How do states from the early crisis compare to now?

New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Michigan were hit hard early in the crisis, while Texas1, Florida, Arizona, South Carolina, Georgia, and California have been on a longer, slower trajectory. How do their weekly death totals compare to each other?

Weekly Deaths

The early states had the sudden, terrifying spike we all remember from April, with deaths dominated by New York. While those early states occasionally issue corrections as they reclassify deaths — these show up as the big, discontinuous jumps on the graphs — they have generally settled down into comparatively few weekly deaths without a significant resurgence.

Weekly Deaths per Capita

Changing to per capita statistics helps give better intuition for whether a particular state is an outlier due to being hit harder by the virus or simply due to having a larger population. While New York remains the largest of the early states its separation from New Jersey and Massachusetts is much smaller.

Similarly, California is more middle of the pack for the recent surging states and Arizona’s struggles appear much more clearly.

What’s clear — at least for these states — is that in both cases we’re still talking about the first wave of infections. In the early states, it hit very hard and very fast, while in the later states the virus has been growing more slowly, only accelerating hard since July.

• Note that on 28 July 2020 Texas changed to counting covid deaths based on death certificates, so there is a jump in their weekly totals↩

Note: imported from Covid Proxima. Click here to see all the interactive elements.