Category: Health

Pandemic Atlas

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Pandemic Atlas banner illustration

Alejandro Polanco’s latest Kickstarter project is the Pandemic Atlas. The idea, he says, “is to gather the most relevant information about the pandemics and major epidemics that have hit humanity throughout history to create an atlas in the visual style of my Minimal Geography project.” In 130 pages, the Pandemic Atlas explores major epidemics throughout history, and includes general chapters on heath subjects. The project’s inception actually predates the COVID-19 pandemic; it was initally inspired by the 100th anniversary of the 1918 pandemic, but at the time there was not much interest in the topic. Fast forward today, when an atlas about historical pandemics is just a little too topical.

The Pandemic Atlas Kickstarter runs through 24 February (it’s already met its goal). €20 gets you a digital copy of the atlas, €60 adds the hardcover.

Previously: The Minimal Geography Atlas.

The Mythology of John Snow’s Cholera Map

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

John Snow's cholera map (detail)

Kenneth Field explores (and dismantles) the mythology around John Snow, the discovery that cholera was spread by water, the role of the famous cholera map and whether it revolutionized disease mapping. Depending on what you know about the subject—if, for example, you got what you know from an episode of Map Men—what you know is more myth than history: the map came after the Broad Street outbreak, it was not by any means the first example of disease mapping, and John Snow wasn’t the map’s cartographer. Field:

The mythology surrounding his work, the 1854 epidemic, and specifically the role of the map are a fine story, but much of it is retold according to the version many seem happy to believe rather than what really happened. But the real story is just as interesting. There are plenty of excellent longer form discussions of the story in which you may be interested. In particular, Kari McLeod’s excellent article that goes into detail about the various myths, and an article by Tom Koch and Kenneth Denike also goes into detail about the true order of events.

Mapping COVID-19 Hospitalizations

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

The thing that seems to worry authorities most about COVID-19 is its potential to overwhelm hospitals, at which point the mortality rate really begins to shoot up. In March, the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management released the COVID-19 Hospitalization Tracking Project, which maps, on a county-by-county, basis, the percentage of hospital and ICU beds occupied by COVID-19 patients. [Maps Mania]

Simple COVID Maps Show the Growth in the Positivity Rate

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Innouveau’s Corona Status Maps are simple yet effective: they show the rate of positive tests at the national, regional, county or city level, depending on the map. They’re animated and have responsive sliders to quickly show how the positivity rate has changed over time; clicking on a region gives a bit more detail as well. With maps of the Netherlands, Amsterdam, the Hague, Rotterdam, the Netherlands plus Germany, Central Europe and Europe, there’s a distinct emphasis in the maps’ focus. [Maps Mania]

COVID Zones

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
City of New York (left); Province of Quebec (right)

Rather than applying restrictions across their entire jurisdictions, several authorities are designating zones to target measures to prevent the spread of novel coronavirus where the spread is at its greatest. Maps can quickly indicate not only where COVID is at its worst, but also where restrictions have been put into place. Two examples: New York City (above left) and the province of Quebec (above right). New York’s map is interactive and has an address search, whereas Quebec’s map is spectacularly ungranular: diagonal lines show that a region has more strict restrictions in some areas but not others, but does not map those areas (which are indicated in text).

COVID-19 in Ottawa Neighbourhoods

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Ottawa Public Health has partnered with the Ottawa Neighbourhood Study to produce this interactive map of COVID-19 rates in Ottawa’s neighbourhoods. Both the map and its underlying data are subject to many caveats: the differences between rural and urban zones, between where people live and where people are tested, and other factors affecting testing and susceptibility. Most notably, the map is updated only monthly, so the current map (screenshotted above) does not take into account the rapid increase in positive cases over the past week or two as Ottawa entered the second wave. [Ottawa Citizen]

Mapping the Coronavirus at U.S. Colleges

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Colleges with coronavirus since the pandemic began (NY Times)
The New York Times

The New York Times maps COVID-19 cases at U.S. colleges and universities. The map and searchable database are based on their survey of more than 1,600 post-secondary institutions; the survey “has revealed at least 88,000 cases and at least 60 deaths since the pandemic began. Most of those deaths were reported in the spring and involved college employees, not students. More than 150 colleges have reported at least 100 cases over the course of the pandemic, including dozens that have seen spikes in recent weeks as dorms have reopened and classes have started.”

The COVID-19 Infodemic and Online Maps

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

So many COVID-19 maps: some misleading, some mislabelled or with other design flaws, some lacking key information, some misunderstood or misused. On GIS Lounge, Mark Altaweel explores how the COVID-19 “infodemic”—the overabundance of information, some reliable, some not—has manifested itself in online coronavirus maps.

Mapping COVID-19 by European Region

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Screenshot

Accessible via the WHO’s European COVID-19 dashboard, the European Region COVID19 Subnational Explorer maps the incidence of COVID-19 in Europe on a cases-per-100,000-population basis, with layers showing the 7-day, 14-day and cumulative numbers. The site notes that national public health authorities use different criteria and the numbers are not necessarily usefully comparable. Even so. [Maps Mania]

Georgia’s COVID-19 Maps: Bad Faith or Bad Design?

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

In How to Lie with Maps, Mark Monmonier warns that map readers “must watch out for statistical maps carefully contrived to prove the points of self-promoting scientists, manipulating politicians, misleading advertisers, and other propagandists. Meanwhile, this is an area in which the widespread use of mapping software has made unintentional cartographic self-deception inevitable.”1

So which of these two scenarios—careful contrivance or unintentional self-deception—is at play on the Georgia Department of Public Health’s COVID-19 daily status report page?

https://twitter.com/andishehnouraee/status/1284237474831761408

Twitter user @andishehnouraee notes the difference in scale between two county-by-county COVID-19 maps of Georgia. The earlier map maxes out at 4,661 cases per 100,000, the later (and as of this writing, current) map maxes out at 5,165 cases per 100,000. As they point out, there has been a 49 percent rise in total COVID-19 cases between the two maps, but you wouldn’t know it at a glance, because the scales have changed in the meantime.

Is this, as @andishehnouraee suggests, a concerted attempt to hide the severity of the outbreak in Georgia—or, as T. J. Jankun-Kelly thinks might be the case, something that happens when you max out the old scale. In other words: bad faith or bad design? (Or both: it can be both.)

Update 19 Jul: See Twitter threads from Darrell Fuhriman and Jon Schwabish disagreeing with critiques of the Georgia Public Health maps. It’s worth clarifying that only one map is ever viewable at the website: the map’s scale has changed over time, but it’s not like they’re side-by-side except in @andishehnouraee’s tweet.

Update #2: See Jon Schwabish’s blog post critiquing the data visualization critique in more detail.

Mapping Mask Wearing in the United States

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
The New York Times (screenshot)

Wearing a mask in public is increasingly being encouraged or required as a measure to slow the spread of COVID-19. The New York Times maps the rate of mask wearing in the United States. The county-level map is based on more than 250,000 responses to a survey conducted in early July, in which interviewees were asked how often they wore a mask in public.

The map shows broad regional patterns: Mask use is high in the Northeast and the West, and lower in the Plains and parts of the South. But it also shows many fine-grained local differences. Masks are widely worn in the District of Columbia, but there are sections of the suburbs in both Maryland and Virginia where norms seem to be different. In St. Louis and its western suburbs, mask use seems to be high. But across the Missouri River, it falls.

[MAPS-L]

Mapping COVID-19 Exposure Risk at Events

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Screenshot

The COVID-19 Event Risk Assessment Planning Tool is a county-by-county map of the U.S. that shows the risk of coming into contact with a COVID-positive individual at an event. “This site provides interactive context to assess the risk that one or more individuals infected with COVID-19 are present in an event of various sizes. The model is simple, intentionally so, and provided some context for the rationale to halt large gatherings in early-mid March and newly relevant context for considering when and how to re-open.” A slider changes the size of the event; risk goes up dramatically with bigger events, of course. Which you’d think would be intuitively obvious. You’d really think so, wouldn’t you. [Cartophilia]

A County-by-County COVID-19 Map

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Screenshot

COVD-19 is hitting the United States very hard right now. This interactive map from the Harvard Global Health Institute measures COVID-19 risk at the county level. The four colour-coded risk levels are based on a seven-day rolling average of new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people: less than one means green (“on track for containment”); more than 25 means red (“tipping point”). It’s explained here. [Matthew Edney]

Pandemic Mapping and Posterity

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

The flurry of COVID-19 maps that have emerged in the first half of this year will be something that future cartographers and librarians will look back on, both in terms of historical records that need preserving, which is the subject of this CityLab interview with Library of Congress map librarian John Hessler, and in terms of best practices for disease mapping—what to do and what not to do when mapping a pandemic—which is the subject of this Financial Times video interview with Kenneth Field. (Both from early May; I’m playing catchup right now.)