As ever, this was difficult to research. A lot of the important data was locked in a huge European Environment Agency report. And then summarised by a byzantine graph. In the end I had to trawl through individual country reports to get the figures I needed.

It was also tricky to visualise. I chose quite a designery approach which demands that you dig into the image a bit to get the understanding flowing. I hope the result isn’t too byzantine either.

The design took several versions to get right. If you’re interested, you can see some drafts here (or as a PDF).

Christopher Niemann
This US illustrator does a nice line in hand-drawn infographics

(I also like his ‘I Confess’ range)

How many troops has each country sent to Afghanistan?
Ok I did this one. But I think it’s an important question. And quite surprising.

Susanna Hertrich: Reality Checking Device
A visual device for getting some perspective. Nice!

(sorry about the tiny screen shot – it’s the only one I could find) UPDATE: Here’s a big version (Thanks to Matthew Goldthwaite)

If you come across any visual delights, please send them through.

Is the US about to face a pandemic?

The USA still has the most cases in the world. The America media are starting to pump out alarming headlines. “200,000 deaths!”. Here are the current figures.

But when you factor in population sizes, the USA disappears off the map. (It’s actually 15th in the world)

Fatality rates: Is Swine Flu getting deadlier?

When you look at fatality rates for Swine Flu, the percentage of infected people who die, the results are depressingly unsurprising.

Although these nations have much fewer cases than Western nations, far more people are dying. Brazil’s fatality rate is a shocking 10%, against a world-wide average of around 0.3-0.5%.

When you compare these worldwide fatality rates against those from mid-July, you see a slightly worrying trend.

Swine Flu appears to be becoming more deadly in Latin America. Is this down to Western nations use of Tamiflu?

Swine Flu Advisory

Here’s the overall data in a table. Media reporting generally only focuses on the first column. But we think the other columns are more relevant.

The stand-out statistic from all this is the US’s death rate at 1.2%. It’s the only Western nation in the above-average rankings.

This may be down to Swine Flu’s particularly lethal interaction with obesity. An estimated 34% of American’s are obese (CDC)

If you are interested in more, you can see a live interactive table of Swine Flu figures here.
Sources and data in this Google Doc.