Chart Everything / coronavirus, Hugh Montgomery

For Everyone Else

By Nathan Yau

In a Channel 4 clip, Hugh Montgomery does some back-of-the-napkin math contrasting the normal flu against the coronavirus.

“If you are irresponsible enough to think that you don’t mind if you get the flu, remember it’s not about you – it’s about everybody else.”

Intensive care specialist Professor Hugh Montgomery explains why this coronavirus is different from the ordinary flu. pic.twitter.com/h9sQorHQUv

— Channel 4 Dispatches (@C4Dispatches) March 22, 2020

Montgomery assumes that on average, someone infected by the coronavirus infects 3 others and that someone with the normal flu infects 1.3 to 1.4 others. There’s still more to find out about that 3x figure, but the main point — that staying at home right now is for the good of everyone — still holds.

Become a member. Support an independent site. Get extra visualization goodness.

See What You Get

Favorites

The Stages of Relationships, Distributed

Everyone’s relationship timeline is a little different. This animation plays out real-life paths to marriage.

All the Household Types in the U.S.

No need to restrict ourselves to the most common types. There are thousands. Let’s look at all of them.

Data, R, and a 3-D Printer

We almost always look at data through a screen. It’s quick and good for exploration. So is there value in making data physical? I played around with a 3-D printer to find out.

Causes of Death

There are many ways to die. Cancer. Infection. Mental. External. This is how different groups of people died over the past 10 years, visualized by age.