One Thursday night in early January, the disease known as COVID-19 killed a 61-year-old man who succumbed to the newly known coronavirus in Wuhan City, People’s Republic of China.
Nine months later, the pandemic took its millionth life and, although the vagaries of record keeping mean we may never know who this victim was, the fact remains: COVID killed a million people.
Tens of millions of things defeated. Unborn daughters and sons, works of genius not created. Pieces of communities: removed. Whole residential complexes full of elderly – devastated. The human contribution faded, with no way of knowing or saying what was lost. Counting what’s missing when other people die is never an easy task; now it’s a million times.
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A new interactive Associated Press map of the spread of coronavirus, represented through the lives it claimed, mixes knowledge and geography in a way that forces us to see what happened to the world and what is for it again.
Like so many things in the world, everything is small. At first, the map shows only a touch of color: China, the position where the coronavirus silently began its march.
As it began to move, the map evolved: month by month, week after week, day after day, the coronavirus has spread, the pandemic has been declared. Hospitals are everywhere. Cities and countries closed. The world was replaced so quickly that its population can be maintained slightly.
How did such content, so localized, disappoint the routines and activities of massive pieces of human civilization at first?
We’ve all seen it, lived, but the visual is amazing: from a world largely intact through the virus to a world that has just been affected by it, to an entire planet feeling its effects. Choose a position to take a break. Each junction gives a window to this moment.
– 18 March 2020. La China continues to lead the global death toll. In the United States, President Donald Trump declared a state of emergency. The United States lost 191 people. Broad trust among Americans: this can still be contained.
– 6 April 2020: Italy is devastated; 16,523 were lost. China came out of the five most sensitive in terms of deaths. The United States is now with 14,199 deaths.
– May 22, 2020. The United States fired at the rest of the world and is on the cusp of the 100,000 dead – 99,166, As the United Kingdom (35,440), Italy (32,616), Spain (28626) and France (28,292), represented in a darker forest green, along with Brazil. The walk is accelerating.
– July 26, 2020. Au mid-summer, the United States remains the country with the highest death toll: 147,656. Brazil, whose president has just tested positive for coronavirus, is currently at 87,004. In China, blamed through Trump for the virus in terms of some racists, the tone is soft after strict and widespread containment measures.
– 27 September 2020, last Sunday. India ranks third in the world with 95,542 deaths; The United States, which remains number one and criticized for its random containment efforts, has just passed the 200,000 mark; Brazil stands at 141,741, with no obvious adverse political effects on its leader. now a darker green. Africa, Australia and much of Asia are lighter, parts of Southeast Asia have higher mortality rates.
This map tells the story of an invisible virus that has replaced the world. Count early reactions and concerns and smart and bad decisions. Stories of brave men and women who tried to prevent it and were claimed through their efforts. of leaders who have measured and leaders who have not. And how an undeniable human touch ended up killing.
Above all, it tells the story of the million dead and missing. These are the stories of human beings that, if they had simply stayed, might have done things that we would not all forget, or maybe they would have simply done. Like the vital things that only some other people they enjoyed wouldn’t forget. The map also includes its stories, and even between the sublime lines of the map and the illuminating contours of the data, you’ll have to not.
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Ted Anthony, Director of Virtual Innovation at the Associated Press, oversees the news organization’s policy on the spread of the pandemic in society. Follow him on Twitter on http://www. twitter. com/anthonyted