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)

"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.)

Potential changes to the maps

Cases or Deaths?

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

File:March14 cases per-capita-COVID-19.png

The second map in the infobox, showing cases 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)

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 !

Per capita data vs. totals by country

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)

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)

Data sources for maps

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)

Cumulative cases vs peak active cases

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)

Stop removing the map without consensus

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.

---

Please stop removing the map without having consensus on the talk page. As you can see, one editor has voiced their desire to remove the map and replace it with a simple aggregate map of all cases (Almaty) and a second who has not contributed on the talk page here (Goszei) would like the same outcome. Everyone else (Dan Polansky,  Ohc , Voorlandt, Roman, Sdkb and myself) has opposed this. That means there is not consensus for removing it so please use the talk page to discuss any issues and don't just remove the map. Thank you.Monopoly31121993(2) (talk) 10:25, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

I've never removed it, only tagged with a disputed tag, once. And that is fair enough --Almaty (talk) 10:30, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

But whilst it is still under dispute, and has been removed 3x in 24 hours once by MediaWiki, the disputed tag should remain. --Almaty (talk)

Disputed tag back. I would respectfully ask that you dont remove that without consensus. --Almaty (talk) 10:38, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

Can someone point me to the policy where disputed tags are somehow allowed to be removed these days without consensus? Back when i edited a lot circa 2006 that was not the case. --Almaty (talk) 10:59, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

I think, with an article as prominent as this, the WP:BURDEN shifts a little. Placing a tag is normally used to draw attention to an issue that might not otherwise get noticed, whereas there's no question everyone is paying attention here, and there's a downside to adding tags in that they clutter up the page (especially in an infobox). And from a brief skim of the convo above, I'm not sure I'm seeing consensus that the tag should be added from editors other than yourself. It looks like the per capita map was removed somewhere in the blizzard of edit history on this page (please use edit summaries, folks, c'mon!), so I'm going to restore the map as the WP:STATUSQUO while this discussion plays out. Sdkb (talk) 17:35, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

Given the amount of edits that are being made without edit summaries, the ability to use the tag is necessary —49.195.179.13 (talk) 05:28, 16 March 2020 (UTC) Where are we at with this now? The article needs the per capita map. Regardless of how accurate we judge the figures to be, there's no reason the per capita map would be less useful than the total cases map. But the caption should specify clearly that it's confirmed cases per capita, not an estimate of the actual numbers. GeoEvan (talk) 05:30, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

This is insanity. Please CTRL+F my username on this page and read my objection to the map on the grounds that China is colored 2 orders of magnitudes off (this is not a minor flaw). Also, plese read the talk page for the file on Commons, where I point out the same issue. — Goszei (talk)

We need to remove the one per capita map that is inaccurate, not because it is per capita, but because the coloring was done wrong, and so far as that, I agree with Goszei. But we need a correct per capita map. --Dan Polansky (talk) 06:59, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

I am in favour of removing the map again, since the restorers (a.o. Monopoly31121993 and Sdkb) have in the past couple of days not given any argument with respect to the contents of the discussion that I am aware of; their arguments seem rather formal and on the line of: there is no consensus, therefore you may not remove the map. This argument could easily be used the other way around, by the way. I am in doubt about their underlying motivations since, well, I can see no discussion by them of the contents and arguments to the contra. As long as the quality of the map is not up to standard, it deserves to be and stay removed, or at the very least, tagged. As the map is now, it is of the same value as a statement that 1 is bigger than 0, and we all knew that already.Redav (talk) 11:12, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Just to be clear: I would agree with including an accurate up-to-date map showing cases (of a well-defined(!) kind) per capita, since that would indeed give valuable information. According to me, that would mean: both lower and upper limits for the colouring, correct calculations that are not off by (more than) an order of magnitude, and - of course - correct colouring. Unfortunately, the per-capita map(s) that I found in the past couple of days did not meet those criteria. Unfortunately too, I lack any experience in creating digital maps with division(i.e. country, province)-wise colouring.Redav (talk) 11:33, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

I have published script to calculate per capita figures from Wikipedia pages (List of countries and dependencies by population and Template:2019–20 coronavirus pandemic data), in User talk:Dan Polansky#Covid cases per capita. What I do not have yet is the creation of the SVG and I am tired. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:47, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

This looks interesting news to me, even if I do not know how to run a script. I can now better understand why one would like to have the list with the COVID-19 numbers correspond to the list of divisions (i.e. countries, dependencies, etc.). A problem I can see with this is that not always the sources of numbers (e.g. public health authorities) operate according to the list of divisions. E.g. the "Netherlands" in the list of divisions does not seem to correspond to (the country of) the Netherlands - for which the public health authority RIVM collects and publishes numbers - but to the Kingdom of the Netherlands, which includes three more countries, namely Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten, each with their own public health authority. A similar issue may hold for other divisions such as Guernsey and Jersey with respect to the United Kingdom. It might, however, in some sense be a minor issue. I will try and indicate in the list of divisions that the Kingdom (rather than the country) of the Netherlands is meant there. As soon as the list of COVID-19 pandemic data is fully organized in the same way, meaning that somehow the data are presented in there according to the same divisions, the outcome in a map created along these lines may actually be very helpful. I am not sure how the instances of non-correspondence of areas of control for public health authorities / sources that publish number data are going to be resolved, though. Furthermore I would welcome a clear indication of whether the number of cases corresponds to all current or the aggregate of all past and current cases.Redav (talk) 12:59, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Dan Polansky, how about using the list in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_(United_Nations) lather than the list in List of countries and dependencies by population? At least the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Netherlands are treated separately there!Redav (talk) 13:12, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Am I the only one not to see it? What consensus is there against the per capita map? Flawed though the latter map may be, it's infinitely less misleading than the current map in which the geographically expansive countries such as China and Iran are covered in dark red based on absolute figures, thus dramatically and misleadingly amplifying the infection rates of these countries. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 13:56, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

To me, accurate absolute numbers per country of a well-defined quantity and indicated according to a legend with both lower and upper boundaries per colour, are not misleading, although extra information would certainly be provided by an accurate map for a well-defined (relevant) quantity according to a legend with both lower and upper boundaries per colour. (I do seem to get little or no response on the issue of intervals with limits at both ends. I wonder why, since I think this is an essential point in the misleadingness discussion.)Redav (talk) 16:28, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

@Redav: Given how sprawling this page is, I can understand that you may have missed some of my comments. My motivations for reverting were policy-based (which becomes important on a page as huge as this), but I also do think it's important to have a per-capita map for the reasons I explained in the per-capita vs. totals section above, as well as on the commons file page for the per capita map. Sdkb (talk) 20:02, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

@Sdkb: (Thanks for showing me how to address someone more directly.) O yes, I may have missed things, but I never disagreed with having a cases per capita map in principle, as long as what is presented is a) well-defined, b) meaningful [with e.g. lower and upper limits to intervals, otherwise the open intervals may overlap (and will certainly do so as soon as there are more than two) and anyone could with whatever intentions choose colours to their liking; in that respect I cannot say I am completely at ease with certain developments regarding this map], c) accurate, and d) verifiable / falsifiable. I am afraid the current map still does not meet all these criteria, which I consider essential and critical if we are going to share information (rather than something else). I am afraid I cannot find a lot of addressing these issues by those who seem to wish to retain a cases per capita map, even if it is arguably off.Redav (talk) 01:09, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

I found the mistake!!! Turns out with so many shades of red you can really end up scratching your head for a while until to you see that somehow I forgot to use #c80200 so everything is one order of magnitude off. Please note the following: 1) The map is intended to reflect active cases (so yes, 8 in 1,000,000 in China is correct), 2) I have removed the old map from the map, 3) I will try to correct this as soon as possible.Monopoly31121993(2) (talk) 15:30, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Addressing the issue(s) as to the content, as you seem to be doing now, is very helpful. And if you succeed in creating and adding an accurate map for a well-defined (relevant) quantity according to a legend with both lower and upper boundaries per colour, that too would be helpful indeed. But I seem to have to object to the number of 8 active cases per 1,000,000 for China, on the basis of simple mathematics. From the table in the article (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:2019%E2%80%9320_coronavirus_pandemic_data) I take the numbers indicated there for China: T(otal) = 80,880; D(eaths) = 3,213; R(ecovered) = 67,819. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China, considering the number of inhabitants for 2010 as 1,339,724,852 and the estimated number of inhabitants for 2018 as 1,427,647,786 - both given there - I estimate the current population in China as roughly I(nhabitants) = 1,445,000,000. Elementary arithmetic then gives as a result for the per capita number of active cases A(ctive cases per capita) = (T - D - R) / I ≈ 7 per million.Redav (talk) 16:28, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Here's is the new map updated with 16 March data.Monopoly31121993(2) (talk) 17:26, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Active Cases per-capita of COVID-19 16 March 2020

I very much appreciate your efforts to address several issues with the active cases per capita map for COVID-19! Could you mention both lower and upper limits with the colour legend? (Or do you prefer leaving that to me?) And the colouring for China now seems of in the opposite direction compared to previous versions: > 1 case per 100,000 inhabitants corresponds to > 10 cases per 1,000,000 inhabitants. On https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:2019%E2%80%9320_coronavirus_pandemic is my estimate (and data) from my calculation for China which results in approximately 7 cases per 1,000,000. What causes the difference?Redav (talk) 17:39, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

With the map the definition indicates that it is about active cases. That part is clear. What is not clear from the definition is that / whether it is about confirmed cases only. Another issue, I am afraid, is with the accuracy for at least China (already mentioned above) and the Kingdom of the Netherlands as well. This kingdom has T = 1,417, D = 24, R = unknown, and I ≈ 17,700,000. (For the definitions of these symbols, see above.) That would result in A ≤ 78,8 per 1,000,000 i.e. between 1 per 100,000 and 1 per 10,000. Is there a bug in any software you have run to create the map, are the input data off, or what else could be the matter?Redav (talk) 17:54, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

I propose including in the title for the cases per capita map the following text: "reported active cases per capita", interpreting an "active case" as a person that has been infected and is still infected, thus excluding the non-infected, the recovered, and the fatalities.Redav (talk) 19:14, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

do we have sourcing as to who defines when a case is active? It will be very inconsistent worldwide reporting, as recoveries are very inconsistency reported. We must stick to case number with one simple calc at the absolute most or we are in direct violation (not my strict interpretation, direct violation) of WP:CALC —Almaty (talk) 02:54, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

@Almaty: The WHO seems to have solid numbers with their daily situation reports, available here: www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/situation-reports. What's wrong with using those? Also, to everyone, please put some work into commenting in the correct section to keep the sprawling mess of this talk page a little more organized. Sdkb (talk) 03:54, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

@Sdkb: they don’t say active cases. I strongly propose that yes we can indeed include daily new cases, and daily new cases per capita... no one knows active cases. Only if there is one division only, straight from the WHO. —Almaty (talk) 05:16, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Also as mentioned above, the long-term map should be "peak" active cases, not current active cases which would obviously become irrelevant at some point. Ythlev (talk) 04:06, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

per capita map currently very incorrect, should it be removed? There are currently many problems in per captia map, I feel that it should either be quickly changed or removed, it shows completely misleading information. For example, Australia currently has about 1 case per 70,000 and somehow it is shown in the 1 per 10,000 category, this cant even be explained by the use of old numbers, Australia has never had 1 per 10,000. This map is blatant false information. Just your average wikipedian (talk) 20:55, 16 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.

Developing an SVG version

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)

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)

Why is Hong Kong listed separately to China?

Shouldn't Hong Kong be included in the figure for China, in the table? We don't list, for example, England, Scotland, etc. separtately (they are combined into United Kingdom). You could also argue that Taiwan shouldn't be listed separately either, because very few countries recognize it's "independence". Same goes for Palestine, as it isn't a real country.MisterZed (talk) 17:32, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

@MisterZed: Because our articles separate the mainland from the other three territories; each of the NHC daily reports (since the case confirmation in the Tibet AR on 29 Jan) also cites 31个省（自治区、直辖市）, which is the number of provincial-level divisions in the mainland. CaradhrasAiguo (leave language) 17:43, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

Because there is no freedom of movement between Hong Kong and the mainland China, they have very different healthcare systens, and the measures taken by the governmant of the PRC are not valid in Hong Kong and vice versa--Ymblanter (talk) 17:45, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

MisterZed, Hong Kong and Macau are Special Administrative Regions and while are technically part of China, are not part of the Mainland. Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝) 22:51, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

Agree

Hong Kong and Macao (SARs of the People's Republic of China) should be listed with data from the Chinese mainland. However, the Republic of China (currently in occupied Taiwan) should be listed as a separate nation as it is not, in reality, under the Chinese government's jurisdiction. Its de facto government also confirms a much lower number than the mainland. Palestine is actually recognised by most countries (it is just that most of the Western world doesn't) and is recognised as a non-UN member state by the UN (along with the Holy See). The Republic of China is no longer recognised by the UN as a member or non-member, and is recognised by only a handful of countries including Paraguay and the Holy See. JMonkey2006 (talk) 10:25, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

• Hong Kong and Macao have very high autonimy including having border control with the mainland so they are generally consider separate from the main land. With Taiwan most countries don't officially recognise it because of China but most do unofficially so it is listed as separate. — RealFakeKimT 19:26, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

It is true that the SARs of Hong Kong and Macao have a high degree of autonomybut they are still a part of China. Maybe we can list them as

• China (mainland)
• China (Hong Kong)
• China (Macao)

And then also list other autonomous territories such as Gibraltar in a similar fashion.

• United Kingdom (Gibraltar)

JMonkey2006 (talk) 03:24, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

I disagree with this proposal. We follow Wikipedia-wide consensus and norms, which use "Hong Kong", and not "China (Hong Kong)" in tables and lists. Refer to examples such as List of countries by Human Development Index, List of countries by GDP (nominal), East Asia, Cantonese, Dollar, Ages of consent in Asia. Should you disagree with the current Wikipedia-wide consensus, feel free to raise a discussion at WP:Village Pump. --benlisquare_T•C•E 04:44, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Okay, fair enough. But then, we should at least separate other autonomous territories such as the Faroe Islands from their official nation. JMonkey2006 (talk) 08:42, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

National Health Commission of the People's Republic of China lists them separately :). 香港特别行政区148例，澳门特别行政区10例，台湾地区59例―― Phoenix7777 (talk) 04:57, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Map should be coloured | All Red is Distracted !

I am the Opinion it should have a contrast. For the Bad Regions like China, Iran and Italy can be remained Red, but second Yellow, Green and seas blue and the countries with less than 10 cases White. Then can be seen better. Now all red seems an apocaliptic Situation which is not, example

I would say this is harder to read with so many colours. It is ridiculous when even Antarctica is coloured. Hzh (talk) 20:13, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

There are many Expeditions' Ships travelling Antarctica and Arctic. Ships are now domes of germs incubators, It has also stations, but as you read right, countries & territories with less than 10 cases White and seas blue For me ridiculous is put Alaska with equal cases to USA, just because Alaska is political there, but is a different territory with almost no one... for god sakes, just the beautiful wolves... or other interesting animals... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.108.149.192 (talk) 21:15, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

The infobox map should be replaced with File:COVID-19 outbreak global case count map scripted.svg. It is generated hence less prone to errors. It also complies with mapping conventions. Ythlev (talk) 19:54, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

My only concerns are the colour scheme, it feels kinda odd to see everything in the shade of orange, don't get me wrong. The colour scheme has been discussed before, participated by several editors, so a sudden change won't be widely acceptable. And the second and last concern of mine is the file, why do we need to use multiple files for a single purpose map? These are just my opinions by the way. —hueman1 (talk • contributions) 20:03, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

Should go from blues to refs IMO. Florescent green, no thanks. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:23, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

HueMan1 Agree, except that we should make the seas white and the countries with the least cases gray. Victionarier (talk) 18:10, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

Greens to reds sounds fine to me, but I have no objection to the current color scheme, and the proposal does not look good at all — it's impossible to tell which colors represent what without looking at the key, so it's much less informative. Sdkb (talk) 06:43, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Greens to reds cannot be seen by all the colorblind people out there. Grayscale (or any single color going from dark to light) is greatly preferred. I would leave it as is, or switch from red to a single color that is more calming. Segoldberg (talk) 18:16, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

For me a better Map Realistic continues to be so https://interaktiv.abendblatt.de/corona-virus-karte-infektionen-deutschland-weltweit/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.108.149.192 (talk) 09:49, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

• In my opinion it should stay as is as the diffrent shades of red have find contrast. — RealFakeKimT 19:51, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
• Whatever it is, it should be a gradient. This image is just visually confusing and completely counter intuitive. GMG^talk 23:32, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Case fatality rates

This has been an ongoing discussion throughout the course of the article. The current CFR quoted, whilst high, sourced, and attributed, does not provide any necessary context to the general reader. Estimates vary widely based on numerous factors (please do a search of "death rate" or "mortality rate" or CFR in the talk). I think that any CFR quoted needs a detailed amount of context, context that not even experts are able to provide at this stage. Therefore, until a review on CFR is done, CFRs should not be quoted per WP:MEDRS --Almaty (talk) 02:48, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

"CFRs should not be quoted per WP:MEDRS": Aha. I am at a loss of words. Shame on you and on WHO. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:10, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

Lets be WP:CIVIL please User:Dan Polansky --Almaty (talk) 09:37, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

Which passage of WP:MEDRS prohibits publishing of CFR, publishing with appropriate warning about uncertainty? Are you in any way affiliated with WHO? --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:43, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

Anyway, the kind reader can find out about CFR e.g. in Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19), ourworldindata.org; search for "How do case fatality rates from COVID-19 compare to those of the seasonal flu?" and find that the CFR for covid-19 is "12 to 24-times higher than common flu" when all ages are considered together. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:09, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

User:Dan Polansky that is precisely my point, we need to include a lot of clear communication of uncertainty if and when we decide to publish CFRs. --Almaty (talk) 10:16, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

That is easy to do yet Almaty claims above even experts cannot do it. Let's try: "The best estimates of CFR range from X to Y, but the calculation is fraught with difficulties, including difficultyA, difficultyB, and difficultyC(trace to multiple sources)". How hard can it be? Are you in any way affiliated with WHO? --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:27, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

please see my user page in regard to my affiliations. Yes I agree we can certainly say something along those lines, you have my support on that wording. —Almaty (talk) 02:49, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Views lost

17:23, 11 March 2020‎ Amakuru moved page "2019–20 coronavirus outbreak" to "2019–20 coronavirus pandemic." Hence the page started counting views from zero. Where can I find the lost views? --Maxaxax (talk) 04:10, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

Graeme Bartlett (talk) 06:14, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

Graeme Bartlett In source code I can see that you put a link there, but I can't make it work. In view mode it's invisible (at least on my device) Robertpedley (talk) 12:42, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

Maxaxax: try this:

(I get empty boxes for both on preview). Boud (talk) 14:45, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

thank god it’s less than a million daily there, I thought for a second we might become authoritative on the subject!! —Almaty (talk) 08:42, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Lockdowns vs quarantines

There is a difference. If Israel is on "lockdown", that means New Zealand is on "lockdown". Neither are on quarantine. --Almaty (talk) 08:07, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

generally agree--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 15:35, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

Quarantine = practicing social distancing, closing schools, cancelling events, etc, but you can still go out, i.e. what the U.S. is doing now. On the other hand, lockdown = staying at home no matter what, except in extreme circumstances, i.e. what Italy is doing now. Victionarier (talk) 11:20, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

It was wrong that it can’t be reinserted without numerous verifiable sources. It was removed 6 times at last count, no fault of the author, it’s that the data is impossible to do. Almaty (talk) 13:10, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Total cases outside China exceed total cases in China

Almost certainly the world counter will exceed 162,000 cases either today or tomorrow -- at which point there will have been more cases outside China than there were inside China. That probably deserves a line in the Epidemiology section, and probably in the lede. This not crystal-balling. Since the pattern of new cases inside and outside China indicates that it is only a matter of a day or two, I simply heads-up here on the talk page, so it can be added when appropriate. (For deaths, the relevant total number would be ~6400.) - User:Tenebris 66.11.171.90 (talk) 10:42, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

Irrelevant without sources. If it is inevitable we can state it tomorrow, when there will be sources. Carl Fredrik ^talk 10:50, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

Per WP policy, basic math (in this case a sum total) is not OR and does not require separate referencing. And it did end up being today. - Tenebris 66.11.171.90 (talk) 14:47, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

The maps are original research Almaty (talk) 19:52, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Meaninglessness of map of cases per capita

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.

---

• No definition of "cases per capita" is indicated, so it remains unclear whether total number of infected, current number of infected, deaths, or anything else is meant.
• The boundaries in the legend are open in one direction, so in principle all the world could rightfully be coloured with the lightest colour, and it would strictly speaking still be correct.
• But such colouring would make the map meaningless.
• The remark by Monopoly31121993 saying editor with China objection states "strictly speaking the colouring is not wrong" so removing image is unwarranted at his/her re-introduction of the map does not include a discussion of the above.
• I propose removal of this particular map until:
  • a clear definition is stated by the author;
  • upper boundaries are added in the legend, in the form of: between 0.1 and 1.0 cases per million inhabitants.Redav (talk) 12:18, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

I think the map is actually helpful, since a ratio of cases to population is a better representation of the coronavirus’ impact on a country than numbers (such as those indicated on a map) without context. --Comment by Selfie City (talk about my contributions) 12:21, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

I would agree as soon as the definitions and colouring legend are clear and leave no room for misleading. As the situation is now, the map can - and seems to - be used to misrepresent and downplay the state of the COVID-19 outbreak. What would you say to this?Redav (talk) 12:38, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

I removed the map for now. Victionarier (talk) 18:13, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

The map had issues, but it was also very helpful. --Calthinus (talk) 18:20, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

We need another editor to make an alternative, as the one who made the incorrect one is being rather evasive. — Goszei (talk) 19:06, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

This discussion is somewhat of a duplicate of the discussion at Talk:2019–20_coronavirus_pandemic#Potential_changes_to_the_maps; can we try to centralize, please? There seems to be no major desire there to remove the per capita map, so I'm going to restore it for now. I'll leave the data parsing to those with more expertise, but the impression I'm getting is that there are improvements that could be made to the per capita map, but we need something and there's no so egregiously wrong as to make the current map unusable. Sdkb (talk) 05:29, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Cases per capita map is very wrong

The map uses 5 colors (excepting grey) but the legend contains 6. The bright red is missing from the map. I think that the beige in the map actually corresponds to >0.1 cases per million, the bright pink is >1 case per million and the dark pink is >10 cases per million. As it is now, lots of major countries are off by a factor 10; Russia, China, Finland and so on. Even if the legend was fixed, Iran has 165 cases per million and should be darkest red. As it is now, it is very misleading, and I'm removing it from the articles it is used in until this issue is fixed. See discussion on the image page –St.nerol (talk) 12:49, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

Someone needs to address this. USA is incorrect. Right now it is about 1 per 70,000 based on case #s, map suggets otherwise. --152.132.9.196 (talk) 21:34, 16 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.

Pandemic starting date

Date of the disease originated is seemingly disputes. The previous edit said it started from November 17 before December 1. An earlier edits stated that the date is pushed toward December 12. This causes editing conflict, or misinformation through Wikipedia project. I recommend that editors must use the true independent reliable sources that is stable and they till can search from Google and find best sources largely informs about the virus. Secondly, do not change the origin date periodically that causes less trust for Wikipedia readers. The Supermind (talk) 16:23, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

The disease starting date is November 17 2019, according to China. The pandemic starting date would be officially when the WHO declared a pandemic, so 11 March 2020. CoronavirusPlagueDoctor (talk) 16:40, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

No. When something is identified as a pandemic is not when it began. The pandemic started 17 Nov 2019. Lots of people started calling it a pandemic later, certainly by Feb/early Mar. WHO started calling it a pandemic on 11 Mar. The latter is not when the pandemic started. Bondegezou (talk) 17:17, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

The problem with the 17 November date is that it is a claim based on an undisclosed government document reported by a newspaper. We don't know how reliable that information is. The 1 December date on the other hand is given in a published paper on the study of the disease. Hzh (talk) 17:55, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

This site here suggests that at the very least it would have been November something: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/wuhan-seafood-market-may-not-be-source-novel-virus-spreading-globally Idiacanthus 14:30, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Yes, it is implied by the 1 December date (the infection would have been earlier before the patient went to a hospital), but it also could have been October 2019 or earlier as indicated by the qualifier if not earlier, therefore it's not of much use. The 17 November date would also pushed the date of first infection even earlier. Hzh (talk) 15:13, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

"If not earlier" doesnt seem to be in the article right now Idiacanthus 16:30, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

I can still see it - the first human infections must have occurred in November 2019—if not earlier—because there is an incubation time between infection and symptoms surfacing. Hzh (talk) 18:18, 16 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)

We do not give advice

A well-intentioned editor added a hatnote ("Follow the advice of the World Health Organisation on how to help you and others from preventing the spread of the Coronavirus: here") to the top of the article directing readers to WHO. Such notes do not fit the purpose of an encyclopedia. - MrX 🖋 19:35, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

We can include what the WHO advice is, but yes, we can't advocate. – Muboshgu (talk) 19:39, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

We cannot include what the WHO advice is, because it is too long. We should provide the information that WHO (among other) give vital advice(s) in many pandemic topic, because it is encyclopedic, and we should do it right, because it is vital.

The way to write it to make it "encyclopedic" is up to you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.185.254.81 (talk) 20:01, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

A link to World Health Organization is sufficient for anyone who wants to know more about WHO, and whether their advice might be useful to a particular reader. Our job is to create an article that contains concise information about the pandemic. Although it is undoubtedly a worthy endeavor for someone, we are not in the business of advising readers on how to deal with the pandemic, the disease, or their health. - MrX 🖋 21:15, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

We can include a note in See also along the phrase of The World Health Organization has published advice on how to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. The advice can be found[<link> on their website]. CoronavirusPlagueDoctor (talk _{about the coronavirus}/Contributions _{about the coronavirus}) 21:22, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

We can include a neutrally and concisely phrased link in the External links section (not the see also section). Something like "Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak information from World Health Organization" - MrX 🖋 21:42, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

Shouldn't we include a link to the article about the WHO? Or is that not needed due to the fact that everyone knows who the WHO is? CoronavirusPlagueDoctor (talk _{about the coronavirus}/Contributions _{about the coronavirus}) 01:30, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Other major sites like Google, Facebook, and Twitter have all surfaced or pinned prominent links to WHO and CDC (or other local health authority) when displaying COVID-related content to ensure their users have easy access to critical information. I'm in favor of allowing a direct link to CDC or WHO to be placed within the text where appropriate as a substantially smaller percentage of readers would find the same link in the External links section or citation. However, this was discussed previously and consensus was that it violated WP:EL. - Wikmoz (talk) 06:05, 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)

What is your source that it is less and less possible, and that it was controversial when they said it? They still say to control it, it can be controlled, the Asian countries repetitively show this Almaty (talk) 00:17, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Who says it was controversial? ping:doc James we have to have our heads clear on this, whilst the numbers go up, medrs sources say it can be controlled. South Korea and China appear to be controlling it well in my opinion. But we need to use the sources. Also you do know that worldometer is a proprietary, private algorithm that is an estimate only? Almaty (talk) 00:43, 17 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)

It doesn’t matter what they mean by controlled, We’re just stating that the WHO recognised it as a pandemic, and as a pandemic that for the first time can be controlled. Almaty (talk) 12:11, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

It’s a reliable reflection of what the WHO said and says, if we want to expand upon control measures, we have the prevention section for that Almaty (talk) 12:13, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

I’m at work and tried to reply to this but went to wrong section Almaty (talk) 12:44, 16 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)

countries/locations

TRNC

Can we include Northern Cyprus somewhere else? There are reported 6 cases. Perhaps another section for partially and non recognized states? Beshogur (talk) 20:58, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

• Probrably not as there is very little international recognition for Northern Cyprus. — RealFakeKimT 19:40, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
  • The main discussion about this was on Template talk:2019–20 coronavirus pandemic data, and it is decided to have Northern Cyprus included. Non-recognition is less relevant than who is counting the statistics. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:11, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Extra countries

For UK can there be extra countries like Wales,Scotland,England and Northern Ireland. Hi poland (talk) 22:24, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

• No as they are generaly included togeather. — RealFakeKimT 19:39, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Expected cases next week (Extrapolation)

Please add the total number of expected cases for one week after the current day based on the latest percentage increase. For example Germany had 4838 cases on 2020-03-15 with a percentage increase of 27%. That means in 7 days on 2020-03-22 it will have 1.27^7*4838 cases that is 25780 cases. This is a better value for showing the actual number of infected people than the current case numbers due to the incubation period delay. Robads (talk) 01:10, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

This would be very hard to do and maintain without a spreadsheet of some kind. Also, extrapolations are very unreliable, and they depend on a constant rate of increase, which changes anytime a government enacts new rules to stop the coronavirus, and is also affected by testing capacity. See Wikipedia:BALL. CoronavirusPlagueDoctor (talk _{about the coronavirus}/Contributions _{about the coronavirus}) 01:28, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Well I tried see here for the cases of China and Germany. The blue dots are taken from [[9]] and [[10]] and the orange dots are the cases from the real case numbers and percentages of each day since the beginning of the outbreak extrapolated 7 days into the future. The extrapolation is a little bit scattered, but the overall trend is reproduced quite well agreeing with actual number of cases and thus the method can be a reasonable good prediction for the future. Importantly, the increase is very drastic for Germany. If people know, what will be if no changes are enacted, they may be more likley to enact changes. (Wanted to upload the graphics, but does not work. Shows: "We could not determine whether this file is suitable for Wikimedia Commons. Please only upload photos that you took yourself with your camera, or see what else is acceptable. See the guide to make sure the file is acceptable and learn how to upload it on Wikimedia Commons." Any ideas? Thanks. Links do not work, by the way.) Robads (talk) 22:57, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

JHMap source missing; other citation cleanup

There's a source cited multiple times as "JHMap" that is not actually in the article. I've looked back a ways in the diffs and am not finding it, so my guess is someone copy-pasted material with citations from another article and forgot to bring the source with them. Someone fix it, please. I did several hours of citation and other clean-up, and this was the only thing outright broken that I didn't fix. BTW, imposed a consistent citation style as instructed at WP:CITEVAR; among other cleanup, I reverted a half-finished attempt to convert this to a mixture of at least two forms of Vancouver-style citations, since the article is already predominantly in "vanilla" WP:CS1 style, and it's a completely lost cause trying to use something as fiddly as Vanc. in an article like this that is seeing dozens or more editors per day working on it, some of them using old cite tools that lack such options anyway, and most of whom would not know Vanc. style if it bit them in the rump. Anything that requires consistently adding special parameters over and over again is a poor idea in such an article since most editors simply will not do it, meanwhile in an article this large and growing, it's a bad idea for code-bloat reasons, too. In the course of this I fixed over 100 cases of people using the wrong parameters (putting publisher in the |work= field and vice versa), doing deprecated things like |year= instead of |date=, fake "placeholder" author names, misusing author-related parameters for fragments of publisher names, mis-identified publications, unlinked notable publications, missing information that helps identify publications and their reputability, bare-URL "citations", etc., etc., etc. I'm sure I missed a few spots, but I think I nailed about 97% of it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:26, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

thank you for bring the above to our attention--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 15:58, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

cases/numbers

First confirmed death in Mexico

https://www.debate.com.mx/politica/Muere-el-empresario-Jose-Kuri-primera-victima-de-coronavirus-en-Mexico-20200315-0210.html https://www.radioformula.com.mx/noticias/20200315/quien-era-jose-kuri-harfush-la-primera-victima-de-coronavirus-en-mexico/ https://turquesanews.mx/mexico/primer-victima-mortal-de-coronavirus-en-mexico-el-empresario-jose-kuri-harfush/

Please confirm if the news outlets are true. If they are, modify the numbers on Mexico death toll to 1. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.159.1.26 (talk) 04:42, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

76 years old man Goodbye in Hamburg

First one in Germany North, now 14 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.108.149.192 (talk) 12:14, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

References

First case in Yemen

First Coronavirus case has been reported in the country of Yemen. But due to ongoing civil war in that country it's hard to confirm or verify that.claim. [[11]]

Neither side of the conflict has confirmed it either. But I think it's fair enough to include that in the official list.

Also Coronavirus Asia list includes Yemen. Kalpesh Manna 2002 (talk) 11:11, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Cases in Brazil

Brazil has 221 confirmed cases so far.

https://g1.globo.com/politica/noticia/2020/03/16/governador-de-roraima-pede-fechamento-de-fronteira-por-causa-de-pandemia-do-coronavirus.ghtml — Preceding unsigned comment added by MatheusGamezi (talk • contribs) 16:34, 16 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)

Minor locations in Hubei

@Ikon21: Here's an example of how we handle minor locations in Hubei [12] [13] [14] [15] Everybody in the English speaking world knows where Brooklyn is, but to write 'Jianghan' without writing 'Wuhan' is to obscure the location of Jianghan. Geographyinitiative (talk) 06:13, 16 March 2020 (UTC) (modified)

Is what is found on Wikitionary a guideline? I don't think so. For the sake of the infobox, it should be concise as possible. Anyone can rollover the Jianghan link and see that it is a district of Wuhan, so it is not necessary to list Wuhan repeatedly as the information is more elaborated in the actual article. -Ikon21 (talk) 06:26, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Global personal registration of disease

This website was recently created to enable individuals to register their status, providing global information about the condition and spread, and minimizing "dark numbers". It was reported by this technical media. I don't know where to add it in the article, if any. TGCP (talk) 10:57, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

In English TGCP (talk) 10:59, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

I would strongly object to this being added to the article. - MrX 🖋 11:43, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

OK, we'll wait until it becomes a recognized tool for researchers and authorities. TGCP (talk) 11:50, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

The first known pandemic that can be controlled

Each time added over the last 5 days, have had thanks, and each time removed without discussion? That’s exactly what the WHO said and says. Pls explain removal and discuss —Almaty (talk) 11:59, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

The spread of Spanish flu was controlled to some extent: some placed managed much better by practicing social distancing. What does WHO mean by "controlled"? Each pandemic can be subjected to control, that is, a combination of measurement and intervention measures in part based on the measurement. --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:04, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

The content in the lead should be removed if only on the grounds that it is not summarizing content in the body. GMG^talk 13:50, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

It is old news already. It was controversial when they said it. And it is becoming less and less possible as time goes on. Undue weight for the lead. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:32, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Are you proposing that the pandemic may not be controlled user:doc james? Can I please see some sourcing on that? —49.195.179.13 (talk) 00:48, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Sure http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/03/slow-covid-19-spread-california-county-turns-mitigation California moving from containment to mitigation. Basically it is complicated Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:19, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

that’s the US. The pandemic has been controlled in China and sth Korea, so it can be controlled. That’s the WHOs point. —Almaty (talk) 02:57, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Here is another ref[16]

All pandemics can theoretically be controlled / contained with the proper political will. I think most fell it cannot be contained as that will does not exist in many places.

If it cannot be controlled in most / all places it cannot be contained completely at this point in time. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:17, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

yes theoretically all pandemics could be controlled. However, this is the first known pandemic that has proven control ability at the outset. That is extremely important information. —Almaty (talk) 03:35, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

No it is not important. That was days ago and is no longer true. WHO has not repeated this.

It simple does not belong in the lead. Lots of good sources also say it cannot be controlled.

So if we discuss it, it should be in the body were both sides can get equal weight. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:48, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

do you want to draft it then, User:Doc James? We all have to be mindful that our national governments have been saying different things, and this is a global page. I think you’re overresponding to the American situation. As another example, Australia called this a pandemic in mid February but I was very careful not to include that opinion, until the international community supported that definition. —Almaty (talk) 05:29, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

I obviously agree with Doc James. I see no reason to given undue weight to political statements of WHO. This beast was a pandemic long before WHO declared it to be one. The apparent level of incompetence on part of WHO is alarming. Like, do you see WHO anywhere publishing the two-peak flatten-the-curve graph showing that mitigation is worthwhile? Or do you see WHO publishing graphs with logarithmic scale? Has WHO published an estimate showing that the actual cases are 10x to 100x times higher than the reported ones in most countries? I mean, "WHO says X" is revealing about WHO, but not necessarily much about X. --Dan Polansky (talk) 06:03, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

we aren’t talking about the reliability of the WHO here. As an Australian, I inherently distrust the WHO, which is why we called it a pandemic weeks before the rest of the world. I’m asking, do we agree that the pandemic can be controlled or not? —Almaty (talk) 06:27, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

If "controlled" means "mitigated and slowed down", then it is obvious, without WHO, that covid can be "controlled", and so could the Spanish flu, so covid is not "first"; if "controlled" means "contained" in the sense that e.g. no more than 5% of population becomes infected, then it is very unobvious that it can be so "controlled/contained", and WHO statements do not change that. But it does not really matter since even if the beast can only be slowed down, that is very much worthwhile since it can drive the deaths per thousand infected down e.g. from 5% to 0.5% (the numbers are unreliable!) via avoiding overloading the healthcare system. So for practical purposes, it does not even matter whether it can be "controlled"; it can and should be "mitigated" and "slowed down". --Dan Polansky (talk) 06:42, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Old news and controversial

This can be discussed in the body "as the first known pandemic that may be controlled"

This level of details is too much for the lead "Coronavirus cases with twice as many active cases of any other country including China and Iran combined at 20,603 active" Plus WorldOMeter does not say this and we are doing original research.

Plus the number of cases in Iran is controversial.

Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:23, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

agree with editor--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 15:50, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

@Ozzie10aaaa and Doc James: See "The first known pandemic that can be controlled" section above. GMG^talk 17:28, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

please note that worldometer is a proprietary algorithm that is an estimate and not even admitted by its publisher to be verifiable —Almaty (talk) 04:13, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

User:Almaty not sure what this pertains to? Did you mean to post it here? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:15, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

User:Doc James yes I’m replying to your comment that “Plus WorldOMeter does not say this” —Almaty (talk) 05:09, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

I replaced it with another source. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:15, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Can the pandemic be controlled

based on governmental assertions in the Anglo sphere, User:Doc James is asserting that “it cannot be controlled”. However, multiple countries have controlled their outbreaks. Please reply “cannot be controlled” or “can be controlled” with reasoning. —-Almaty (talk) 03:57, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Transmission

The last paragraph of the 'Transmission section that refers to cites unpublished papers. As far as I can tell, this does comply with WP:MEDRS. Can someone more familiar with this guideline comment? - MrX 🖋 12:19, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Strongly support the new edit on wp:boldavoid and wp:redundancy

The article now reads like a breath of fresh air —Almaty (talk) 12:43, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

• Almaty There is no such policy as wp:boldavoid. Victionarier (talk) 13:43, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Template:Cite web parameters with more than one value

• Warning: 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic is calling Template:Cite web with more than one value for the "title" parameter. Only the last value provided will be used. (Help)
• Warning: 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic is calling Template:Cite web with more than one value for the "publisher" parameter. Only the last value provided will be used. (Help)

I cannot find them. T3g5JZ50GLq (talk) 15:17, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

WHO.int mashup: "MAP : Novel coronavirus (COVID-19) situation"

• https://www.who.int/redirect-pages/page/novel-coronavirus-(covid-19)-situation-dashboard

redirects to:

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

The GIS data which builds this map could be useful or a

{{external media}}

infobox could point to the map. T3g5JZ50GLq (talk) 15:32, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

The data on that map appears dated and doesn't seem to show how old each data point is. The U.S. cases shown are only half the current total, for instance, and Russia closer to one-third. Rmhermen (talk) 16:11, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Ton of US Gov videos and photos here

in case anyone wants to help importing them: https://www.dvidshub.net/search/?q=coronavirus&filter%5Btype%5D=video&view=grid Victor Grigas (talk) 17:24, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Unfortunately, we need someone who has the software/knowledge to batch convert these to a different format. Commons does not accept MP4's which is what pretty much every video put out by the DOD is stored in. Umm... maybe @Fæ: can, or knows someone who can? GMG^talk 17:27, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

I think that's probably a set with me in it.

I'll think about it (warning, my thinking time is measured in months). I already have a cookie doging programme to get files, my problem is more ancient kit per m:Hardware_donation_program/Fæ and that Toollabs was not a very helpful place to transcode 1GB video files. BTW, I already am doing CDC videos. --Fæ (talk) 18:27, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Lead sentence - editing dispute

It seems that myself and User:ABigBeast05 disagree as to the proper formatting in the lead; I thought I should put a few of the options up for discussion.

1. The 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic is an ongoing pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).
2. The 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic is an ongoing pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).
3. The ongoing pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).

Personally, I disfavor #1 on the grounds of MOS:AVOIDBOLD and redundant wording, and I don't think #2 is a valid styling. Comments or suggestions? — Goszei (talk) 17:30, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

I definitely think that option 1 is the most suitable, it suits the article in terms of the layout and looks more encyclopedic-like. It sounds more right to say option 1

• Support #3 I agree that #1 and #2 are redundant. #2 is particularly bad for the lack of bolding. As an example that supports #3, the 2002-2004 SARS outbreak article's lead doesn't say "The 2002-2004 SARS outbreak was an outbreak...". Same goes for the Western African Ebola virus epidemic.

Support #1 Considering Mr. X's suggestion, I think the redundancy in #1 can be fixed, so there's no need for #3. Also, MOS:BOLDLEAD changed my opinion of #3. 162.221.124.29 (talk) 17:57, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Support #1 I like the bold as it keys in the topic of the article. Two would be my second choice. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:59, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Support #1 The first one seems fine. Pandemics should be named by their year and disease. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(events)#Health_incidents_and_outbreaks Also see examples of lead sentences on other pandemics Spanish Flu and 1889–1890 flu pandemic Qwaiiplayer (talk) 17:59, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Support #1 I think the bold highlights the topic in an encyclopedic manner and is suitable as the introduction in that is sounds like how it should, I as the defender of Option #1 think that it should be kept but I would solidify #2 as my second choice. User:ABigBeast05 (talk) 18:05, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

• Support #1 Starting with the title and bolding it is standard for articles per MOS:BOLDLEAD. MOS:AVOIDBOLD is only valid when the article's title does not lend itself to being used easily and naturally in the opening sentence, and I don't see any issue with the opening sentence here. It simply defines the topic which is what is recommended in MOS for lead sentence. Hzh (talk) 18:09, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
• Support #1 per above editors--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 18:16, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
• Support #1. We should bold the name of the article in the lead.  — Amakuru (talk) 18:38, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
• Support #1 of these options. MOS:REDUNDANCY is the real issue here and not MOS:AVOIDBOLD I think. #1 is certainly redundant but #3 also seems distinctly odd to me—in #1 the note that it's caused by SARS-CoV-2 is subsidiary, as I think it should be, but in #3 it's the point of the sentence—so I don't mind MOS:REDUNDANCY being ignored a bit here if that's the choice. And there's no reason at all to use #2 if the wording is there anyway. —Nizolan ^{(talk · c.)} 18:41, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

I would support MrX's "global outbreak" idea below to ease the redundancy (briefly explaining what a pandemic is). —Nizolan ^{(talk · c.)} 22:08, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

• Support #1 for the same reasons already made by other editors. Maranello10 (talk) 18:48, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
• Support #1 - By convention, we bold the title in the lead sentence if it can be done naturally, which I think it can in this case. Ideally, we would change the second "pandemic" to something like "global outbreak". Option #3 is not a good form for the beginning of an encyclopedia article, in my opinion. - MrX 🖋 19:00, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
• Support #1 per above editors. — RealFakeKimT 19:30, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
• Support #1; this is standard Wikipedia style. -- The Anome (talk) 20:54, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Comparison of COVID-19 and Influenza

Hi, ANBI (the Italian National Association of Biotechnologists) changed the creative commons on their charts after my request. I have various versions that I can upload later, I have started with this first one. I hope it can be useful.--Alexmar983 (talk) 18:49, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Oh no ^^ You can't do that... There is 60 million of people in italy, each catching a flu every 5 years in mean. Simple math tell us there is over 200'000 Italians with flu at any given time (in mean probably 2-3x more during the season). If you think there was only 100 patients with flu in the entire health system of italy, your wrong. very wrong. The reality is that most people labelled as "dying from old age" does so while sick with a minor illness such at a flu or a cold. Unless there is a pandemic and special efforts to test, usually no such test are conducted.

Also, i'm will go in the OR territory but, the curve of case on that graph is absurd. It's obvious that italy had more cases before that no one bothered testing. Which again boils down the the real problem with the data : They need serious analysis because the tests are partial and arbitrary. Iluvalar (talk) 03:54, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 16 March 2020

It would be nice to update the information.

Coronavirus Cases: 181,248

Deaths: 7,128

Recovered: 78,328

Proof: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ 31.13.144.90 (talk) 19:48, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

• That is a live counter and the table isn't updated automaticaly so there will be delay but I will update it. — RealFakeKimT 19:56, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Thank you, RealFakeKim!

Austria

The government site at:

https://www.sozialministerium.at/Informationen-zum-Coronavirus/Neuartiges-Coronavirus-%282019-nCov%29.html

lists 3 deaths so far. Wikipedia currently shows 2. Can someone update the number on wikipedia? 2A02:8388:1641:8380:3AD5:47FF:FE18:CC7F (talk) 19:53, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

 Done will update. — RealFakeKimT 19:59, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

cases/numbers

Cases in Brazil(234)

In Brazil,234 cases of coronavirus have been confirmated! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 186.241.245.15 (talk) 20:29, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Updated thank you. Please provide a source if existing sources are not adequate (they were this time). Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:18, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Greenland

Given that Greenland now has a confirmed case in Nuuk, I think the main map should be updated so that it is no longer a grayed-out "No Data". --(Moshe) מֹשֶׁה‎ 17:55, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Germany 17 ⚱️

Please use this link to update faster https://interaktiv.abendblatt.de/corona-virus-karte-infektionen-deutschland-weltweit/

"Potential long term impacts"

Although interesting, I considered removing this section per WP:CRYSTAL. Thoughts? --Calthinus (talk) 21:34, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

depends on the references...IMO--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 22:14, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

KEEP = That is not Crystal Ball 🔮 but Obvious Facts, depending all world to only China supplements was weak, more local depending economies in own products from cars to airplanes must be, each country must develop, construct and produce own product, and personally hope the outdated work system, without all third offices or people handling to industry, must reappear ! Future must be only Direct Jobs. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.108.149.192 (talk) 22:30, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

....yeaaaaahhhh reading this made me consider deleting it again. --Calthinus (talk) 00:11, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 16 March 2020

Change the title to Novel coronavirus pandemic Loganthebogan1272 (talk) 22:23, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

 Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{edit semi-protected}} template. – Muboshgu (talk) 22:28, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 16 March 2020

UPenn has 3 students testing positive from traveling abroad spring break and socializing: https://penntoday.upenn.edu/announcements/message-penn-students-benoit-dube

UPen also cancelled its 2020 commencement: https://penntoday.upenn.edu/announcements/message-penn-community-major-changes-commencement — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2604:2000:1484:436:7156:8718:F57C:825A (talk) 22:55, 16 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)

Semi-protected edit request on 16 March 2020

Change 'The virus primarily spreads between people SIMILAR to influenza' to 'The virus spreads primarily between people SIMILARLY to influenza' because 'SIMILAR' is an adjective modifying the noun 'PEOPLE' and 'SIMILARLY' is an adverb modifying the verb 'SPREADS'. 72.168.128.30 (talk) 23:45, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

 Done - Updated to "The virus primarily spreads between people in a similar manner to influenza" as I think it is clearer than using an adverb.

Old moves on this Talk page

I think its a good idea without question to adjust the old moves list into not collapse (false) value list to allow others see the whole thing at once, because many are not getting it. Its getting out of control. Regice2020 (talk) 00:24, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Example below

Rather than a long list perhaps just add a giant "stop proposing moves that aren't likely to happen" sign (I've seen these before but can't think of an example off the top of my head). —Nizolan ^{(talk · c.)} 00:31, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

@Nizolan: That is the point. They need see that long list (shown). The only solution for them review the other moves without needing to press [Show] Regice2020 (talk) 01:30, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Mobile wiki posts replies to the wrong place

Is that a known fault? Or because of the volume of talk? I’m mostly mobile so would appreciate any wiki gnomes helping me out. Thanks 🙏🏼 Almaty (talk) 01:19, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Map of total reported cases as of 16 March 2020

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.

---

The map would look COMPLETELY DIFFERENT if it would consider a RATIO of the number of people living in the particular country TO the number of the infected! Has anyone thought about that? This looks pretty disinformating.

Yes, there was a per capita map until recently, but it was removed by Almaty since we haven't found anyone to correct the formatting and fix the errors; there is extensive conversation in the section above. I disagree with the removal, but the simplest fix is just to get someone to get it to a state where it can be uncontroversially included. To centralize discussion, please make any further comments in the section above. Sdkb (talk) 04:02, 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.

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)

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)

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)

Recoveries are not updating today

Reported deaths and no recoveries for today. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 112.213.209.244 (talk) 05:24, 17 March 2020 (UTC)