not effective." The source does not say that garlic is ineffective. The source says that there are no studies regarding efficacy of garlic on COVID-19. (Garlic is rather broad antimicrobial and one of the likelier candidates. A future study *may* demonstrate some beneficial activity.)

R.I.P errbody😎🔥 Sy3thaba (talk) 12:46, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

The table should be sorted by number of deaths, not cases. The number of deaths is a better guide to the severity of the situation, and probably a better guide to the total number of hidden cases as well. Fig (talk) 17:31, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

References

Potential changes to the maps

Cases or Deaths?

The first map in the infobox, showing total cases per country

The second map in the infobox, showing cases per capita

New map, showing deaths per capita

As more European countries are running out of tests, and both the UK and especially the US have had low testing rates from the start — counting cases is likely to poorly reflect the state of the pandemic. However, deaths are likely to be much more accurate, both at the aggregate level and the per capita level. Should we shift at least one of these maps to cover deaths or deaths per capita? Carl Fredrik ^talk 11:50, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

It would be a nice map to have but I don't see a need to replace either of the maps there now. Adding a third map to show deaths per-capita would be preferable to replacing one of the existing maps.Monopoly31121993(2) (talk) 14:49, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

Both absolute (total deaths) and relative (deaths per capita) are useful in my opinion, and indeed better than "cases" for which the numbers are completely unreliable. The advantage of the relative map is that countries of different sizes can be compared more easily (and to judge which countries are proportionally more affected). I think it would be a good idea to show both maps (but perhaps not in the lead). Ideally, it would also be nice for the larger countries (US/China) to have the data displayed per province/state in this worldmap . Voorlandt (talk) 20:22, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

I don't think we should include any death calculations or per capita calculations as while these may seem simple, they are not obvious or correct in their interpretation. The reason for this is that there is a massive lag in this outbreak especially, and due to unreliability of reported figures (undue comparison will be made against disparate health care systems). Both will lead people to me more alarmed or reassured than they should be. In terms of policy this violates WP:CALC specifically. --Almaty (talk) 08:36, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure I follow."Due to unreliability of reported figures" we should only show the aggregate reported figures? That doesn't really follow especially when the reported figures are those currently listed on the page's chart, most sourced from the WHO. With regard to an alleged "massive lag" (in reported figures or virus symptom onset(?)) and that per-capita maps of deaths or rates of infected persons will "lead people to me more alarmed or reassured than they should be." I don't think it's up to Wikipedia editors to decide what facts from reliable sources Wikipedia readers should and should not be exposed to and certainly not on the grounds that it could makes some of them alarmed. The data here comes from the WHO and World Bank's population estimate figures for 2018.Monopoly31121993(2) (talk) 09:36, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

We should only show the raw reported figures, from the WHO. I don't see them anywhere dividing it from the world bank population estimate from 2018, that is WP:OR. That doesn't hide anything, it just prevents us from doing a calculation that the reliable source is not doing. --Almaty (talk) 09:55, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

Ok, Almaty's opinion is clear. Almaty would like to "only show the raw reported figures, from the WHO". Voorlandt and myself disagree with Almaty. Would anyone else like to share their thoughts?Monopoly31121993(2) (talk) 10:25, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

I agree that per capita statistics should be published in addition to totals. The "per number of people" statistics is routinely published in Wikipedia for occurences of other diseases. The only argument I see provided by Almaty against it is that it would alarm people. I don't see anything wrong with people being alarmed by alarming statistics. Don't see any explanation for Almaty's argument regarding why "per capita statistics" is misleading. That somebody else such as WHO does not provide it does not mean that it is misleading.Roman (talk) 15:44, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

I also support per capita. We are dividing by large numbers (country populations) that are well-estimated and are constant (assuming we are using some recent census), so any error is overwhelmingly due to the error in cases - which we have anyway. The resulting comparison is meaningful and useful. Here is a link for 'usefulness' [2]. Segoldberg (talk) 20:24, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Yes but that isn't a clear summary of why. Its not because I only trust the WHO, or I'm a censor (far from it, the opposite), its because per WP:CALC there is not clear current consensus that dividing these figures is a meaningful interpretation of the source. The calculation is simple, but they don't do it, because the answer is misleading. --Almaty (talk) 10:29, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

Yes, we need per capita. I see no violation of WP:CALC ("Routine calculations do not count as original research, provided there is consensus among editors that the result of the calculation is obvious, correct, and a meaningful reflection of the sources. [...]"): the manner of calculation is super straightforward. (As an aside, I see no undue alarm; I only see undue complacency.) --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:32, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

Which ever map is chosen, it's probably best they don't look like the player wiped out entire nations in Plague Inc. 73.155.111.138 (talk) 08:30, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

I would be okay with a deaths map and a deaths per capita map being added as part of a package, per my proposal below. Sdkb (talk) 07:19, 17 March 2020 (UTC). ...It would be nice to have a gif showing at each frame the daily situation in the maps.

A statistics predictions for the near futere are welcome...

Deaths per capita map

Deaths per capita

There is now a deaths per capita map. Thanks to @Dan Polansky: I must say it looks excellent! And it does a much better job than confirmed cases per capita of showing the true severity of the regional epidemics, since the testing policies differ a lot between countries. The fatality rate is very much more comparable. Other thoughts? —St.nerol (talk) 13:47, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

I concur that cases data, which was frequently poor already, is becoming ever less accurate. We should therefore de-emphasise it in the text and in the map. Death data is more reliable (albeit not perfect). That said, while moving away from inaccurate cases data, it is still important and useful to describe the spread of the pandemic. The reader should be able to clearly see the global reach of the pandemic. Bondegezou (talk) 13:51, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Fully agree. As long as we keep the total confirmed cases map, the global spread should be evident. —St.nerol (talk) 13:55, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Come to think of it, this map also complements the original total confirmed cases better than the cases per capita map: Since both confirmed cases and deaths are important, and both absolute numbers and per capita are relevant, we have four possible maps. But we get as much as possible from just two maps when one is cases in total and one is deaths per capita. Then there's no redundancy! —St.nerol (talk) 16:50, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

@Dan Polansky:, do you think you could update the map to reflect the latest data, and give me a ping afterwards? --St.nerol (talk) 22:13, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Deaths are very likely underreported in at least two countries that have the darkest shading on that map: Italy nursing home elderly resident COVID-19 deaths appear to be underestimated by a factor of 3 in one case listed in that article, and other cases cited in the article suggest that this is widespread in parts of Italy; the COVID-19 death count in Iran is quite likely, according to many different sources of information (see the article) to be a lot higher than the official value. Despite this, I tend to think that the death counts, despite being delayed compared to the positive SARS-CoV-2 detections, will be more reliable than the positive SARS-CoV-2 detection count in many countries. Adding the map, either normalised for population or not, would be useful. Boud (talk) 00:18, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

@St.nerol: I updated the map yesterday evening. Next planned update of the map is today evening. I see no gain in updating the map more frequently, except perhaps to correct errors should there be any. --Dan Polansky (talk) 06:44, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

@St.nerol: I think the article would benefit from both reported cases per capita and deaths per capita maps. The article needs to contain the best caveat about how both reported figures are underrepresenting the real figures as it can, as far as can be done while meeting Wikipedia verifiability guidelines. As for whether we need absolute counts when we have per capita, some have argued that using colored backgrounds for non-capita map is misleading, or even fraudulent, and I can see what they mean: the colors give impression that we are dealing with density, which only applies to per capita maps. It would make sense to me to only include two maps: total reported cases per capita and total deaths per capita. --Dan Polansky (talk) 06:54, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

@Dan Polansky: You're right! I made a miscalculation and didn't see that the map was indeed updated. I'll try to start an RFC here to see how we should use the map. St.nerol (talk) 10:36, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

As of March 19, in cases per capita the undisputed leader is San Marino (4244), followed by Faroe Islands (1474), then Vatican City (1248), then three more mini states (Iceland, Andorra and Liechtenstein), with Italy being only seventh and just above Luxembourg, according to worldometer. Cases per capita demonstrate testing per capita rather than the severity of the decease. Deaths per capita seem to be more indicative of the severity (this data is not given on worldometer or any known to me source, except the map of Dan).--Maxaxax (talk) 00:44, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

RfC on which maps to use

There are three very relevant maps currently being discussed: Absolute number of confirmed cases, Confirmed cases per capita and Deaths per capita. They are displayed above. Which maps should we use in the lede?

1. Confirmed cases per capita, Absolute number of confirmed cases (current)
2. Deaths per capita, Absolute number of confirmed cases
3. Confirmed cases per capita, Deaths per capita
4. All three (in a collapsed state?)

St.nerol (talk) 10:58, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

• Comment on Overlapping RfCs This RfC overlaps slightly with the one already in progress below about whether to list a per capita map first or a totals map first. I'm not exactly sure how to handle overlapping RfCs. I propose we agree that that one take precedence regarding which map to list first/uncollapsed and this one take precedence regarding which map(s) to list. If there is a conflict between the RfCs, the RfC with significantly more participation will take precedence, or if they are roughly equal, that one as the first RfC will take precedence. (Note: I'm making this comment before any !votes have been cast in this RfC.) Sdkb (talk) 17:10, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4, with one primary uncollapsed map (as decided by the other RfC) and the rest collapsed. All three maps have potential value; let's give readers the option to access them. Collapsed maps take up very little room, decluttering and allowing us to move the photos higher up, while also taking only a single easy click for interested readers to access. They're a win-win. Sdkb (talk) 17:45, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

  Hmm, St.nerol, it seems like you and I may be the only ones here currently. If no one else comments otherwise, would you be alright with me boldly implementing option 4 with the three maps (leaving out the daily new cases map, which isn't updated/developed enough to be ready for mainspace yet). We'd of course revert if others start chiming in and the consensus moves in a different direction. Sdkb (talk) 21:17, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Daily new cases

The daily new cases of COVID-19 on March 13

I propose as a second map that we simply use this map, as it gives more relevant information, does not involve calculations, and it will be able to be updated very easily based on the link provided. --Almaty (talk) 13:05, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

I disagree that that Almaty's map "gives more relevant information" than the per-capita infection rate. I think knowing how many people on average in a country are infected with a virus is very relevant information.Monopoly31121993(2) (talk) 13:25, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

I would say that the per capita will be relevant information in a few weeks, but pertinently when they are published by reliable sources. Additionally the map of per capita has a caption that we cannot hope to keep current. --Almaty (talk) 13:31, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

Why will per capita be relevant information in a few weeks and not today?As for keeping the map current there are many maps on Wikipedia that regularly need to be updated and I have updated this one twice already over the past few days.Monopoly31121993(2) (talk) 13:48, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

I rescind comments in relation to undue concern or alarm. I simply don't think that this map is verifiable. In order for it to remain verifiable we have three options IMO.

1. Only use raw figures from the WHO

2. Use another source that is making maps that we consider to be reliable.

3. Waiting until any WP:MEDRS compatible source at least publishes a table showing per capita case rates. --Almaty (talk) 01:08, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

ALASKA with 500 is Strange, very !

@Almaty: I would be okay with this map being added as part of a package, per my proposal below. Sdkb (talk) 07:17, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

thanks mate, sounds like a great way to move this discussion forward from a clear stalemate. —Almaty (talk) 07:27, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

@Almaty: Have any updates been made to this map? It needs some changes before it'll be ready for mainspace (in my view). Namely: new updated data, conversion to SVG, moving the legend out of the image itself (to parallel the other maps), and switching to red (the color we're using for case counts). I'd also prefer it be a per capita new cases per day map, rather than totals by country (we could always have both). Sdkb (talk) 23:04, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Cases by density

In addition to maps showing number of infections by country & another showing incidence by population, there should be another showing incidence by density (eg cases per hundred sq kms). That would show where it's most concentrated. Jim Michael (talk) 10:10, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

And dan please read medrs. It is our most onerous policy to adhere to and this article is confusing because many claims can just have a reliable source, but all medical claims must have a medrs source. This is generally review articles, international authoritative statements (from bodies such as the WHO or the DSM) and medical texts. If you find a CFR in one of those please insert it with all the disclaimers. Almaty (talk) 15:22, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Per capita data vs. totals by country

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

By and large, I much prefer the per capita map. Especially as the virus continues to spread, the totals map is increasingly becoming just a variation on a world population map. It makes no sense to display prominently a map where, if Exampleistan suddenly splits into two countries tomorrow, the outbreak would suddenly show up as half as bad there. The one redeeming factor of that map is that it appropriately shows how severe the outbreak has been in China, whereas the per capita map does not. Fortunately, there's a solution to that: splitting up the data for China by province. That way, Hubei will presumably show up as appropriately severe. The main downside of this approach is that some readers might ask why China gets more granular data than other countries, but I think most won't have a problem (and if the data does exist for generating a world map of prevalence by zip code or some other smaller unit and we could turn it into a map, that would of course be brilliant). Sdkb (talk) 06:33, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

See also: commons:File_talk:March14_cases_per-capita-COVID-19.png#Colouring_seems_misleading_for_China. Sdkb (talk) 06:44, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

The data for such an addition is pretty readily available; both the population and case numbers are included in yesterday's WHO daily situation report. Sdkb (talk) 05:08, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Now there are 180 cases in brasil, but in the main table it dropped from 151 to 121 LGCR (talk) 18:10, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

What would folks think of listing the per capita map before the totals map? (per the logic in my archived comment directly above about why per capita is generally more useful for readers wanting to know where the outbreak is most intense) I'm going to try boldly implementing, but we can discuss here if it turns out to be controversial. Sdkb (talk) 23:58, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Ratherous, you reverted. What's your argument? Sdkb (talk) 02:36, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Regardless of the use of per capita maps, the main informative resource in use by most media outlets and general epidemic data is the total cases map, showing the exact extent and reach the virus had on a certain number of people. --Ratherous (talk) 02:56, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

@Ratherous: The main thing our readers are looking for in the maps is an indication of where the virus is most severe, and the per capita map does that best. Media outlets using totals are doing so mainly through a combination of poor statistical knowledge and laziness in not wanting to count populations. Another way to look at it: the totals map is also "per" in a way. It's just that rather than using an even unit that allows equal comparisons, the totals map uses "per country", making it look like the virus is worse in more heavily populated countries, e.g. India is darker than Vatican City. That's not what we want. Sdkb (talk) 03:24, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

I don't think it's very fair to assume laziness of journalists, rather it is a clear indication that readers are indeed looking more for totals of infected individuals at any given place. There is a very blatant reality that larger countries have greater potential at posing risk to the rest of the world due to their larger populations. The one person infected in the Vatican has a much lower probability of spreading the virus than the now 147 infected individuals in India. Regardless of the use of per capita maps, the main maps of the total should always be placed first. --Ratherous (talk) 05:27, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

I've started an RfC below so we can get some more perspectives on this. Sdkb (talk) 18:40, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

RfC on which type of map to list first

Should this article list a per capita count map first, or a total count by country map first? Sdkb (talk) 18:40, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

• Per capita map. The main thing our readers are looking for in the maps is an indication of where the virus is most severe, and the per capita map does that best. The total map, by contrast, is increasingly becoming just a variation on a world population map as the virus continues to spread. It makes it look like the virus is worse in more heavily populated countries, e.g. India is darker than Vatican City. That's not what we want. It makes no sense to display most prominently a map where, if Exampleistan suddenly splits into two countries tomorrow, the outbreak would suddenly show up as half as bad there. Another way to look at it: the totals map is also "per" in a way. It's just that rather than using an even divisor that allows equal comparisons, the totals map uses the uneven "per country" divisor. Sdkb (talk) 18:40, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Per capita map per Sdkb. — RealFakeKimT 19:08, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

• Per capita Per Sdkb, and as a stark example, shading implying San Marino, with around 120 cases in a population of fewer than 40,000, is on par with Hong Kong (181 cases in population of 7.4+ million), is bollocks. CaradhrasAiguo (leave language) 19:17, 18 March 2020 (UTC)
• Total Count Still the main resource of information on statistics. Per capita map can be included, but in no way should it go before the main map. Readers should primarily see the amount of actual infected people around the world. Plus still a more accurate exact figure. As I said earlier, it's not only the extent of infection in any given country, but also the threat of any given population to infect other people, which would rely on total count. --Ratherous (talk) 19:38, 18 March 2020 (UTC)
• Per capita per Sdkb. Total count map does not need to be listed at all. Per capita is directly calculated from totals. A map for totals with colored background is arguably grossly misleading (not factually wrong but misleading), since the colored background visually suggests we are dealing with density, which is only true for the per capita map. While in the per capita map, China has a slightly less dark color, it is still relatively dark and when the reader considers their background knowledge that China has a huge population, they should immediately see that the China total count is actually very large. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:29, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

  Very well put. For China, my preferred solution is to split the data by province — see the proposal for that below. Sdkb (talk) 21:03, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

• Total Count Map – This is still the aggregate total and the main source of information on the raw statistics. The per capita count map is something that is not entirely obvious at a glance. While a per capita count provides useful information on the spread density within a population, it fails to provide a picture of the actual, overall spread and can actually be misleading to unfamiliar viewers. LightandDark2000 🌀 (talk) 18:39, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Data sources for maps

Extended content

Are coronavirus maps, should we use Our World in Data as a reliable attributable source, or should we be making calculations not yet published in reliable sources? --Almaty (talk) 14:06, 14 March 2020 (UTC)I removed the aggregate new cases map which was included in this history section of the page so that we can discuss it first. There are two major issues with the map. The data does not come from the WHO but from a third-party charity website called "Our World In Data"..."a project of the Global Change Data Lab, a registered charity in England and Wales (Charity Number 1186433)." The map claims that there were 0 new cases on March 13th in Iceland, Norway, Belgium, Portugal, Greece, and a few dozen other countries and that's just inaccurate.Monopoly31121993(2) (talk) 13:48, 14 March 2020 (UTC) The reason is I have not seen it published in any reliable source with WHO data, to keep the dispute simple. --Almaty (talk) 14:37, 14 March 2020 (UTC) It doesn't claim that, it claims that there were between 0 and 10. --Almaty (talk) 13:50, 14 March 2020 (UTC) They claim the data does come from the WHO. Are you able to point to any specific inconsistency in the reliability of this source? --Almaty (talk) 13:52, 14 March 2020 (UTC) Also they aren't just a charity researchers at University of Oxford, who are the scientific editors of the website content. I strongly propose that unless anyone can point to how any of the data is inaccurate, that we use it. The main reason is because myself and other editors aren't able to easily verify the content of the maps. This will worsen as the outbreak progresses. --Almaty (talk) 13:58, 14 March 2020 (UTC) Yes, Those countries reported dozens if not hundreds of new cases between 12 march and 13 March. That's evident in the table's history page. Belgium for example went from 399 to 559. The map you added shows Belgium with 0-10 cases.Monopoly31121993(2) (talk) 15:53, 14 March 2020 (UTC) Per capita is absolutely relevant today, as it was a week ago and a month ago. Bed capacity would usually exist per capita, so case totals per capita is very indicative of severity. Furthermore, per capita achieves coloring invariance upon region merge: it is not so badly sensitive to choice of granularity of regions. --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:54, 14 March 2020 (UTC) If it is a indicative of severity why can't I see it in a WP:MEDRS source using WHO data to date? Ive done quite a search to come up with this current opinion. --Almaty (talk) 14:57, 14 March 2020 (UTC) Per capita is at worldometers.info; search for "Tot Cases/1M pop". I don't know about WP:MEDRS; I am not really a Wikipedia editor. In any case, as long as WP:CALC applies, we should be fine. ---Dan Polansky (talk) 15:03, 14 March 2020 (UTC) User @Bondegezou: and myself concur that WP:CALC is not being fully interpreted and with divisions in particular these may not be "obvious and correct". --Almaty (talk) 15:56, 14 March 2020 (UTC) Worldometer fails WP:MEDRS so severely, that even its updaters have lost faith in it, it appears --Almaty (talk) 16:55, 14 March 2020 (UTC) Is the above original research or can you support the above claim with reliable sources? --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:20, 14 March 2020 (UTC) Yes User:Dan Polansky I can support that claim with worldometers own website The live counters show the real-time estimate as computed by our proprietary algorithm, which processes the latest data and projections provided by the most reputable organizations and statistical offices in the world. This is not peer reviewed, is an estimate, is not a study, is not even thought to be verifiable or correct by its publisher. ---Almaty (talk) 00:55, 15 March 2020 (UTC) Well, your claim is an original observation gained by looking at worldometers.info and using your brain; the claim "worldometers.info is unreliable" is not traced to a reliable source. Of course, your reasoning is very plausible, and one has to take worldometers.info with grain of salt, but is the grain larger than that for WHO data? But my main point is on the meta-level and it stays: you require me to trace the obvious to a reliable source while you do not require yourself to trace the obvious to a reliable source. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:06, 15 March 2020 (UTC) User:Dan Polansky I dont want to argue, but we all have to use reliable sources. I would love to insert things that were my original research and i've tried to before, but we cant. The pillars of wikipedia apply. --Almaty (talk) 10:22, 15 March 2020 (UTC) Per WP:CALC, we can do certain calculation ourselves; Almaty claims we can't. Let the reader read this very discussion alone; I see not a single person agreeing with Almaty, who sets unreasonable high standards on what should be common sense but uncritically defers to WHO. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:24, 15 March 2020 (UTC) Ok, maybe we can't trust the maps there, probably a data quirk if their tables are correct. But can we make maps like it - I want to use their "no data", and I truly think that a map with the number of new cases is more important at this stage, than per capita cases. My opinion of this will change, when anyone can show me a WP:MEDRS source that is showing charts with per capita cases. I can't find one --Almaty (talk) 17:03, 14 March 2020 (UTC) I find it obvious that per capita is super useful (total cases, active cases, daily new cases, daily deaths, all per capita), and to support the notion, I mentioned that bed capacities would usually be maintained per capita in a country. I do not have WP:MEDRS sources to support what I just said and what I consider to be obvious reasoning. Maybe someone knows where to find such sources. If WP:MEDRS sources do not report per capita, maybe they should wake up from their dogmatic dream and start reporting also per capita right now, before it is too late. --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:20, 14 March 2020 (UTC) I'd go so far as to say that the use of the current graphic is highly misleading. Some Europeans have remarked at the Danish government's shutdown when comparing it to the apparent inaction in France or the UK, whereas the reason becomes instantly clear if you consider that the size of population matters a great deal. The only truly objective measure that can be used is the per capita figure. -- Ohc ¡digame! 17:28, 14 March 2020 (UTC) Let me add that the name of the game is bed capacities, respirators, breathing machines and such. If there were no risk of exhausting these, it would be kind of acceptable to give up all flatten-the-curve measures, maybe not entirely acceptable, but kind of. And these capacities, the name of the game, the resource nummero uno that you can run out of, is usually maintained on a per capita basis. And the resource does not increase exponentially at 20% per day rate, only the demand for that resource does so increase. Per capita is super meaningful; maybe some has the WP:MEDRS paperwork to support that claim; I supplied the substantive arguments. --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:42, 14 March 2020 (UTC) I expect that they are doing this in unpublished government data, of course. But that doesn't help our encyclopaedia. Can you even point to a table, let alone a graph or a chart or map that shows per capita? that isn't worldometer? I note that for the second time in 24 hours this has been removed due to errors, once due to the Mediawiki doing it. Its an exceedingly big job, and one I think we need to delegate to the likes of Our World In Data (where their data is verifiable). --Almaty (talk) 00:39, 15 March 2020 (UTC) Here are links to the data sources for the map. This is certainly not "unpublished government data." Many news websites have map and visualization pages up and running now. There are plenty of examples of per-capita maps out there and the data for making these is widely available at places like: FT[3] and John Hopkins [4]. The Hill even published a list of top map sites[5]Monopoly31121993(2) (talk) 10:25, 15 March 2020 (UTC) User:Monopoly31121993 I dont trust you to be able to keep up with the volume of data that will be coming through in the next few weeks, to be frank. Its not like I dont think you've done a good job so far. Its just that maps will become completely unverifiable --Almaty (talk) 11:01, 15 March 2020 (UTC) Does Almaty concede now that there are reliable sources publishing cases per capita? That would be a start. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:07, 15 March 2020 (UTC) I'm not in this for the argument, trust me, just for verifiability. --Almaty (talk) 11:10, 15 March 2020 (UTC) (outdent) So does Almaty concede the point that has been demonstrated? There cannot be any rational argument if one party refutes to play the argument game fairly. Almaty, do you now agree that "there are reliable sources publishing cases per capita?" --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:15, 15 March 2020 (UTC) Guys, I wrote a program that can read a dataset and generate an svg map. [6]. It currently fetches data from John Hopkins University, but the dataset doesn't have every country/territory and is updated daily, not as frequent as the current map. I say we generate the maps using a community-maintained list. Ythlev (talk) 11:45, 15 March 2020 (UTC) Excellent, makes perfect sense. Let the script fetch data from locations in Wikipedia, and it is then the business of Wikipedia editors to update those locations to reflect reliable sources. Is Template:2019–20 coronavirus pandemic data good for the purpose? It should be easy to extract the data from there using Python. --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:01, 15 March 2020 (UTC) I don't know how though. I only know how to fetch from pages with data only. Ythlev (talk) 12:10, 15 March 2020 (UTC) Okay, maybe I'll have a look. --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:12, 15 March 2020 (UTC) no I’m afraid that I am still yet to see medrs sources showing per capita statistics. And it’s cos they can’t, so we can’t. —49.179.25.69 (talk) 12:31, 15 March 2020 (UTC) I think it is possible with Wikidata. Ythlev (talk) 12:18, 15 March 2020 (UTC) Here's a very quickly written grabber that returns a dictionary where the countries are the keys and the values are list of column values as integers (no work of beauty, but it works and is here right now): def grabFromTemplate(): import urllib, re url="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:2019%E2%80%9320_coronavirus_pandemic_data" allLines = [] for line in urllib.urlopen(url): allLines.append(line.rstrip()) allLines = " ".join(allLines) allLines = re.sub("^.*jquery-tablesorter", "", allLines) allLines = re.sub("</table.*", "", allLines) allLines = re.sub("<(th|td)[^>]*>", r"<td>", allLines) allLines = re.sub("</?(span|img|a|sup)[^>]*>", "", allLines) allLines = re.sub("</(th|td|tr)[^>]*>", "", allLines) allLines = re.sub("&#91.*?&#93", "", allLines) allLines = re.sub(",", "", allLines) allLines = re.sub("<small>.*?</small>;?", "", allLines) allLines = re.sub("</?i>", "", allLines) outData = {} rows = allLines.split("<tr> ") for row in rows: try: cols = row.split("<td>") cols.pop(0) cols.pop(0) country = cols.pop(0) cols = cols[0:3] cols = [int(col) for col in cols] except: continue outData[country] = cols #for key, value in outData.items(): # print key, value return outData --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:53, 15 March 2020 (UTC) Okay, with a few modifications, it worked. I can incorporate it now. Ythlev (talk) 13:19, 15 March 2020 (UTC) A lot of work is matching those country names to ISO country codes used to colour the map. Ythlev (talk) 13:20, 15 March 2020 (UTC) @Dan Polansky: It's done: [7]. Your code has some bugs though. It does not work for Netherlands for some reason. Ythlev (talk) 18:17, 15 March 2020 (UTC) @Ythlev: It fails for Netherlands since Netherlands has "–" in the 3rd column instead of zero. I don't know what "–" means, or else I could just tweak the script to replace it with zero or maybe place None in the list instead of int. Did you also create a per capita map on the world level? File:COVID-19_Outbreak_World_Map.svg is not per capita. --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:03, 15 March 2020 (UTC) No. Such a map is being question now. Ythlev (talk) 19:07, 15 March 2020 (UTC) NCBI StatPearls link in support of per capita, in addition to actual number [8]. Prevalence, or cumulative cases per capita, is an estimate of the probability for a person in the country to be sick (useful if you are considering walking around in public in that country). Incidence, or new cases per unit time, is useful for tracking rate of new cases. Segoldberg (talk) 18:08, 16 March 2020 (UTC) Hi there, you may already know, but i would like to inform you that the data for the per capita map is wrong, it shows Australia as >0.1 but it is currently at >10 it has actually been >1 since the 1st march so the map is definitely not accurate as of 13th march as it states. I have not checked for other countries but there are probably more mistakes that need fixing. Just your average wikipedian (talk) 06:35, 16 March 2020 (UTC) You may know x and y, but you may not conduct operations on them. Just want to say this is the weirdest discussion in history. If a map of cases by country is acceptable based on the data available, then a map of cases per capita causing such trauma because it's OR (no it isn't) or it's somehow fundamentally unknowable information, implies that the wiki page "countries and dependencies by population" also needs deleting. Otherwise, x is acceptable, y is acceptable, but x/y is magically wrong. Funny old place. 165.225.81.57 (talk) 10:33, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Cumulative cases vs peak active cases

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If the first map is meant to be more directly sourced, the second should be more reflective of impact. Taking into account the health care systems and "flattening the curve", the second map should be peak active cases per capita. Ythlev (talk) 11:34, 15 March 2020 (UTC) If the data is available, I would be okay with this map being added as part of a package, per my proposal below. Sdkb (talk) 07:20, 17 March 2020 (UTC) So right now we have two competing per capita maps; one cumulative and one peak outbreak (see above). At the moment, I think that the cumulative map of @Raphaël Dunant: is preferrable. If China had another major outbreak, the peak outbreak map of @Ythlev: would not change a bit, but the cumulative map would reflect the change. Second, the peak outbreak map has a funny scale. How are the cutoff levels chosen? I appreciate Ythlev's ambition to reflect the intensity of the blow to the healthcare system and the general population. Perhaps this could be accomplished by a deaths per capita map? St.nerol (talk) 14:55, 17 March 2020 (UTC) Why is "changing a bit" important? Looking at any map so far, can you tell whether the disease is more serious in China than Europe or less? could be accomplished by a deaths per capita map? That's still a third map. Ythlev (talk) 15:13, 17 March 2020 (UTC) Second, the peak outbreak map has a funny scale. If by funny, you mean not powers of ten, the figures are mostly within 45 cases per million, so compared to the above map, using a smaller scale separates the countries better (e.g. East Africa, South Asia). Ythlev (talk) 15:26, 17 March 2020 (UTC) Several countries in Europe have over a 100 cases per capita. At the current centre of the outbreak your scale does not separate countries well at all. St.nerol (talk) 15:38, 17 March 2020 (UTC) And why should a world map separate Europe better at the expense of other regions? You want to know about the situation in Europe, there is a map of Europe in the corresponding article. Ythlev (talk) 16:13, 17 March 2020 (UTC) I agree with the consensus that if we are to have one per capita map, it should be the cumulative cases one. I can see the value to a peak active cases one, though, and would like it to be included as part of a package, per my proposal below. Sdkb (talk) 17:01, 17 March 2020 (UTC) The cases per capita map was removed from the article because it needed fixing. A corrected svg was then restored to the article. You have now removed it twice in favour of your own map. I see no consensus for having a peak active cases map instead of a regular cases per capita map. There are also some potential problems with your map that needs to be discussed; @Redav: mentioned some of them. Total confirmed cases per capita is data readily available from e.g. https://www.worldometers.info/ An illustration of this data clearly has encyclopedic value. The regular cases per capita map should be restored to the page until if a consensus here should say otherwise. –St.nerol (talk) 16:04, 17 March 2020 (UTC) As per @Sdkb: and @Redav: (asking for an SVG version of the total cases per capita map) and @St.nerol: comments, the total cases per capita map has been restored. I also feel like total cases per capita has more value to an encyclopedia than peak cases, as it is more useful to know which country have been hit the most, not which countries have been hit the quickest. I am agreeing with the direction the consensus seems to be going, but will abide by any consensus. Raphaël Dunant (talk) 16:45, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Developing an SVG version

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I greatly appreciate the efforts of Monopoly31121993(2) to produce a PNG per capita map for the infobox, but there is still an urgent and open request for SVG version that can be updated by all editors, like the primary map. Perhaps the script developed by User:Ythlev and User:Dan Polansky above could be of use to an editor reading this who would like to give it a try? — Goszei (talk) 18:40, 16 March 2020 (UTC) Copying my comment from the Commons: Monopoly31121993(2), I appreciate the effort you've put into updating this, but I need to re-emphasize that, at this point, by far the most urgent need is for you to convert this file to an SVG. This is an extremely prominent file on perhaps WP's most prominent article right now, and keeping it as a PNG (as well as not specifying your data source) effectively prevents other editors from being able to make updates and improvements to it. Maintaining this map is too big a task for any one editor at this point, and while you may disagree with some of the suggestions, consider that (a) even the uncontroversial ones, like fixing Greenland, cannot currently be remedied, and (b) WP:OWN applies — WP needs collaboration to function best. If you continue to maintain this map as a PNG, the editors whose concerns have not been adequately addressed are going to increasingly clamor for the removal of the map from the article, nullifying your work and doing a disservice to readers who would be better served by a per capita map. Sdkb (talk) 20:45, 16 March 2020 (UTC) @Monopoly31121993(2):@Sdkb: I can agree with what Sdkb writes, and I can confirm that I feel an urge and a repsonsibility to remove the per capita map because also the newer version still has multiple issues concerning a) well-definedness, b) meaningfulnes, c) accuracy, d) verifiability / falsifiability, that I do not see addressed, or at the very least discussed with arguments that might convince, by e.g. Monopoly31121993(2).Redav (talk) 01:16, 17 March 2020 (UTC) From Monopoly31121993(2)'s reply on Commons here, it looks like they may not know how to convert a PNG to an SVG. I don't know how myself; is it an easy thing to do? If so, could someone guide them through it? And if not, it looks like the best approach may be for someone else to build a per-capita map from scratch. Sdkb (talk) 03:41, 17 March 2020 (UTC) @Ythlev and Dan Polansky: Would either of you be able to explain how one might use the code you wrote above to create a per capita SVG map? I'm not a technical expert, but we very urgently need someone who is to help with this task. If you need it, population data for the world and province-level info is provided in the WHO daily situation reports like this one. Sdkb (talk) 07:12, 17 March 2020 (UTC) There is no easy way to convert PNG to SVG; the other way around is easy. PNG is a raster image, like colored tiles in your bathroom; SVG is a vector image, representing shapes as lines, arcs, circles and such. PNG knows no shapes; it is just a huge grid of colored tiles. The script on my talk page already grabs Wikipedia sources and provides calculated output. What I would need to do is to expand the script to 1) download a blank SVG of the political world map from Wikipedia sources, 2) create a mapping from country names to country codes since the calculation uses country names and the SVG map probably has country codes in it, in comments or the like, 3) determine which colors to use for which ranges, 4) use the calculated per capita output to color the blank SVG, 5) save the result to SVG file. In a sense, it is very straightforward, but it still takes effort and attention, and I do not know whether I find time and energy to do it any time soon, in part since I have also to make deliberations, measures, and actions concerning me personally; I do not promise anything. I am happy that I can extract cases per capita and deaths per capita in a snap. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:36, 17 March 2020 (UTC) There are a few thing to sort out first. What should the map be. As I said, the map should be peak active cases per capita because it reflects the mitigation efforts and health system burden. Data source. Currently the map (cases map) is just updated by whichever figure is latest for a country. It's quite hard to write a script that can read the current map and update it. What is feasible is to read a community-maintained list of figures. Someone wrote a scrip that can read Wikidata. Alternatively we could just use a single source like John Hopkins University with the drawback that it is only updated daily. Either of these approaches would require consensus though. It means the map can't just be edited by anyone who has the latest figure. Ythlev (talk) 09:17, 17 March 2020 (UTC) @Sdkb:@Ythlev: I located what seems to be an svg world map on https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Population_density_countries_2017_world_map,_people_per_sq_km.svg. I am hoping my next line will help enlist its author in the map project under consideration.Redav (talk) 11:30, 17 March 2020 (UTC) @Ms Sarah Welch: You appear to be the author of an svg world map. There is a request at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:2019%E2%80%9320_coronavirus_pandemic&action=edit&section=9 for an svg world map showing numbers per capita for, among other things, the reported active COVID-19 cases per country / region / dependency / other division type. Would you be able and willing in helping create such a map? Some work on e.g. scripts that calculate the numbers and label them to either country names or country codes, seems to be done already. Thanks a lot!Redav (talk) 11:30, 17 March 2020 (UTC) Ta da! Ythlev (talk) 12:02, 17 March 2020 (UTC) Peak active cases per capita I've included details in case someone wants to check. Ythlev (talk) 12:05, 17 March 2020 (UTC) @Ythlev: This looks promising! Again I propose to include in the title the words "reported" and "active" (or another appropriate word if another quantity is going to be presented) and furthermore to mention the source(s). I can see the list on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:2019%E2%80%9320_coronavirus_pandemic_data is not the (only) source for your current map, since e.g. the total number of infected for (the country of) the Netherlands (which, by the way, is only part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands) mentioned there differs from the 1,413 your table shows, and the Netherlands do not count the recovered. The latter, of course, limits the meaningfulness of a number A = T - R - D for the Netherlands. (Symbols explained above on this page.) Another remark is that your table shows a date of 18 Feb 2020 for the China data. Are there no more recent data available?Redav (talk) 13:13, 17 March 2020 (UTC) I wish I didn't have to keep repeating this. In a pandemic, people are bound to get sick. What matters is whether they all get sick at the same time, hence the map I made is peak active cases per capita. China is way past its peak. Ythlev (talk) 13:34, 17 March 2020 (UTC) @Ythlev: Thanks for your explanation (again, as you say). You seem to address me specifically (although I am not sure you actually do). If that is the case, I cannot see which part of my input you are discussing or arguing with, since I cannot remember inputting any arguments regarding more / less usefulness / uselessness of current and/or peak active cases. If you mean to say that 18 Feb 2020 was the date with the (reported) peak in active cases, and that the data list you provided concerns this quantity, then I can now understand why this particular date is reflected in your list. But I do not remember seeing / reading that the data list was about peak active cases at the respective peak days for the respective countries / territories / division of whatever kind. Maybe I missed it, maybe it was not provided.Redav (talk) 16:38, 17 March 2020 (UTC) @Ythlev: Is there a substantial number of divisions (e.g. countries, territories, provinces, etc.) that record the number of recoveries from COVID-19? I know that (country of) the Netherlands does not do so. For such countries, I do not see how a meaningful number of active cases can be obtained. I do, however, agree that a map which presents accurate values of the accurate cases per capita, would be very interesting and meaningful indeed.Redav (talk) 17:50, 17 March 2020 (UTC) The data is from John Hopkins University, who collects data from various sources, so I have no idea. But they do report 1 recovery from the Netherlands. Ythlev (talk) 20:32, 17 March 2020 (UTC) @Ythlev: On https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6 (which I think is the source you mean) I see mention of 2 recoveries for (the country of) Netherlands. This number is the same as shown on https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/. Following sources from both websites, I have not been able to find any ultimate source for these 2 alleged recoveries. What is more - and I repeat this message that I already repeatedly gave on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:2019%E2%80%9320_coronavirus_pandemic_data in relation to the (first) table in the article - is that public health authority RIVM in (the country of) the Netherlands does not count recoveries. This can be read on its website https://www.rivm.nl/coronavirus/covid-19/vragen-antwoorden#nederland (in Dutch). There, the text "Hoeveel mensen zijn in Nederland inmiddels genezen van COVID-19? Dat is op dit moment niet bekend. Er is geen meldingsplicht om door te geven dat mensen zijn genezen van de ziekte. Iemand die 24 uur geen klachten meer heeft wordt als genezen beschouwd." translates as: "How many people in the Netherlands have recovered from COVID-19? At this moment this is unknown. There is no obligation to report that people have recovered. Someone who has no complaints during 24 hours is considered as recovered." Does this convince? Therefore, I can see no reason whatsoever to use a number of recoveries for (the country of) the Netherlands. Does this help to reach a consensus that (secondary) sources mentioning a specific number of recoveries are overriden by what can be considered as the best possible source for data about (the country of) the Netherlands at this point in time? (The Kingdom of the Netherlands - I repeat, or maybe I mention it for the first time on this page - includes and is more than (the country of) the Netherlands.)Redav (talk) 22:01, 17 March 2020 (UTC) @Redav: Well, some countries are thought to underreport figures. Some countries have more tests than others. It's impossible for the map to be perfectly accurate no matter what. Ythlev (talk) 06:10, 18 March 2020 (UTC) @Ythlev: Your point in itself is clear to me. In fact, I am convinced that not only some but every country underreports, in the sense that they undertest: not every infected person is tested. On top of that, there may be authorities which deliberately underreport with respect to the figures they know as the outcomes of the tests that they actually (had) carried out. But, as long as we accept to define the quantities used to fill tables and draw maps, as the figures published by the responsible authorities that may be assumed to best know the data (even if flawed by undertesting), in my view there is no reason to accept any figures that deviate from the figures reported by these responsible authorities. So, in the case of (the country of) the Netherlands with the responsible authority RIVM which clearly states they do not count the recovered, I see no reason to accept the number of 2 recovered as mentioned by some. If we would accept such a figure, we would deviate from what I think is probably the most feasible definition of a measured quantity to be presented, and we (would) seem to be following some - not or less well-defined - strategy of, say, estimation. I am not saying estimation is absolutely unhelpful, but I argue that estimated figures be separated from the reported figures, however flawed the latter may be. Contrary to what you write, I am not convinced that the map is bound to be inaccurate, at least not to the degree that I understand you mean. Starting from the definition that what the map and table present are figures reported by the respective responsible authorities, we seem to be able to be certain of at least accurately presenting these reported figures. So, the quantity we would (try to) present are not the actual numbers of active COVID-19 cases - however much we would like to have those figures -, but rather the reported figures just mentioned. The main inaccuracy left is then related to in how far an authority is the only (uncontested) authority for a particular division (e.g. country, province, state, territory).Redav (talk) 14:02, 18 March 2020 (UTC) Total cases per capita I added an SVG version of the map with the latest numbers and sources. Feel free to comment and/or adapt the map. Raphaël Dunant (talk) 13:38, 17 March 2020 (UTC) @Raphaël Dunant: Thanks for your work; it's nice to have it back! Regarding possible tweaks, I see a few: Greenland appears to reflect the data for Denmark, rather than itself. There's a weird border curving up along the right side. Also, now that we have a workable map back, it would be nice to start trying to figure out how to integrate province-level data for China, as requested above. Sdkb (talk) 17:34, 17 March 2020 (UTC) Great indeed to have such a map. Of course, we need to realize that its value is limited by under-testing / under-reporting in the reported confirmed cases, but it certainly helps. As to China's provinces, would any of the svg-maps on https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Maps_of_subdivisions_of_China help? (I do not know how svg maps technically work, and hope the specialists can easily assess that.)Redav (talk) 17:43, 17 March 2020 (UTC) Thank you @Sdkb: for the improvement suggestion. The weird border curving has been corrected. Note that Greenland has the correct value of 1 case per 56171 inhabitants , which is different color from mainland Denmark. I also colored French (Guyane, Reunion, etc.) and UK (Jersey, Gibraltar, etc.) dependencies differently than the mainland, with their correct color. For @Redav: remark on breaking down Chinese provinces, then we could argue of also breaking down big countries (Russia, Brazil, etc.)? Note that it will make the map harder to maintain, and that in this case we also need to do it for the total case map. We can open a new Talk session for finer-grained maps. Raphaël Dunant (talk) 18:07, 17 March 2020 (UTC) Oops, I assumed it wasn't in Greenland yet, but I guess we're at that point.We're now officially on track to win the IRL Plague, Inc. /humor And yes, good thought to make that a separate section; I'll open that up now. Sdkb (talk) 18:14, 17 March 2020 (UTC) At User talk:Dan Polansky, I now posted a script that creates an svg fully automatically from data that it grabs from Wikipedia. Maybe someone will find it useful. I suspect there are glitches in region match between the sources of data, but overall, my impression is good. --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:43, 17 March 2020 (UTC) @Raphaël Dunant: It looks great that, as far as I can judge from blowing up the map, at least three of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Netherlands (namely Aruba, Curaçao and (the country of) the Netherlands) have separate values and colours; I did not yet succeed in discerning the fourth, being Sint Maarten, but that may be caused by the relative smallness of that country. You even created a separate value and colour for one the three public bodies within - i.e. belonging to - (the country of) the Netherlands that lie in the Caribbean, namely Bonaire. Again the relative smallness of the other two public bodies (Sint Eustatius and Saba) may be the cause of me not being able to identify them on the map. These are welcome contributions to me. As to breaking down countries into provinces, states: I have not exactly pleaded for such breaking down of numbers - though I have tried to point to svg maps for China broken down into provinces -, but - of course - interesting it would certainly be, if feasible and accurate.Redav (talk) 23:33, 17 March 2020 (UTC) Total deaths per capita (outdent) I now created File:COVID-19 Outbreak World Map Total Deaths per Capita.svg, using code at Commons:File talk:COVID-19 Outbreak World Map Total Deaths per Capita.svg. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:46, 18 March 2020 (UTC) The deaths per capita is a nice job! It does seem to indicate the severity of the situation in the respective countries much better than the cases per capita. I hope we can use it! —St.nerol (talk) 12:19, 18 March 2020 (UTC) Thanks for the remark about the visibility. I brightened the total cases per capita map to make it more readable. Raphaël Dunant (talk) 15:11, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Including additional maps in collapsed state

Draft:2019–20 coronavirus pandemic/Infobox sandbox Old title: Let's introduce an interactive drop-down menu to switch between maps

As I explained above, I think the per capita cases map is much more useful for readers than the total cases map, and will continue to become even more so as the virus said. That said, I can imagine some readers validly wanting to see a total cases map, as well as a total deaths map, per capita deaths map, total new cases map, and per capita new cases map. As we (hopefully) work on getting the per capita map turned into an SVG, I was wondering whether it would be possible to, instead of having multiple maps above and below each other, display one map by default (I'd prefer the per capita cases map due again to my explanation above, but that's open to debate), and have a drop-down menu that readers could use to switch between maps, ideally including most or all of the ones I just listed. Do any of the more technically-inclined among you know if we could do that? I know it's fancy, but it seems like it would be worth the effort for the top of an article as prominent as this. Sdkb (talk) 20:17, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

This doesn't seem to be getting engagement. Is that since you all don't like the idea, or just since no one who has seen this yet knows how to do it? If you have an opinion for/against the idea, it'd be helpful to know that, as achieving consensus is a precursor to figuring out technical implementation. Sdkb (talk) 19:20, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Okay, so after looking into this a bit, I think a much easier option that'd have a similar effect would be to include a bunch of maps but just collapse them by default using {{collapsed infobox section begin}} and {{collapsed infobox section end}}. What say you all to that? Sdkb (talk) 08:57, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

@Sdkb: It's a little hard to know before I've seen it. It's probably a good idea, but I think at least one map should be visible without clicking. I started an RfC above about which maps to use, which is relevant with regards to your initiative. St.nerol (talk) 11:16, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

@St.nerol: I've whipped up a preview of what it might look like in the sandbox and added it along the side here. The maps included or not included are obviously open to debate; your RfC should hopefully help clarify that. Sdkb (talk) 17:37, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Splitting data by state/province

(mostly copying my comment from above to kick this off) By and large, I much prefer the per capita map. It's main problem seems to be that it doesn't appropriately show how severe the outbreak has been in the part of China where it originated. Fortunately, there's a solution to that: splitting up the data for China by province. That way, Hubei will presumably show up as appropriately severe. The main downside of this approach is that some readers might ask why China gets more granular data than other countries, but I think most won't have a problem (and if the data does exist for generating a world map of prevalence by zip code or some other smaller unit and we could turn it into a map, or just adding data for e.g. Italy, that would of course be brilliant). The data for such an addition is pretty readily available; both the population and case numbers are included in yesterday's WHO daily situation report. Sdkb (talk) 18:48, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Sure; I don't mind showing provinces of China, or some other large country where the case concentration turns out to be very different for different parts. But I guess China is the most relevant to show provice-level here. —St.nerol (talk) 23:06, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Adjusted number of cases

Dear all,

I would like to share an idea to have a more precise understanding of the number of cases of COVID-19. A more precise current number of cases could be approximated by computing the square of cases today divided by the cases one week ago.

The concept behind this assumes that people with the infection get tested after the symptoms occur. Since the incubation period is most commonly 5 days, the number of current cases would be at least 5 days old. In fact, if requesting and processing the test took 2 more days, the number of cases would be around 7 days old.

My suggestion is to use the growth of the previous days. Let us imagine that a region had the following cases:

date	cases	daily growth
$n$ days ago	$a_{n}$
$(n-1)$ days ago	$a_{n-1}$	${\frac {a_{n-1}}{a_{n}}}$
$\cdots$
1 day ago	$a_{1}$	${\frac {a_{1}}{a_{2}}}$
today	$a_{0}$	${\frac {a_{0}}{a_{1}}}$

We can approximate the future growth by the past, and say that an adjusted number of cases can be approximated with:

$a_{0}\cdot {\frac {a_{0}}{a_{1}}}\cdot {\frac {a_{1}}{a_{2}}}\cdot \ldots \cdot {\frac {a_{n-2}}{a_{n-1}}}\cdot {\frac {a_{n-1}}{a_{n}}}$

which is the same as ${\frac {a_{0}^{2}}{a_{n}}}$

As an example, these are the values for the first 10 countries in the list on 2020-03-14:

country	cases today	cases one week ago	adjusted cases today (approx.)
China	80844	80695	80993
Italy	21157	5883	76087
Iran	12729	5823	27825
South Korea	8162	7134	9338
Spain	6391	430	94988
Germany	3795	684	21056
France	4499	949	21329
United States	2794	352	22177
Switzerland	1359	254	7271
United Kingdom	1140	206	6309

These adjusted values may fluctuate with sudden high values, like in the case of Spain.

I hope someone can find this idea useful.

Regards, Julian (talk) 17:18, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

Unfortunately, our policies do not allow for original research. - MrX 🖋 20:07, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

Wikiversity permits original research per Wikiversity:Wikiversity:Original research. I never did much of anything there, but it could be interesting for the purpose. The above is very interesting. I saw other methods of estimation of actual cases, and those methods also suggest for multiple countries that the actual cases are 10x as many as the reported ones, or even 100x; for countries with comprehensive testing such as South Korea, the factor would not be so bad. One heuristic I saw is this: take the number of deaths and, if the country's healthcare is not overwhelmed, multiply it by 100 and then by 10, thus, by 1000; the 100 is for death rate of 1%, and the factor of 10 accounts for delay in time. It is very approximate, but we need to be clear that the actual cases hugely exceed the reported cases for most countries. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:28, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, having those maps front and center is wildly misleading. The maps are pretty and it is fun to make them, but they leave the reader dumber than if he hadn't seen the article in the first place. Bury them deep down, with appropriate warnings not to try to draw any conclusions from them. (Better still, remove them - but that would be an uphill battle.) 85.76.71.208 (talk) 14:40, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

I don't know how things work in Wikiversity, but one way they could work is this: there would be a page for research subject and subpages per participant who has anything to publish. There would be e.g. Wikiversity:COVID-19/Julian Mendez, and Wikiversity:COVID-19/Dan Polansky. Each participant would publish their original research on their subpage, and others could comment on the talk page, and the subpage owner would decide which of the comments to incorporate. Maybe someone familiar with Wikiversity could comment. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:37, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Thank you very much for the suggestion. I have created the subpage at Wikiversity:COVID-19/Julian_Mendez.

I hope this idea helps understanding the number of cases. The long incubation phase and the exponential growth combined could be misleading. People could overlook that the number of cases is considerably greater than the number of reported cases. --Julian (talk) 15:11, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

medium.com/@tomaspueyo draws a similar conclusion; you may find the article, its analysis and graphs interesting; they seem very plausible to me. --Dan Polansky (talk) 15:20, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Comment/caution: Medium is a self-publishing platform and should be treated in the same respect as any other blogging platforms when comes to referencing in Wikipedia. robertsky (talk) 02:25, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

I think the article is very good and gives a consistent view on the global problem. I have the impression that some people still do not wholly understand the importance of social distancing, and this article can help understanding the problem. --Julian (talk) 09:33, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

I support using the source with extra supporting sources, please see my discussion in subsection Global cases rate vs wuhan before lockdown Moneyball99 (talk) 19:05, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

But the reliable source said and we go nuts changing to pandemic in 61 places and countless other pages, but then we don’t trust them when they say it can be controlled? Ridiculous Almaty (talk) 15:18, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Proposal: Move moratorium

These requested moves on here are getting disruptive so I formally propose a moratorium. I am neutral on how long it should be. Interstellarity (talk) 20:51, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

Support

1. Support - We need to focus on the content, not the title. What the final title will be hinges on what the end-point of this pandemic ends up being: we should be wary about trying to title the current incident while living through it. doktorb _words^deeds 20:55, 15 March 2020 (UTC)
2. Support The last move was pretty disruptive, taking the usual editors to move all other related pages and updating them to conform to the new page name of this main article. Let's wait for the pandemic to stabilise first (be it for good or bad). robertsky (talk) 21:16, 15 March 2020 (UTC)
3. Support a 30 day move moratorium, unless and new consensus to lift this moratorium occurs before then. - MrX 🖋 21:30, 15 March 2020 (UTC)
4. Support. The renamings 3 time a day is ridiculous. Iluvalar (talk) 03:38, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
5. Support. This is clearly a long-running distraction that has been affecting this page and its related subpages. Carrots have stopped working, so it's time for the stick. --benlisquare_T•C•E 04:49, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
6. Support. I think that there are reasonable arguments for COVID-19 rather than coronavirus, but there are also good counterarguments, and any proposal along these lines wouldn't have a snowball's chance in hell of being seen as a priority right now. We can get back to this in six to twelve months' time. The change to pandemic was justified, but any other changes (such as from coronavirus to COVID-19, or in terms of the year(s)), are minor matters compared to the content. I propose at least a 3-month moratorium. Boud (talk) 01:05, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
7. Support. This is clearly needed now, as yet another RM comes along on yet another triviality. Obviously moratoria are not suicide pacts - if something radically changes in the real world, then of course we're allowed to think again. But for now the current names enjoy solid consensus and we should have the ability to shut down quickly the never-ending attempts at moves between the different names, when nothing has radically changed.  — Amakuru (talk) 12:05, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
8. In the last 2 weeks, there have been about 13 requested moves, many of which have been speedily closed per SNOW. In the last RM, some editors supported the idea of a moratorium. Therefore, I request that there be a moratorium for the next 3 months on page moves, as having these daily requests is becoming very disruptive. Three months should be long enough for the pandemic to die down somewhat and by then we should all have the time to look more closely at the requests without being bogged down by the rapidly evolving situation currently going on. Thanks. Mgasparin (talk) 22:08, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
9. would support such action--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 22:36, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
10. Support the standard six month moratorium. No move proposals on this page before September. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:40, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Oppose

1. Oppose: I notice there was some WP:RM recently, but most of them seems to too focus on "wanting to close" despite some merit on the RM starter side. I want to restrict users from attempting to enforce additional rules that would censor voices in RM and prevent users from using vote "Speedy Close" or having it closed for WP:SNOW. Wants them to keep RM open for 7 days no matter how much were started after another. Regice2020 (talk) 23:48, 15 March 2020 (UTC)
2. Oppose: we moved too slowly on removing "Wuhan" from the article title. A move moratorium is too extreme of a solution to this problem. We should remain adaptable. This may be for another discussion, but I propose we only allow one move request or move review to be open at a time. This makes sense because move requests/reviews technically conflict with each other. For example, we can move from "2019–20 coronavirus pandemic" to "2019–20 COVID-19 pandemic" or to "2019–20 SARS-CoV-2 pandemic" but not to both. In practice, this means any move request started while a request or move review is still ongoing gets closed immediately, and all discussion redirected to the active move discussion. I am still thinking of how to close the loophole of people NACing a move discussion early just so they can post their own. Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 07:23, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Comment

We have proven that we are able to deal with multiple move requests, and we cannot predict the future. So let’s just be the encyclopaedia that we are, and just deal with them when they arise. —49.195.179.13 (talk) 05:26, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

• Instead of a formal move request that puts a notice on top of the page, start an informal discussion on this page first to float the ideas. I think almost all of these move requests are wasting effort. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 05:34, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

I support this option. A moratorium on move request notices, not on move discussions. -St.nerol (talk) 15:01, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Support this as well. --Efly (talk) 01:26, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Year in title

This is the only time that there's been a coronavirus pandemic. Now that pandemic is in the title, the years no longer need be. Jim Michael (talk) 05:23, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

That is not quite true, there was also SARS and MERS, both coronaviruses and pandemic causing. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 05:37, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

It's only been a pandemic in 2020, though. All the best: Rich Farmbrough (the apparently calm and reasonable) 07:57, 16 March 2020 (UTC).

Graeme Bartlett Jim has a point; this is the first coronavirus to be labeled a pandemic by the WHO. Victionarier (talk) 13:44, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Jim is correct, as is Rich. There is no need for a year in the title but if any year is included surely it should be the year in which it was labelled a pandemic (2020). Magna19 (talk) 14:44, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

The pandemic started in 2019. It's the same phenomenon and that phenomenon started in 2019. When WHO labelled it a pandemic doesn't matter: nothing special actually happened on that day. Bondegezou (talk) 08:03, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

I also question whether this is the only coronavirus pandemic. It's the most famous one, sure, but Porcine epidemic diarrhea virus now has a global spread. Bondegezou (talk) 13:56, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Self-isolation and quarantine

The section has been updated quite a lot over the last few days. The CDC guidance link was removed under WP:EL and four bullet point summary was removed under WP:NOHOWTO. CDC citations were then removed for unknown reasons and the section was rebuilt with very specific NHS guidelines. It now has WP:SYNTH issues and conflicts with WHO and CDC recommendations. Not sure of the best way to keep the Prevention section as accurate as possible but I think it's important that we do. - Wikmoz (talk) 23:38, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

yes it is a very important section--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 17:33, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

I say revert back to CDC as they are the major us agency — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.135.84.170 (talk) 21:10, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Illustration of an aspect of social distancing

Alternatives to handshakes

In my opinion this is a useful illustration of one aspect of social distancing. Of course a lot of measures will be required. Not sure why removed? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:01, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Can you justify why this funny comic strip showing people doing thumbs-up and namaste is a useful illustration? Because it's obvious to me that's not the case. In fact, I would go so far as to say that this kind of content has no place in an encyclopedia. Wikipedia isn't a textbook for kids. --RaphaelQS (talk) 04:15, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

These are example of avoiding direct content with other people. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:30, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

I think it would make a very useful addition. HiLo48 (talk) 04:37, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

agree it would be a useful addition...IMO--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 12:01, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

References

These animated images feel a little out of place on Wikipedia. Displaying handshake alternatives doesn't feel as important as communicating some other prevention recommendations and the animated format can be distracting. - Wikmoz (talk) 05:42, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

It can also be engaging. We have the instructions on how healthcare providers should put on PPE. We do not really need more pictures of people wearing masks. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:24, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

There are a few cultural references that are specific to New Zealand: hongi, “NZSL” and “East Coast wave”. That isn’t ideal for an article that’s global in scope; many viewers will be wondering what a hongi is before noticing the .nz URL. Roches (talk) 09:16, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

This illustrates the global nature of the outbreak and that yes some responses will be local. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:24, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

• I'd oppose the use of such graphics. It made the article looks like it's for children, and also quite irrelevant for a global audience. I'd oppose anything made by that website whose images aren't good at all (as can be seen by their misrepresentation of the intervention curve, suggesting that the quality of their so-called experts is dubious). Hzh (talk) 09:56, 17 March 2020 (UTC)
  • • That would need a reference / more than your personal opinion. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:24, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Their curve is sourced to CDC, and since it deviates from that source, we can say it misrepresent the source. Anyone who can misrepresent a source cannot be reliable. Hzh (talk) 17:08, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

No we cannot say that. The CDC does not exclusively dictate the field of community health and epidemiology. This is an entire profession. The CDC graph combines multiple actions into one graph well the other graphs deal with one aspect at a time. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:32, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

They did more than emphasizing one single aspect. For example, they moved the curve below health capacity, which is not supported by the source. I have seen curves used in various news report, and they made no such claim even when showing a line for health care capacity (for example, a recent report I saw on BBC TV news and it shows the curve going above the line with intervention). The idea that you can do it with a large-scale outbreak, particularly with no decrease in total number of cases, is pure nonsense. All the curves I've seen in RS in fact also show decrease number of cases, which is not shown in this curve. Very poor effort by that website. Hzh (talk) 17:56, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

What "large-scale outbreak"? Most of the images I've seen have been somewhat targeted at an NZ audience. NZ has 20 cases so far. Significantly, fewer at the time the images you are referring to were likely created. Which highlights the point that there has been a worrying increase in cases. However, there's still no indication of any real community spread, and all the border closures likely mean there are likely a bunch of people who've decided it's time to come home fairly recently. (Plus NZ still hasn't banned non residents and citizens from coming so there's probably some coming to try and ride out the outbreak in NZ.) There is some concern over insufficient testing, and so we may be in a Italy, UK etc situation. The hope is that NZ can prevent this becoming an outbreak akin to Italy etc. Whether that will succeed is strongly debated. But if you're trying to apply the images to the situation in Italy etc, it's not surprising that they don't work since I don't think they were really targeted at such a situation. Nil Einne (talk) 10:31, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

If you are arguing that that curve is specific for NZ, then it is not applicable to the rest of the world, therefore it should not be used aimed at a global audience. Hzh (talk) 11:16, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Hi, Thank you so much to all the volunteers who are helping share evidence-based information in this article. I took a look at "File:Covid-19-Handshake-Alternatives-v3.gif" and also the source. I think it adds information to the article and given that the article has strong references that follow Wikipedia's Guidelines indicating that social distancing is a prevention measure, I do not see why we cannot include this to demonstrate social distancing. Given that articles are supposed to be written at a level for everyone to understand, I support re-adding this. JenOttawa (talk) 12:07, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

What information is added? You can't just say that the illustration adds information and expect people to take your word for it. To be absolutely clear, this illustration is useless, distracting and unencyclopaedic and should be removed. --RaphaelQS (talk) 18:02, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

There is no clear consensus to use it (4 support, 4 oppose or expressed reservations), so I'm not sure why it's been put back. Hzh (talk) 20:35, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

While I can appreciate several of the arguments against this, on balance, I'm in favor of this illustration. The main reason is that there is a lot of high profile image/footage at the moment of people using greetings that bring them physically close to each other, like elbow and foot bumps: this image is sending the message that true alternatives aren't physical contact. On whether it's too childish, I don't think that's a problem: some readers are young, and this style of cartoon adds lightheartedness to a social issue at a time when people are very stressed about their personal behavior. I think many images on Wikipedia are culturally specific, so I'm not fussed about one being NZ-centric. Hildabast (talk) 20:48, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Here is some rudimentary "social distancing" lineart: 1. no crowds, 2. physical distance, 3. no handshakes. I can make more in the same style, if there is anything you would like to have depicted. Cheers, gnu57 23:09, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

• I wouldn't be opposed to the use of a graphic like this one, but it should be multicultural (include alternatives greetings from different cultures), without a watermark and ideally public domain and uploaded on Commons. Darylgolden^(talk) Ping when replying 23:35, 17 March 2020 (UTC)
  • You able to trim the stuff at the bottom User:Darylgolden? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:02, 18 March 2020 (UTC)
    • @Doc James: That would likely be illegal (or at the very least, very shady). Darylgolden^(talk) Ping when replying 01:10, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Well it isn't. I am happy to remove. It is on commons. It is under an open license. And it is multicultural. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:13, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

As others have pointed out, it is New Zealand-centric. Though I suppose I wouldn't be opposed to the use of this image, but I don't think it should be used in this article (there are more important aspects to social distancing than alternative greetings). Darylgolden^(talk) Ping when replying 01:55, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Okay what do you have as illustrations that are available under an open license. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:07, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

This image contains credits in the image itself. Because this image is a freely licensed image, it is in violation of Wikipedia's image use policy.--RaphaelQS (talk) 00:22, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Sure have cropped them. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:34, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

If the illustration demonstrates in one small space several important methods of avoiding hand contact... It appears ok to me to use. It's effective. A number of world leaders are talking about them and if it cheers people up as a sideline, does it matter that it is a cartoon?Whispyhistory (talk) 04:42, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

I'm a Kiwi so probably biased but I support the use of that image. As a free image, we don't have to worry about the possibility other images could be created which may be the same or better. The only question is whether this one is good enough and IMO it is. If someone creates another suitable free images, then we can discuss which one to use but until then..... If editors are really worried about the 2 or so panels which are somewhat NZ specific, we can always remove them but IMO it's not necessary. The question of whether other images created have been misleading is largely moot unless someone can provide evidence that this image is a problem. Editor's personal dislike for the website, is also irrelevant unless they can show some reason why it matters to us. (E.g. they mislead on copyright.) Nil Einne (talk) 10:12, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

What about including it on the 2020 coronavirus pandemic in New Zealand article? Bondegezou (talk) 14:02, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

• I believe I was the one that removed the image. The article is already thick with illustrations and this is pretty light on educational value in comparison. I'm not opposed to its use on more specific articles like Social distancing, but the bar for educational value warranting inclusion is set by the range of illustrations available for a subject, and I don't believe this falls in the upper range of most educationally useful media for this higher level subject. GMG^talk 12:56, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

How can we get this talk page under control?

The amount of attention being devoted to this article is immense, and as might be expected, it's making this talk page really unwieldy and unorganized. Even with the 24hr archiving, there are still tons of duplicate discussions being opened up, making it difficult to centralize discussion on discrete topics like the maps. I'd like to use this thread as a space for proposing solutions to get things under control. Some ideas:

• Introducing a pinned list of established consensuses similar to the one at Donald Trump.
• Relax the norms about not changing section headings, applying WP:SECTIONHEADINGOWN to better define what discussions are happening in each section.
• Using the archiving and collapsing templates more liberally to stop proposals unlikely to pass before they suck up too much oxygen and generate clutter.
• More readily transferring comments made in an inappropriate place to the appropriate centralised discussion.

I'm sure there are more ideas that aren't occurring to me, but the basic gist is that experienced editors should be more aggressive about cleaning up this talk page than we normally would be for one with a more normal level of activity. Also, I should note that for the related issue of the edit history of the article itself also being extremely unwieldy, I requested that we add a line to the edit notice encouraging better edit summary usage. Cheers, Sdkb (talk) 04:38, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

I have been grouping discussions. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:48, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks! I guess we just need more others helping you and/or more aggressive grouping, then. Sdkb (talk) 05:13, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

I pulled the archival down to 18h to decrease the number of discussions here. Not sure if that's the best idea or not. Feel free to change it back if you disagree. Mgasparin (talk) 09:42, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

people don’t refactor like they used to, strikethroughs aren’t necessary, one can summarise —Almaty (talk) 11:46, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

I'm not too familiar with the history (if there's a page documenting that, I'd be curious to see it), but I think refactoring might need to start coming back. Sdkb (talk) 19:06, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

I think a WP:NOTFORUM edit notice might be warranted, for one thing. Dekimasuよ! 15:55, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

@Dekimasu: Implement that as well as semi-protecting both the article and talk page to only autoconfirmed users. CaradhrasAiguo (leave language) 15:58, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

I don't think protecting the talk page is warranted. It's very rare to make it impossible to add all edit requests. On the other hand, moving the article itself to extended confirmed is a possibility given the level of protection at other related articles. Dekimasuよ! 16:00, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Ok, then blocking any new users who commit any NOTFORUM infractions. I considered local blocks, but there are too many national / regional sub-articles for that to be feasible and a topic ban would be more feasible logistically anyhow. CaradhrasAiguo (leave language) 16:17, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Page notice added. Dekimasuよ! 16:21, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

looks good--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 17:30, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

I'm glad to see the talk page edit notice. I agree with Dekimasu that protecting talk pages is generally a last-resort; if we did do so, we'd need to create a sub-talk page so that non-autoconfirmed editors could still participate. Regarding extended-confirmed protection, I think a request would probably be denied given there's not too much vandalism currently, and if it did pass, that might just result in this talk page getting flooded even more with edit requests. It does seem that not all editors are heeding the article page edit notice; perhaps change the i icon to a caution triangle? Sdkb (talk) 19:06, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

I think the problem is none of the header notices, which provide a lot of info, show for mobile users. Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 03:55, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Are people on mobile really editing a page as huge as this? Oh my. If they are, is there any way to get the notices to show for mobile users? Sdkb (talk) 00:09, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Proposal: Add a header at the top that says Current consensus like the one on the talk page of Donald Trump

This may prevent unnecessary discussions that have been repeatedly been discussed over and over again. Interstellarity (talk) 22:15, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

• Support. This should be uncontroversial. We just need to make sure that anything on the list actually does represent consensus, and realize that consensus can change. - MrX 🖋 22:55, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

  Agreed; it's just a matter of someone taking on the work to create it. It should include only discussions that have taken place on this talk page and either been closed or reached a clear consensus. Sdkb (talk) 00:07, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

• disagree strongly because seemingly minor things such as “exhaled” as User:Doc James and I have disagreed and then agreed on, need to be repetitively discussed, over and over again... the point of the encyclopaedia —Almaty (talk) 16:23, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

  The point of a current consensus header isn't to prevent WP:CCC; it's just to make it easier to identify what the current consensuses are and to find the discussions where those consensuses were previously achieved. It does have the effect of making consensuses a little more solid, but that's a good thing for an article as important as this one. It'll be nice to have an easy shortcut to give to an editor who tries to overturn an established consensus. Sdkb (talk) 21:06, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Guardian: Air pollution likely to increase coronavirus death rate, warn experts

Seems important to include somewhere (but not sure where)

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/17/air-pollution-likely-to-increase-coronavirus-death-rate-warn-experts

Thanks

John Cummings (talk) 09:50, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

would such a source be reliable for such a claim?--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 17:06, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Probably not. See WP:MEDRS Benica11 (talk). Thank you for helping Wikipedia! 02:27, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Chinese origin

The Chinese government is ramping up its propaganda trying to deflect claim that the country is the source of the virus, by casting doubt on its origin - [9], also pushing the idea that US may be the source [10]. We also have a recent spate of edits doing the same thing pushing the Chinese view, changing the origin of the virus to unknown or undetermined, and now it has been removed completely. What is the opinion on keeping or removing the origin of the virus? I would object to saying that its origin is unknown since its purpose is to serve Chinese conspiracy theorists, but ambivalent on keeping the mention of its origin in the infobox. Hzh (talk) 12:11, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

This Paragraph responds well and should be kept as it is :

On 31 December 2019, a cluster of pneumonia cases of unknown cause was reported by health authorities in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province, China,[145] and an investigation was launched in early January 2020.[146] These cases mostly had links to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, which also sold live animals; consequently, the virus is thought to have a zoonotic origin.[147] The virus that caused the outbreak is known as SARS-CoV-2, a new virus closely related to bat coronaviruses,[148] pangolin coronaviruses[149] and SARS-CoV.[150] It is believed that the virus possibly originated in horseshoe bats (genus Rhinolophus).[151]

Indeed there is not Known Origin. Read the Page about the market that you understand that even Chinese government can not be sure about half from market and half not from market. In addition with more than 120 specimens of animals in market, it is not identifiable in which meat this came from, neither specify the animal, neither in which region this animal of globe was infected or caught. So it is unknown. Of course before that had economical fights between USA & China about tax in products, the Handling Import Taxes. So, of course USA has a guilty part, but do not believe USA would contaminate itself or planned bad this fight. It is a pity as consequence the Animals in Africa is not protected yet or China still leave Traditional Medicine allowed, in which, Rhinos still gonna brutally disappear, no, they have still not learned. Regards

The sources do not question that China is the origin, they question whether the market is the origin or which animal it came from, which is an entirely different claim and irrelevant to what is being discussed. Hzh (talk) 13:27, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

You do not understand, there is a half people that had NO contact with market... and ... If you have a Crystal Ball, use it with your more than 6th sense... I really do not know if China was the Origin, for me not, for me the Origin was the Arabian Deserts were in 2003 Sars Virus had and that is a Fat Mutation with a mix of other virus together... So.

Whether they had contact with the market or not is irrelevant in this discussion, which is about China. 100% of the earliest cases were in China. It has already been shown that the 2003 SARS virus came from bats via civets as intermediate hosts in China, why you are trying to suggest it came from the Arabian desert? Is this a new conspiracy theory? Hzh (talk) 14:14, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

All the reliable sources accept China as the origin. Suggestions otherwise would belong here Misinformation related to the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:55, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

@Hzh, 100% of the case where Chinese because we were only testing people coming from China. Based on what we know now about the virus, it would take about 2000 patients before a doctor start noticing a trend (IF there was any trend whatsoever). Let's say, he didn't have the information and just was incompetent and raised the alarm with only 200 patients. Still the virus would have needed to spread for at least 2 months before it could have been noticed in Wuhan. And we know how much this virus spread in 2 months... We could have detected this virus even earlier by extreme luck, but that's just wishful thinking. Iluvalar (talk) 23:33, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

You are speculating, unless you have a valid source for your assertion, then it cannot be accepted as an argument, and in any case not relevant to the argument here. Considering how quickly it spread in Europe (and many countries did a lot of tests and detected very few until the last week or two), the idea it has been spreading for months beforehand simply doesn't make sense. We already know that many such outbreaks originated from China, like the 2003 SARS outbreak, and like SARS, it has been linked to bats in China, although in this case the intermediate host is unknown. If it had been spreading for months beforehand, it would still have been in China itself. There is simply no evidence that the virus originated from outside China [11], any claim otherwise must be considered fringe or conspiracy theories, as it would be if I say it comes from Mars. Hzh (talk) 09:41, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

−

Guys, it is not our role to decide or to argue about where it originated, our role in that regard is to present information about what verifiable reliable sources have said about where it originated and to cite those sources. Please see WP:DUE and/or take this argument to a blog somewhere. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 10:13, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

The claim of origin is something now disputed in the edits, the most recent one - [12], frankly it wasn't really disputed until the Chinese government recently decided that the origin is not in China, and a number of editors chose to follow the Chinese government line. Personally I'm not fussed if the infobox use the first case or origin (although some said that the first case should only be used for date of first case), but I would object to people adding "unknown" or "undetermined" to origin. Hzh (talk) 10:46, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Oh yes it is our role people look to Wikipedia for accurate information. Its obvious it started in China. china just doesn't want to take responsibility so they are shifting the blame. Lets not help China people. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.135.84.170 (talk) 21:18, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

So give the people looking "to Wikipedia for accurate information" accurate sources to back any claims that are made. Mulstev (talk) 01:23, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Is this a pandemic?

I am not sure about the definition of a pandemic, but just 0.002% deaths of human population by 17-3-2020... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.39.214.62 (talk) 13:41, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Yes; it was confirmed by the WHO a while ago. Victionarier (talk) 14:09, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Interesting definition.

A pandemic has nothing to do with mortality per se, only with spread. However, for comparison, let's use the Spanish flu. Mortality statistics are still being debated there (wartime, there was censorship and general disruption), but analysis suggests the final mortality rate was somewhere between 1-5% of those infected. India may have had as much as 5% of their entire population die. COVID-19 is in early days yet, so statistics are particularly blurred in both directions (underreporting of mild/asymptomatic cases; unsure outcome of large numbers of unresolved cases) -- but in Italy, nearly 8% of all their COVID-identified patients have died. While Italy does have three complicating factors for mortality, nothing is preventing the rest of the world from following Italy's caseload trajectory. In Italy, all it took was one single person who was not tested because his travel history did not meet the (then) China-region criterion. - Tenebris 66.11.171.90 (talk) 16:59, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

I am talking about actual figures not hypothesis. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.39.214.62 (talk) 21:50, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

It's a pandemic. The WHO says it is. They're the top experts. – Muboshgu (talk) 21:55, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Definition of Pandemic is not catastrophic per itself. The definition is just an epidemic with sustained local propagation in "3+ cointries within 2+ WHO regions". With China, Korea and Iran outbreak, we are pamdemic.

As of now, this pandemic has nearly no effect. By the early numbers this epidemic display, it has the natural properties to be a 1918-like disaster. 2020 is basically lost year. Yug (talk) 05:47, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

In 1918 there was about 2 billion people but now is around 8 billion, we can´t compare both.(please sign post)

via percentages we could 'compare'--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 18:03, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

I remind you that pandemic has not referred to mortality since 2009 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.39.214.62 (talk) 23:05, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Increasing fatality rate

We have surprassed the 4 percentage of fatality rate, sadly this most important data sometimes was in the article (I mean the overall fatality rate), but it is now deleted. We are now at 7893/194515=4.05 percentage. 87.97.82.243 (talk) 18:19, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

No, that number is pretty much useless out of context. The number of CONFIRMED case is directly proportional to the amount of tests we throw at it. It's kinda obvious that china gave up testing all of it cases on feb 4. Although they will keep reporting death cases with much more accuracy then confirmed case. I think it's about 100% certain at this point that COVID'S virulence is at least on par with other coronavirus and therefore it's conservative to expect it to hit about 1/20 to 1/10(?) of the world population. In my opinion, you can easily add two 0 to your 194515 give or take one order of magnitude. So we'd be at 0.4% (4x a seasonal flu) to 0.04%(1/2 a seasonal flu). I hope it helps. Iluvalar (talk) 20:41, 17 March 2020 (UTC) That is correct, all the mass hysteria is caused by "1/2 a seasonal flu."--Maxaxax (talk) 22:53, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

"The cluster of mainland China (except Hubei province) still has a decreasing trend in CFR with an estimate of 0.15% (95% CI: 0.12–0.18%)"[13]. Just found this souce, it was in february. Iluvalar (talk) 01:43, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Seasonal flu does not overwhelm your healthcare system, and does not make it run out of ICU beds. Start paying attention, and look at Hubei and Italy. --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:43, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

I only see that Italy found a cold during a cold season as soon as they had the tests available. Italy didn't notice or cared about any surge of death before they had the tests. Which correspond exactly to what would happen if the virus was a seasonal cold. I see no exponential growth of death cases in Hubei, staying well under the normal mortality rate of the region. Also strongly indicating that the virus is not in it exponential growth phase and that the starting flow of cases was strictly caused by tests availability (just like everywhere else in the world). This reinforce the hypothesis (up to 99.5%) that the early detected cases in Wuhan were not the very first infected and that COVID-19 (being overall mild) had time to spread across the world. Chances are, it's already in peak strength across the globe. Iluvalar (talk) 18:00, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Why is Italy seeing healthcare capacity problems that it does not see in common cold? I quote: ' “It’s not a wave. It’s a tsunami,” said Dr. Roberto Rona, in charge of intensive care at the Monza hospital. “It’s something that makes you change completely how you run a hospital.” '[14]. You'll find plenty of such articles; are they unreliable? Do you believe that certain regions in Italy are not running out of ICU beds? Why did Chinese suddenly have to build additional hospitals real quick this year, but not during last year's common cold season? Do you believe that Italy normally run out of ICU beds during common colds epidemics? --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:34, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

At the peak of the flu season ? Yes. Iluvalar (talk) 23:13, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Global cases rate vs wuhan before lockdown

With the world having a higher average rate of active cases than Hubei the day before lockdown it is important to provide a reference metric against which to compare the need to declare a state of emergency to save lives. Please do not remove this statistic, rewrite if needed.Moneyball99 (talk) 22:54, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Originally a new section, converted to reply to the above section I removed an addition by @Moneyball99:. While objectively, this information could be useful somewhere in this article, it doesn't belong in the lead, whose purpose per MOS:LEDE is to summarize the article and not go into intricate details like this. In addition, citing another Wikipedia page is explicitly not permissible per WP:CIRCULAR. It is also arguably improper synthesis to compare numbers from different sources. @Goszei: might have additional thoughts.--Jasper Deng (talk) 22:55, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Which section should include it then?Moneyball99 (talk) 22:58, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

(Please indent your replies per WP:INDENT). @Moneyball99: Theoretically, the history section, but you have other issues to address first.--Jasper Deng (talk) 23:01, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Is there something else than WP:CIRCULAR? Moneyball99 (talk) 23:04, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

@Moneyball99: Did you address the concern of improper synthesis?--Jasper Deng (talk) 23:08, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

@Jasper Deng: From what I understand improper synthesis would be stating a conclusion (eg this is the most important) vs A is higher than B is NOT improper synthesis as it is a plain reading of the facts from sources. Rates such as comparing homicide rate between two cities would require different sources from each respective city as such could naively be construed as improper synthesis as would all Coronavirus data for a country and not from a supranational entity (eg WHO). Calculating the rate is support by the included source (Worldometer Coronavirus - cases per million) as such as is not covered by No original research and a calculated rate is a Routine calculations using just simple arithmetic. Also "SYNTH is not mere juxtaposition" Moneyball99 (talk) 23:39, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

@Moneyball99: This is not a mere juxtaposition. You are asserting that the virus is worse worldwide than in Hubei based on that metric. This can be very misleading (local densities vary; what counts as a case? This is not something like homicides that has an unequivocal global definition). CALC is not applicable since you clearly have no consensus that the calculation you did from the Hubei article is valid. Most importantly, no reliable sources make this comparison, so at best it's WP:UNDUE weight to include it.--Jasper Deng (talk) 23:45, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Fair enough, switched numbers to deaths rate per million following metric of Coronavirus meta analysis of citation (see edit) Moneyball99 (talk) 00:30, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, but I don't think this is enough to address the WP:NOR and WP:UNDUE concerns. For example, the two dates (March 17 and January 23) are picked from many other possibilities, so this is not a straightforward comparison. E.g. it ignores the important context that (to quote from 2020 Hubei lockdowns) "the [January 23] lockdown came two days before the Chinese New Year, the most important festival in the country, and traditionally the peak traveling season, when millions of Chinese travel across the country". In contrast, March 17 does not carry such special meaning and urgency across the compared region (rest of the world). Your addition is likely to promote (intentionally or not) the conclusion that the Chinese authorities acted more diligently than - on average - the rest of the world, based on cherry-picked data points. This is why we have policies like NOR and UNDUE. Regards, HaeB (talk) 03:01, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

@Jasper Deng: @HaeB: Please edit or mark (eg citation needed) next time instead of deleting. Not cherry picked, comparison made here "Spain and Madrid Spain has very similar numbers as France (1,200 cases vs. 1,400, and both have 30 deaths). That means the same rules are valid: Spain has probably upwards of 20k true cases already. In the Comunidad de Madrid region, with 600 official cases and 17 deaths, the true number of cases is likely between 10,000 and 60,000. If you read these data and tell yourself: “Impossible, this can’t be true”, just think this: With this number of cases, Wuhan was already in lockdown. With the number of cases we see today in countries like the US, Spain, France, Iran, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden or Switzerland, Wuhan was already in lockdown. And if you’re telling yourself: “Well, Hubei is just one region”, let me remind you that it has nearly 60 million people, bigger than Spain and about the size of France." ctiing data from Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention the was analyied in a published JAMA paper "Characteristics of and Important Lessons From the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Outbreak in China" here. . Not my research by the way. Facted check by professionals here and cited by the NYTimes . Can you please clarify NOR and UNDUE? Anymore citations needed? Moneyball99 (talk) 04:40, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

"Please edit or mark (eg citation needed) next time instead of deleting." - No, the burden is on the editor who wants to add the insufficiently sourced material, see WP:BURDEN. Especially in a very high profile article like this.

You have now reinserted your observation (in only somewhat different versions) four times within less than seven hours [15] [16] [17] [18] against three different editors who removed it. Please stop, read Wikipedia:Edit warring, and obtain consensus here on the talk page first before inserting it again.

I don't blame you for being of the opinion that the juxtaposition you found is interesting, or for wanting to bring it to the attention of many people. But Wikipedia is not the place for promoting such findings. That is basically the gist of NOR. To your question, you can find NOR and UNDUE explained at the links Jasper Deng gave above (WP:NOR and WP:UNDUE, respectively). If there is a suitable source that directly makes the comparison you want to add, that may solve the issue.

Regards, HaeB (talk) 05:37, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

@HaeB: Thank you for the quick response. 1. I read (WP:NOR and WP:UNDUE already before replying, I was asking how it specifically applied to this situation in this context. In other words why the editors interprets or believes the tag may apply for clarification? 2. I understood the purpose of wikipedia is to do live edits, I did not see your suggestion to fix in TALK as requirement is that an unwritten best practice? 3. WP:DONTREVERT "Do not revert an edit because that edit is unnecessary, i.e. the edit does not improve the article. For a reversion to be appropriate, the reverted edit must actually make the article worse. Wikipedia does not have a bias toward the status quo (except in cases of fully developed disputes, while they are being resolved). In fact, Wikipedia has a bias toward change, as a means of maximizing quality by maximizing participation." "While objectively, this information could be useful somewhere in this article" Jasper Deng 4. As the new sources show it is not my observation as that would be NOR. 5. Aren't edit wars when people revert changes the exact previous change or merely reword it? To the best of my understanding a good faith edit addressing the editors in a "bold, revert, discuss (BRD) cycle" would not be counted as that would it?. Moneyball99 (talk) 06:08, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

@Moneyball99: No, you cannot obtain consensus by repeatedly reinserting your material, even if you try to address concerns each time; doing otherwise is edit warring. Wikipedia is actually as much about discussion as it is about editing, for discussion and consensus is what's needed to resolve an editing dispute like this one. DONTREVERT is only an essay without the force of a policy or guideline, and in any case we would here argue that you made the article worse by inserting material not compliant with the verifiability policy. The burden is on you, as the content proponent, to show that your addition is compliant with Wikipedia policies, not on us to show that it isn't. In this case, you cannot insert information on a comparison of per-capita cases unless a reliable source explicitly makes that connection. Otherwise, that is WP:UNDUE weight, and original research.--Jasper Deng (talk) 06:36, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Moneyball99's addition looks like WP:OR to me too. Bondegezou (talk) 07:56, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

@HaeB: Sorry to ask again, did you read the sources carefully? Because this source made that comparison already and it received 501 public media citations and was reviewed by medical professionals. "you cannot insert information on a comparison of per-capita cases unless a reliable source explicitly makes that connection" So how is a source cited by the NYTimes and fact cheched by medical professionals like "Richard Hopkins, a retired epidemiologist" and "Richard J. Kuhn, editor in chief of the journal Virology and a professor of science at Purdue University" original research WP:NOR , what am I missing something here? I don't know how else to put this but as this is I assume a science based article, Wikipedia editors are not a realistic source of professional consensus. As such should editors like Bondegezou (Associate Professor in health informatics) and other editors with a statistical or medical research experience should be the ones commenting on this as this is a very complex topic. Moneyball99 (talk) 12:53, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

@Bondegezou: Thank you for getting involved, your health background should be very useful for this discussion. Could you carefully review the sources please, what am I missing? Awaiting your feedback, Moneyball99 (talk) 12:53, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

What you are missing is that your draft sentence is WP:SYNTH. It's not about whether the sources for your input data are OK. The problem is that you are drawing a novel conclusion. Find a reliable source (preferably meeting WP:MEDRS standards) that says the same thing and you can cite it. But you can't carry out original research. Bondegezou (talk) 13:46, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

You have 7 citations in your draft sentence. Can you give us a single citation for the whole point being made and maybe point out an appropriate quotation from that citation that matches your draft? Bondegezou (talk) 14:20, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

@Bondegezou: Thank you for the reply. I understand it is not about citing input data. My question is what wrong with the citation for the type of numbers and comparison datas used (eg death rate at lockdown) or the use of the dates by the source. When the source of this type of analysis was extensively cite by hundreds media sources of media source and fact checked (SEE ABOVE). As for WP:MEDRS logically purely statistical analysis done by the source (SEE ABOVE) with be enough given the fast paced current Coronavirus situation should not have the same type of evidentiary burden as testing of a medical product. When the "Cost of waiting 1 day equals increase in 40% of coronavirus cases" . In other words "Perfect is the enemy of good" for now, in the future we will have better information.

@Bondegezou: Thank you for the reply and the actionable insight. I create a second draft in stages to try address your concerns(see below). 1. The excessive number of citations was to satisfy the other editors concerns. 2. While the comparison is the same format and type a minimum of four new citations are needed for the numerator and denominator of new input calculation (1 Global deaths & 2 Pop, 3 Hubei deaths & 4 Pop) 3. As the statement about Spain is of little general utility for this article, I used the global rate instead using the same metric of the source like the common misnomer Global GDP. 4. I believe the fact checking article may be a good second source but at the cost increase the sources to six. 5. Are there any objections to the version for spain (see below) aside from relevance to a global article? Moneyball99 (talk) 15:57, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Medium fails WP:RS - see WP:RSP. You need a different source. That source seems to only talk about Madrid, so you can't use it talk about the global situation: your "Global generalized version" still appears to me to violate WP:SYNTH. Bondegezou (talk) 16:17, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

@Bondegezou: Thanks for the reply, I think something is getting lost in translation. Let's break this down step by step, are there any objections to the Version for Madrid? (aside from relevance to a global article) Moneyball99 (talk) 17:04, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

The objection to the version for Madrid is that your source is a Medium article and that doesn't meet WP:RS, as explained at WP:RSP. Bondegezou (talk) 17:24, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

@Bondegezou: You are right, I agree completely in part. About the Medium article in and of itself it should not be a source normally but in this situation it is extensive cited 501 times WP:GOOGLETEST by the media meeting the notability test and fact checked by medical experts meeting reliability test WP:RSP ("Richard Hopkins ... epidemiologist" and "Richard J. Kuhn, editor in chief of the journal Virology and a professor of science at Purdue University" ) not by itself but in aggregate. As a logical point simple analysis done of medical statistics relying on primary offical sources should not be held to an unnessesary high standard as this is not a test of a medical product that warrants double blind studies of effectiveness. Given the rapid pace of development of the Coronavirus situation I think the aphorism "Perfect is the enemy of good" should apply, as better sources of information will be available in the future but too late to be useful to the public. Is not the review by medical experts the approximately equivalent to be "peer review" like despite not being journal published research in this situation? (See changes "Version for Madrid" below) Moneyball99 (talk) 18:58, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

@Moneyball99: No, especially in a time like this we are not going to relax our verifiability standards, as it is more important than ever that readers not be misled. The point you keep not getting is that you cannot combine numbers from multiple sources to make a comparison, period. Find reliable sources that make the exact comparison you want to (Medium does not count, WP:SPS).--Jasper Deng (talk) 20:27, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

@Jasper Deng: Please do not mischaracterize my comment I did not suggest lowering the standards for verifiability. Medical sources are different and much higher standard for products than general sources because effect on health, medical statistics are different. Please show me your source for your opinion with the exact wording you used. "that you cannot combine numbers from multiple sources to make a comparison, period" because following the logic all tables from multiple sources on this page are SYNTH. Also it appears other editors User:Dan Polansky Julian agree with me that the Medium source should be included. Why do you think you know better than the medical experts that reviewed the Medium post and the New York Times? What sources do you have disprove them? Moneyball99 (talk) 21:43, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Sentence draft

As of 17 March, using deaths per million the number of global deaths (1.0 deaths/mil) per capita surpassed that of Wuhan, Hubei (0.3 deaths/mil) when the region was placed under lockdown on Jan 23 2020.

Sentence draft 2

Source

"Spain and Madrid Spain has very similar numbers as France (1,200 cases vs. 1,400, and both have 30 deaths). That means the same rules are valid: Spain has probably upwards of 20k true cases already. In the Comunidad de Madrid region, with 600 official cases and 17 deaths, the true number of cases is likely between 10,000 and 60,000. If you read these data and tell yourself: “Impossible, this can’t be true”, just think this: With this number of cases, Wuhan was already in lockdown. With the number of cases we see today in countries like the US, Spain, France, Iran, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden or Switzerland, Wuhan was already in lockdown. And if you’re telling yourself: “Well, Hubei is just one region”, let me remind you that it has nearly 60 million people, bigger than Spain and about the size of France."

Summarized

"In the Comunidad de Madrid region, with 600 official cases and 17 deaths"...[at that case number Jan 23 2020] "Wuhan was already in lockdown" ... [while] "Hubei is just one region"... [it has]"60 million people, bigger than Spain and about the size of France." (showing city/region/country comparison & per capita rate comparison)

Version for Madrid

As of 10 March, the Madrid region has more deaths per capita than Hubei did when the region was placed under lockdown on Jan 23 2020. Cited 501 times Fact checked

Global generalized version

As of 17 March, the number of global deaths per capita surpassed that of Wuhan, Hubei when the region was placed under lockdown on Jan 23 2020.

References

Why? The standard year range representation is preferable as "2019-20" unless the initial range of year transits to the next millennium, or century, it have to be written depends on the transit digits. The stable digits is unnecessary to write again. I rely with on "2019-20". You can see other Wikipedia articles that the title has been written as the same rule. The Supermind (talk) 11:34, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Death rate by age

The graph at this link appears to show that fatalities drop for age 90+. Is that correct, or is the graph actually showing fatalities by a percentage of the total affected population and the drop is because there are so few people at that age? If the latter, this seems confusing and misleading. Consider linking a corrected / clarified version of this in the Wikipedia article.

https://osf.io/fc8bj/?view_only=c2f00dfe3677493faa421fc2ea38e295 Scott McNay (talk) 02:36, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

There are less 90 year old. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:35, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

No, it's a graph per capita, the amount of 90+ shouldn't affect the graph. But COVID-19 tests are performed only if the doctor witness an acute and ABNORMAL breathing distress. It would explain why less 90+ yo patients get tested. Iluvalar (talk) 00:54, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Downsize the pictures

Okay, am I the only one that thinks this page seems to be almost sensory overload with pictures, graphs, and other visual distractions? I realize pictures are helpful, but there seems to be a few too many on this page. It seems like every section and subsection has its own photo of some kind. I suggest some of these photos be moved to a gallery section, near the bottom. It just seems overloaded with imagesMulstev (talk) 03:15, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Which one you thinking? We could make the gallery images smaller. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:34, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

I should not have used the word 'gallery' in my earlier comment. What I meant by that was to perhaps move some of the pictures that appear along the right hand of the screen and put them at the bottom of sections they appear in. For example, under the subsection 'China' in the 'Urban Response' section, there are two pictures and a video clip along the right hand side. Perhaps these images could be placed at the bottom of the 'China' subsection, centered. It may not help, but at least it could be attempted. To me, having images grouped at the bottom of sections and subsections would be cleaner, for lack of a better word. Initially what caught my eye was the group of charts and graphs at the very top, and then I saw how many images appeared along the right had side. Mulstev (talk) 00:31, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Plots with cases and death per capita for the most affected countries

(The following question is already posted in the talk page of 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic by country and territory Talk:2019–20 coronavirus pandemic by country and territory#Plots with cases and death per capita for the most affected countries. I post the question also here because I think it could also be relevant for this article.)

There are now very many countries affected. In most cases absolute numbers are used which neglects small countries. I adapted a Python script to be able to make plots with cases and death per capita automatically for the most affected countries: https://github.com/RainerWinkler/COVID-19-plot. I Uploaded the plots for the current top 10 countries.

Top 10 Countries Cases

Top 10 Countries Deaths

There are six more plots on above link till rank 40 currently. It is easy to see which small countries are now also affected. The plots are easy to be adapted and can be generated by all users. The data is from the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control. Will such plots be helpful here? Malanoqa (talk) 12:09, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Well one would be good. Also it would be nice to get that info into the main chart.--Calthinus (talk) 17:25, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

yes agree w/ Calthinus--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 19:07, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Combating U.S.-centric bias

Trimming section on United States

The section on the United States' response is too long relative to the severity of the outbreak in the USA. I think this reflects an inappropriate U.S.-centric perspective that we ought to combat. Can we trim it down, moving excess detail to the U.S. outbreak article? Sdkb (talk) 19:44, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

probably is a bit too long at this point--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 21:31, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

totally agree it's too long. i tried rewritting it a bit so it would be less wordy

"The United States reported its first case of COVID-19 on 20 January, 2020. By March 12, diagnosed cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. exceeded 1,000. The number of cases exceeded 2,000 by March 14; 4,000 by March 16 and 8,000 by March 18. In response, the Trump administration limited travel to and from China and Europe. Many American sports leagues and organizations, such as the NHL, NBA, and MLB have postponed events. As of 18 March 2020, the epidemic was reported to be present in all states, plus the District of Columbia. The number of confirmed cases in the U.S. rose to 8,019, with 124 deaths. A national emergency was declared on 13 March to deal with the outbreak, and individual states have closed schools and restaurants in order to slow the spread of the disease.

The White House has been criticised for downplaying the threat, and controlling the messaging by directing health officials and scientists to coordinate public statements and publications related to the virus with the office of Vice President Mike Pence. On 4 March, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of the United States deleted the running tally of the number of people tested for the coronavirus across the US from its website. Concerns has risen that the deletion, as well as the previous May 2018 dissolving of the National Security Council directorate for global health security and biodefense, could possibly limit the country's response to the epidemic." Of course we have to put the citations and stuff but MadameButterflyKnife yeah sure.talk 00:29, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Removing U.S. from list of countries with major outbreaks in lead

Someone added the U.S. back to the list of countries in the lead with "major outbreaks", but due to extremely poor edit summary usage, I don't know who they are. I don't think it makes sense to list the U.S. but not e.g. Australia/Malaysia/Japan, so I'm going to take it out again and add a hidden text warning. I think this reflects an inappropriate U.S.-centric perspective that we ought to combat. Sdkb (talk) 20:40, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

No, someone did not "add the U.S. back to the list of countries in the lead with major outbreaks". The USA were included as part of the countries with major outbreaks before your edits, so you are the one deleting the USA without consensus in the talk page. There are over 8,000 cases in the USA, almost as many cases as there are in South Korea, a country labeled as a major outbtreak. And your analogy with Japan makes no sense. In New York city alone (not the state but the city specifically), there are 1,300 cases. In Japan as a whole there are less than 1,000 cases. No single Japanese city has over 1.000 cases. Please, stop deleting the USA without consensus. James343e (talk) 10:10, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

The United States was only added about two days ago (sorry, I'm not able to find the diff, again because of bad edit summary usage/the sheer quantity of edits), so the WP:STATUSQUO is for it to not be present in the lead. I'll revert to that while this discussion plays out. Japan was a bad example for me to choose, but the overall point stands that, when looking at the severity of the outbreak in different parts of the world, there's nothing currently to make the U.S. stand out. Sdkb (talk) 20:29, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

The WP:STATUSQUO was including the USA as one of the countries with major outbreaks before @User:Sdkb edited it. If it was before he edited it, it was the status quo. "when looking at the severity of the outbreak in different parts of the world, there's nothing currently to make the U.S. stand out." There are over 2,500 cases in New York (state), over 1,300 cases in New York City and over 1,000 in Washington, it is already uncontrolled in the country. There are also 8,990 confirmed cases in the USA, more than in South Korea, a country listed as major outbreak. James343e (talk) 10:10, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

It looks like the U.S. was perhaps added here. James343e, I ask that you please self-revert to respect WP:STATUSQUO. You are welcome to continue believing and arguing that the U.S. should be added, but a presence of 48hrs is not close to long enough for the text to acquire status quo status. Sdkb (talk) 22:02, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Dear Sdkb, i find it slightly inapproppriate that you avoid discussing the topic at hand. 2 arguments I gave:

1. There are over 2,500 cases in New York (state), over 1,300 cases in New York City and over 1,000 in Washington, it is already uncontrolled in the country. At this point, it looks like denialism to deny that there is an uncontrolled pandemic in the country.

2. There are over 9,000 confirmed cases in the USA, more than in South Korea, a country listed as major outbreak. Therefore, it makes no sense to include South Korea, but not the USA. It would be following a double standard.

Please, do reply to those arguments, instead of avoiding the topic. The WP:STATUSQUO is valid after 24 hours without revert. Your specfic edit (deleting the USA) has lasted less than 24 hours and so it cannot count as status quo.James343e (talk) 10:10, 18 March 2020 (UTC).

There is no such thing as a 24hr rule for WP:STATUSQUO, and I think any reasonable interpretation of the policy would require text to be present for significantly longer than that before becoming the status quo. I have no interest in debating settled policy here. I ask that an uninvolved editor please enforce it by reverting James343e's edit and then collapse the off-topic portion of this thread so that we can return to the actual question at hand. Sdkb (talk) 22:26, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

You did it again. You ignored my 2 arguments. These are my 2 arguments:

1. There are over 2,500 cases in New York (state), over 1,300 cases in New York City and over 1,000 in Washington, it is already uncontrolled in the country. At this point, it looks like denialism to deny that there is an uncontrolled pandemic in the country.

2. There are over 9,000 confirmed cases in the USA, more than in South Korea, a country listed as major outbreak. Therefore, it makes no sense to include South Korea, but not the USA. It would be following a double standard.

Please do reply to those 2 arguments. The talk page is to discuss about the topic at hand, not to avoid the discussion, as you are strategically doing by ignoring my 2 arguments. By the way, there is no such thing as "an edition needs to last 48 hours to be status quo", especially in constantly changing articles about an ongoing event like this.James343e (talk) 10:10, 18 March 2020 (UTC).

I noted in my edit summary for the previous message that I was replying to policy and would reply to your arguments in a minute. I've now done so below (slight delay from the edit conflicts), but you evidently could not wait that long before accusing me of avoiding your points. (Side note: it appears the timestamps on your signatures are inaccurate. If you are copying your earlier signatures, you may want to use tildes instead.) Sdkb (talk) 22:36, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

@James343e: I noted above that Japan was a bad example for me to choose, but the overall point stands that, when looking at the severity of the outbreak in different parts of the world, there's nothing currently to make the U.S. stand out. You asked me to reply specifically to your points about the counts in some U.S. cities and about the comparison to South Korea. Regarding the former, those numbers don't mean much unless they are put in comparison with other global cities, many of which also have similar counts. Regarding the latter, the U.S. is a much bigger country than South Korea, so having only a slightly higher count is not very persuasive. Cheers, Sdkb (talk) 22:36, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

@Sdkb: OK, let us compare with other global cities. Please do tell me the name of one single city in the world (only one), that has over 1,500 coronavirus cases, and is from a country which is not included as having a "major outbreak" in the lead paragraph. You won't find it. That is the reason why NY city having over 1,500 cases proves there is an already uncontrolled pandemic in the USA.

Another proof: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

The USA is the 4th country in the world with most new COVID-19 cases the last 24 hours. Will you keep the denialism? James343e (talk) 23:10, 18 March 2020 (UTC).

I wasn't able to find a list of global cities by coronavirus cases. Can you give me your source for your assertion that NYC has the highest count? Regarding the worldometers list, it also shows that countries like Israel and Singapore have nearly twice the per capita case count as the U.S. I'm perfectly open to adding the U.S. if there is evidence that the severity of the outbreak has reached a comparable level to the countries/regions already listed (remember that we're here to build an encyclopedia, not win battles; there's no shame in conceding). However, I have not seen such evidence yet, and the WP:BURDEN is on you to provide it. Sdkb (talk) 23:32, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

@Sdkb:Well, arguably you have the WP:BURDEN to demonstrate your thesis, as you deleted an already existing USA mention as major outbreak that had lasted more than 24 hours in a constantly changing article of an ongoing event.

I send you a link that indicates the number of daily cases detected. Here you have the link: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

If you carefully read the link, you will see that the USA is the 4th country with most daily new cases in the world. How is that not a major outbreak in the USA? So only 3 countries in the world have a major outbreak?

In addition to that, there are over 1,500 cases in New York City, and no other city in the world has so many cases and is part of a country not included in the lead section of major outbreaks. I don't need to send you a list of other cities, it is common sense. In Japan as a whole there are less than 1,000 cases, and other cities with more cases are alreayd included with the mention of Europe. In the next 24 hours, NY could be in quarantine according to local news.

What is your criterion to add the USA? Do you need 1 million cases? Not even China needed 1 million cases to be included as a major outbreak. The USA has now more cases than both South Korea and France, both of which are listed as having a major outbreak (France is in nationwide quarantine as decreted by their first minister Macron). James343e (talk) 02:10, 18 March 2020 (UTC).

@User:Sdkb: I accidentally reverted the message you added when making other lead changes; I have reverted my mistake. I don't seek to make an argument in either direction on this topic. — Goszei (talk) 20:03, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

There is no country with major outbreak. We are all human beings. The virus doesn't care if you are democrats, republican or jew. The gray countries in Africa on the map doesn't mean the virus go around their frontiers, it's just a sign of their health system capacity. The "curve" may be flatten or not in some countries, but unless some evil genius start thinning the population with flamethrowers, the virus WILL propagate internationally until it's own wake of infected people slow the propagation down on it tracks. 5% to 25% of the world population I would guesstimate... I agree with Sdkb, the article is a bit too much US centric. Iluvalar (talk) 20:53, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

We are required to deal with facts from reliable sources here. America is having a major outbreak by any metric. It's going to get worse, especially when compared to those nations which took timely and effective action. The virus doesn't read Wikipedia, and there is no way anything we write or do or write here can affect the spread.

With one exception. By providing a timely, accurate, and NPOV resource for those looking for information, we can help people take effective action.

As for US-centric, remember that this is the English-language Wikipedia, and we may reasonably expect that our readers come from the English-speaking world, of which [is the largest single nation]. We are going to have more Americans reading our article than (say) Chinese, Koreans, or Italians. --Pete (talk) 23:08, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

The USA just passed S. Korea by number of cases. So I think it is reasonable to keep it. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:08, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

It appears that the whole sentence concerning countries affected by major outbreaks was removed at some point, should it be restored? — Goszei (talk) 22:34, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 18 March 2020

203.35.135.168 (talk) 23:57, 18 March 2020 (UTC) Australia has announced global travel ban.

 Not done for now: Do you have a source for this? We need a reliable source before we can put it in. MadameButterflyKnife yeah sure.talk 00:10, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Add new Field Death by country

Can someone update the table with *Death Rate By Country* as I tried showing in the picture? I am not good in updating the Wikipedia table and moreover I think I can not update this article. I think it will help to compare the healthcare system by country in this crisis. DeathRate = (Deaths / Reported cases) * 100

will look--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:56, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Listing by cases vs listing be severity/death?

I propose that the table be replaced/reordered with one that is based on deaths or severity of cases. Identifying a large number of cases is fine if they're all low-level and/or cured. The problem comes when there are many severe cases and deaths. Tsukide (talk) 02:36, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

The deaths are fairly delayed (about 10 days) from the diagnosis. So IMO diagnosis should come first. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:02, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Impact

• 49 countries with 100+ cases. In most countries it took 20 days to reach 100
• 16 countries with 1000+ cases. From 100 to 1000 it took 9 days in most countries
• 4 countries with 10000+ cases. From 1000 to 10000 it took 9 days in most countries

Most affected countries - Top 20

Most affected countries - Next 20

I would say add to a different page like this one 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic by country and territory Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:21, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

References

 Note: Since this may require a discussion on which page this should go I'm going to deactivate this request for now to help keep the semi-protection edit request backlog down. Once it is determined which page this edit should be implemented on please reactivate this request. Alucard 16_{❯❯❯ chat?} 09:21, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Rankings and active cases and percentages

Can we edit the list of countries affected, by adding in rankings, to check if a country has slowed down or increased exponentially? It's a bit hard to count.

Also, it would help if there was another column for active cases, so we can list them by total infected, active cases, number of deaths, or per 10 million capita.

180.129.74.216 (talk) 04:10, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

More columns will make it wider. We should try to keep it narrow so it works on mobile better. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:23, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

I fully agree with adding active cases to the page. This is the more important number than cases. China is a save country now! Since there is great reluctance to include active cases in the present table, just make a second table for the sake of humanity. In the second table you have three columns: Active cases, percentages with respect to previous day, new cases. Active cases are simply calculated from confirmed cases minus recovered minus deaths. Robads (talk) 18:02, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Completely agree. The number of active cases has become far more relevant to the current situation than the number of overall cases Romdwolf (talk) 18:10, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Lead paragraph structure

@User:Doc James: as far as the first paragraph goes, I think there need to be some sort of clause placed in between the info that "the first case was identified in December" and "the WHO declared a pandemic in March". That's a pretty enormous step-up in magnitude.

My suggestion: First identified by health authorities in Wuhan, Hubei, China, in December 2019, the outbreak spread to over 100 countries before being recognised as a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) on 11 March 2020., or some variation on this.

Something to watch in any case is grammar (your revision says The first case was identified ... and later recognized as a pandemic ... .; the 'first case' was not recognized as a pandemic, the 'outbreak' was recognized as a pandemic). — Goszei (talk) 04:25, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

The lead is just an overview. We do not need spread to over 100 countries listed in their. That can go in the body of the text. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:27, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

@User:Doc James:Fair enough, but I think there should be 'some' kind of cue to the reader that 4 months of international spread occurred in between the first case and the pandemic recognition. I find it a bit jarring to read as it is right now. I like the "100 countries" bit, because it is specific and is called upon in the next sentence mentioning "170 countries". Maybe something like "spread worldwide" or "spread outside of China" could also work. Any suggestions? — Goszei (talk) 04:31, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Note: for now, I have fixed the grammar that I mentioned and reduced it to the outbreak was later recognized as a pandemic. — Goszei (talk) 04:37, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

"by health authorities" is not need. We can simple say "First identified". I think it is better to keep sentences shorter to make them easier to understand for those who might read English as a second language. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:41, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

I am also interested in making the article as easy to read as possible, but I think that particular bit of context is important (explaining the conditions leading up to a pandemic declaration). — Goszei (talk) 05:01, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Juxtaposing it, seems like an effort to criticize the WHO for their delay in calling this a pandemic though. I am not sure if that is what was meant. But we would need a good source for that. In my opinion the criticism of their timing of calling it pandemic belongs in the body of the text if sources exits. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:04, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Leading scientists report that the coronavirus pandemic is probably linked to environmental destruction like climate change and deforestation

I think it is necessary to include it here for preventing other pandemics. For example:

first source.

second source

third source

What do you think?

--Alexander Sauda/אלכסנדר סעודה (talk) 08:00, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

We had some text along these lines some weeks back, but it disappeared at some point. Bondegezou (talk) 08:03, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Any article that has a question mark in the title can generally be given a "no" answer (because it's speculation), and the Express should not be used (it's a tabloid). Hzh (talk) 08:18, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

As far as "I think it is necessary to include it here for preventing other pandemics" goes, see Wikipedia:Purpose. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 10:31, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Requested move 19 March 2020

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Not moved per WP:SNOW. Timrollpickering (Talk) 19:16, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

---

2019–20 coronavirus pandemic → 2019–2020 coronavirus pandemic – Per consensus here, four digits are overall preferable to only two digits for years. SNUGGUMS (talk / edits) 21:57, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

This is a contested technical request. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 10:43, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

• @SNUGGUMS and Ravenpuff: queried move request Anthony Appleyard (talk) 10:44, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

  The closing note also states exceptions can, and do apply, and I don't think this would be "uncontroversial". Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 08:13, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

  (edit conflict) This is probably the most prominent article on enwiki at present, so any change to the title should not, by any stretch of imagination, be considered uncontroversial. Any discussion must take place on the talk page. Furthermore, we would also have to move the dozens of associated articles (e.g. timelines, impacts, locations) that use "2019–20" to the new syntax. I also note that there are currently no articles that begin with "2019–2020", but hundreds that begin with "2019–20". Ambiguity is hardly a problem in this case. — RAVENPVFF · talk · 08:16, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose because it would be a waste of time for whoever would get stuck moving these. Per the manual of style, the current title is allowed and has led to absolutely no confusion whatsoever. It isn't worth the effort of adding two more digits to dozens of page titles when there isn't a serious issue with them. Noah^Talk 11:17, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose and speedy close. Consecutive years are not generally included in the four-digit rule and precedent shows that this applies even when it's not a sports season. e.g. 2019–20 Hong Kong protests, 2018–19 Gaza border protests, 1991–92 Georgian coup d'état etc. We really need a moratorium on RMs for this page too, it's just getting ridiculous that we have to go through this every day or two.  — Amakuru (talk) 11:25, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

•  Oppose Do not move, no need for that! --Aliwal2012 (talk) 11:24, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose. It would be more difficult to change something that doesn't need to be changed. The title is already clear to most. MJVAccount (talk) 11:46, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose. Move fatigue. Move should be proposed for something significant, this is inconsequential since the closure acknowledged that exceptions are allowed, and there is no indication that this would be confusing in any way. Hzh (talk) 13:38, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
• I removed the notice per #Proposal: Move moratorium above. —St.nerol (talk) 11:49, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

I would support the similar proposal of moving to "2020 coronavirus pandemic". But it seems wise to keep it to an informal discussion right now. -St.nerol (talk) 11:51, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

• Comment in retrospect I should've realized this wouldn't be a simple non-contentious move (it didn't seem as controversial as whether to call it "pandemic" or "epidemic" as an example). However, I'd like to clarify that the suggestion isn't so much based on ambiguity concerns as it is how two digits look incomplete and informal compared to four digits. Since this site is supposed to take a professional tone, it seemed more encyclopedic to go with a more formal style that isn't abridged. If people really don't like that idea, then I'd be fine with just using 2020 given the virus's overall prominence during this calendar year, which is far bigger than anything it did in 2019. SNUGGUMS (talk / edits) 13:33, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose move requests on current event articles in general. We should expect to see one of these pop up every few days, and it doesn't really matter, because once the dust settles we'll actually decide on the proper name. That's how it always goes. GMG^talk 13:55, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
•  Oppose There are already many articles following this format, particularly for this topic. Perhaps once this has been dealt with we can get a bot to go through all the titles and change "20" → "2020". --Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝) 16:14, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
• ‘’’strongly support’’’ as an incremental name change to a more normal name, do you guys not remember that consensus can change? —Almaty (talk) 16:32, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
• Move to Coronavirus pandemic the date doesn't appear to be needed so why not just move it to the simpler title for the same reason as Manchester Arena bombing. Crouch, Swale (talk) 17:50, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose per Amakuru: The closure statement of the discussion that was referenced to justify this RM proposal says it is not needed. It describes this case in the exceptions, saying "consecutive years use the two-year date range convention without problems [and] can continue to do so." —BarrelProof (talk) 18:28, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose: stylistic tinkering really isn't a priority right now, the current title is permitted even if mildly disfavoured, and I don't see much added value from this. —Nizolan ^{(talk · c.)} 18:29, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose the proposed move per Ravenpuff. Crouch, Swale (talk) 18:42, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

---

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

No confirmed cases

Nothing was said about any recoveries in Poland yet and the Minister of Health didn’t say that there was a recovery in Poland or nobody yet knows about that. Hi poland (talk) 10:54, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Hi poland, your discussion title is a little misleading. Do you mean that out of all confirmed cases, none of them have been reported to have recovered and the article says that there are some who have recovered? Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝) 16:09, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Tenryuu in Poland we have only 1 confirmed recovered patient [19] - Polish Press Agency, [20] - Polish Public (goverment) TV, the data from https://www.worldometers.info/ are not accurated, there are wrong Natanieluz (talk) 16:20, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Natanieluz, maybe the Google translation software isn't up to snuff, but nothing in either article you provided claims that Patient Zero is the only one who recovered; furthermore, those articles were written on the 17th, two days ago, so the situation could have changed significantly by then. I've checked a stats page on Poland and the number of positive cases matches the one on Worldometers, and both were updated today on March 19th. --Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝) 16:44, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Tenryuu yea, I see your point but Iam watching every day MOH press conferences on TV, maybe you want to look at that- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_Poland#Recovered_people. Natanieluz (talk) 16:51, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Natanieluz, I am not the best person to ask to watch MOH press conferences as I do not speak or understand Polish.

Following that discussion it unfortunately depends on what external sources say. Unless there's a reason to doubt the MoH and KPRM IT that's reported in another reputable source like Boud supposes, it's more than likely that we'll stay with those sources. (Trust me, I feel your pain every time I see South China Morning Post used as a source.)

If you have reputable sources that state that the number of reported cases recovered is inaccurate, please include them, but make sure it's mentioned in the text of the article. Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝) 17:54, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Trying to find best definition of the outbreak

I have tried write the pandemic as viral, but it can't save it. The first introductory writing is rapidly changes. However it is unstoppable. Users must write fixed type of introductory statement about the subject. The Supermind (talk) 11:17, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Sub-section on Spain required

Spain now has over 800 dead and the highest level of increase in death toll after Italy with 209 dead in one day.Php2000 (talk) 15:36, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

 Doneyes it should have a sub section--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 17:46, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Celebrity deaths caused by COVID-19

Resolved

Is there already an section with prominent deaths caused by COVID-19? For example:

Celebrity deaths

February 2020

• Li Wenliang († February 7, 2020 in Wuhan, 33 years old), Chinese doctor
• ...

March 2020

• Vittorio Gregotti († March 15, 2020 in Milan, 92 years), Italian architect
• Nicolas Alfonsi († March 16, 2020 in Ajaccio, Corsica, 83 years old), French lawyer and politician
• ...

Or should a list be created for this? Triplec85 (talk) 16:25, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

See Deaths from the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic. Paintspot Infez (talk) 17:01, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Italy (update)

Italy just officially announced that it has more deaths than China reported. The main table should reflect this too. 2A02:8388:1641:8380:3AD5:47FF:FE18:CC7F (talk) 17:42, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

in what way (other than numerically) should it reflect this?--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 19:19, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Best reliable source for data on cases, deaths and recoveries???

Which source should be used for the lede? All have different amounts, but the WHO site has wildly differing case and death totals. Expert opinion is required. https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6 ?

https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/685d0ace521648f8a5beeeee1b9125cd ?

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ ? MattSucci (talk) 18:16, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

What did they know and when did they know it?

I heard on a radio newscast that the Trump administration knew last year they were unprepared for such an event and did nothing. Once a source is found for this statement that we can use, how does this go into the article?— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 19:14, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

@Vchimpanzee: Can we start with the source and see where that takes us? - MrX 🖋 20:24, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

This is the source, approximately 15 minutes from now, assuming the same story is repeated. I figured others would be able to find the same story elsewhere.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 20:45, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Less detail this time, but NPR was mentioned, so I'll check for the story there. I couldn't quite tell whether the current pandemic was already under way for the even in the NPR story.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 21:05, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

This is a different story from after the pandemic began.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 21:09, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 19 March 2020

Change 2,157 to 2.013 Cases for Austria in the table 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic by country and territory. https://www.sozialministerium.at/Informationen-zum-Coronavirus/Neuartiges-Coronavirus-(2019-nCov).html Andus99 (talk) 19:44, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

 Done - Thank you - MrX 🖋 20:22, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Problem with File:FlattenTheCurveCDC.gif

In the section 2019–20_coronavirus_pandemic#Outbreak is File:FlattenTheCurveCDC.gif.

"Figure 1. Goals of community mitigation for pandemic influenza

This figure is taken from https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/rr/rr6601a1.htm, where it is titled "Figure 1. Goals of community mitigation for pandemic influenza"

The problem with this figure is that it illustrates the result of changing multiple variables, in particular "Reduce number of overall cases" as well as delay the timecourse.

In the source, it is not an introductory figure, but a late discussion illustration of the late discussion of the paper. On this page, a more introductory figure is needed. I suggest a figure that changes only one variable, the timecourse. For a first introduction to the concept, the two curves should have the same area under the curve, the number of cases should be the same in the two scenarios. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:23, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

There is nothing wrong with the figure. It sounds like you misread the source. The Figure 1 illustrate the Purpose section in the source after the introduction, it is not about any late discussion, it in fact illustrates an early part of the source and it is the introductory figure. Some publications simply put the figures, tables and notes at the end. I suspect you are misled by the silly figure given in the Coronavirus disease 2019#Prevention, which should not have been used, and I have raised objection to that figure before. Hzh (talk) 23:55, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 20 March 2020

Spain has a . in their number instead of comma in the confirmed cases. Skagraw (talk) 00:10, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

I am pretty sure that the 2019-20 coronavirus pandemic article is written in British English. The numbering convention in British English is to use commas for their number separators instead of full stops. If this article was in the Spanish version of Wikipedia, where it is primarily written in Spanish, then it would be appropriate to use full stops for their number separators. Qwertyxp2000 (talk | contribs) 01:38, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

Map now a mess!

The per capita map has adopted a new level: 1-10/100 million. Unfortunately the colour chosen (cream) wipes out national boundaries, making it impossible to know where one country begins and another ends. This is especially seen in Africa. Please choose a colour which is different from the border colour - or else, choose a different colour for borders! One not in the black/red/cream/white spectrum! Ptilinopus (talk) 00:20, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

Change short description?

Shouldn't the short description for the article be "Pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019-2020" instead of "Pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019"? Since the pandemic spans across 2019 and 2020, it makes good sense to mention both of these years in the short description. Qwertyxp2000 (talk | contribs) 01:40, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

Qwertyxp2000, it refers to Coronavirus disease 2019. – Muboshgu (talk) 01:50, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

Ah, I see. I hadn't noticed that "coronavirus disease 2019" is just the name of the whole specific coronavirus type. Qwertyxp2000 (talk | contribs) 01:51, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

Static link in from Central Notice

Please note, there is a static URL link to this page from a Central Notice (meta:MediaWiki:Centralnotice-Programmatic translations 2020-covid-article-link) please do not move the page without consideration for this. — xaosflux ^Talk 02:46, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

List of ongoing and previous quarantines should be added to this page

I've improved this template a bit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:2020_coronavirus_quarantines

But there's still a lot of misssing information and needed improvements.

This is very important information which is currently split under multiple articles and should be consolidated somewhere.

It would be great if the template could be improved and added on this page. 200.138.199.161 (talk) 03:29, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 20 March 2020

Change ">1 cases per 1,000 inhabitants" in the world map key to "<1." 108.16.214.102 (talk) 03:31, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

Dataset for South Korea, versus China

Slight data anomality? Confusing a bit.

Look at China versus South Korea.

Right now we have:

China (mainland) 80,967 infected, 71,150 recovered. I will ignore the dead folks for the moment.

Now: South Korea has 8,652 infected, and 2,233 recovered.

I understand that China was initially the country to be hit first, but from there it spread to other countries, including South Korea.

So it's almost 3 months now past that ... isn't it strange then that China has almost all of these already recovered (excluding those who died), but South Korea has only 2233 recovered, and 6400 still not recovered?

I think this can probably be best explained that not many folks here on wikipedia seem to update this information - so if there is anyone from south korea or perhaps asia, and can explain this, it may be interesting to see why the dataset is quite dissimilar so far. At the least I think it appears that way. 2A02:8388:1641:8380:3AD5:47FF:FE18:CC7F (talk) 03:41, 20 March 2020 (UTC)