Talk:Timeline of the COVID-19 pandemic/Archive 1

Archive 1

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:2019 novel coronavirus which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 10:49, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:2019 novel coronavirus which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 22:33, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

Parsimony in adding Table Columns

Every single day there are more columns added to the main table. No new data, just more and more calculations of dubious utility. Can we just give it a rest? It's becoming unwieldly. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 170.250.172.246 (talk) 01:00, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

Also, please do not use colspan in the body of tables. It makes them very difficult to parse automatically so the data can be used in secondary analyses and presentations. rowspan is acceptable.

Correction of death count for February 12

On February 13, Chinese officials deducted 108 deaths for being double counted. Should we deduct these 108 deaths from the numbers of February 12? [1] Xenagoras (talk) 12:34, 14 February 2020 (UTC)

Log plot would be useful

The natural geometric growth of a virus is difficult to get a feeling for in a straight forward linear graph. It would be great if someone (cleverer than me in Wikipedia) could add a log plot of the growth which will be a straight line for exponential growth. I suspect that the groth rate is now declining against this benchmark. Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.133.235.14 (talk) 14:56, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

The data is linear on a log-log plot following the equation deaths = days^2.24 where days= days since 19Jan2020. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Covidwatcher (talk • contribs) 14:55, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Adding semi-log plots: Help!

I would like to add these to this page but I would like help with formatting. If I put them after the tables they intrude into the references. If I put them before the tables they create a huge empty space in the middle before the tables.

Cumulative and daily semi-log plots are a good way of visualizing numbers that change or differ over several orders of magnitude. They are also useful for diagnosing growth rates. A constant (exponential) growth (or decline) rate is a straight line on a semi-exponential plot.

Semi-log plot of cumulative incidence of confirmed cases and deaths in China.

Semi-log plot of daily incidence (epidemiology) of confirmed cases and deaths in China.

Semi-log plot of daily incidence (epidemiology) of cases by region: Hubei Province; mainland China excluding Hubei; the rest of the world (ROW); and the world total.

Galerita (talk) 03:38, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

Representation of zeroes

In the tables would it be clearer to represent zeroes as blank cells? For example if this was done, it would be immediately visible that there the epidemic is not established in Qinghai and Tibet. Lavateraguy (talk) 15:01, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:2019–20 Wuhan coronavirus outbreak which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 22:04, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:2019–20 coronavirus outbreak which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 22:19, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

International Deaths

This page would benefit from having a table tracking international deaths if someone can add that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Covidwatcher (talk • contribs) 11:56, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Show international by default?

With ongoing secondary epidemics in Iran, northern Italy and South Korea is it desirable for the outside China cases to be shown by default? Lavateraguy (talk) 14:18, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

UK

The latest numbers I've seen for the UK are 35, with 12 cases reported on the 1st. I'm guessing that the missing 4 cases were reported on the 29th. Lavateraguy (talk) 11:31, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Reducing the number of columns.

I think it would be important to (at long last) reduce the size of this very useful data table by deleting unnecessary columns, such as but not limited to D/(D+A) which has clearly shown it is of very limited relevance. TheRightKindOfDoctor (talk) 17:04, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Provincial breakdown of China no longer transcluded

The page was literally "breaking the wiki," causing references and other templates near the bottom to not work right. To fix it, I put in a link to Template:2019–20 Wuhan coronavirus data/China medical cases by province and removed its tranclusion with this edit.

Unfortunately, that template appears to take - or at one time took - a paramater called |Out of Hubei= which is now relegated to an HTML comment. Here is what I took out used to say:

{{2019–20 Wuhan coronavirus data/China medical cases by province|Out of Hubei=First analysis produced on "China out of Hubei" February 1 2020 in the daily wechat post of  Union des Français de l’étranger Shanghai Santé Dr Guillaume Zagury, Health Innovation expert with the contribution and upon suggestion of Carole Gabay, Market Analytics Expert; soon to become the key metric monitored by Tier I cities foreign residents across 10 wechat groups (over 3000 readers everyday)}}

For details on the limits of Wikipedia, see Category:Pages where template include size is exceeded.

For what it's worth, we are right up against the limit again, so "something will have to give" soon.

davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 19:19, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Needs an infobox on cases Europe

There's currently only an infobox showing cases in China, but the new focus area is Europe so it would be good if there were an infobox reflecting that (and other areas eventually).78.82.231.230 (talk) 19:23, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

MAJOR CHANGE: Page turned into a list of links

Due to Wikipedia software limitations, references and other templates near the end were not displaying correctly. Since the templates that were transcluded into this one will only get bigger over time, the only fix was to not transclude them.

I turned the article into a "list of pages you can go to for more information" article.

Now that I have done this, selected SHORT tables, such as world-wide tables, can be pulled in from elsewhere. See Wikipedia:Transclusion for help on how to "transclude" sections into this article and how to properly label them. Be sure to preview any edits and check the "Parser profiling data" before saving to make sure that the "Post-expand include size" is nowhere near the limit.

For details on the "Post-expand include size" limitation of Wikipedia, see Category:Pages where template include size is exceeded. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 19:30, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

I have removed the China-specific picture and table and replaced it with {{2019–20 coronavirus outbreak data}}.

I realize that I have basically completely re-written the article and that it is no longer a "one stop shopping" place for information on this outbreak. Unfortunately, keeping things the way they were was not an option.

This page still can be a "one stop shop" for information but it will need to be much more limited than before, due to the limitations of Wikipedia software. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 19:37, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Improvement request

I would like to see three more types of statistics on world level (added to the table as rows):

• Fatality rate(%): {deaths/cases}
• Outcome of cases, recovered(%): {recovered/(recovered + deaths)}
• Outcome of cases, death(%): {deaths/{recovered + deaths)}

These are indicators that have also been used with other diseases.

What do you guys think?Moekotte (talk) 12:19, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

The table itself is at Template:2019–20 coronavirus outbreak data. That is where the updates will need to happen.

That template is currently used in 3 articles, but that may change over time. This is an up-to-date list of article pages that use the template.

Because this template is used or may be used in the future in large articles, we need to be aware of Wikipedia's technical limitations. Several articles pertaining to this outbreak have already bumped up against Wikipedia's technical limitations, in particular the "Post-expand include size" limit of 2048000 bytes. Pages exceeding this limit wind up with templates near the bottom of the page not displaying properly and wind up in Category:Pages where template include size is exceeded this category to get attention by editors who focus on such "broken articles." I've already re-done this article so it won't hit that limit, but other COVID-19-related articles might be close and if we add more to the template, they may go over the line. The other two articles currently using the template are far enough from the limit that we could add the data with no problems. But the bigger this template gets, the more potential problems its size may cause in other articles that may wish to include it in the future. That's not saying we can't make the change, it's just a consideration.

A bigger consideration is that may have trouble getting accurate data in some countries and keeping up to date even where we can get good data. For this reason, I don't think it's harmful to leave this data out. People who want to know fatality rates can use their favorite reliable web search engine and eyeball the results for reliable sources. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 16:22, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

To anyone taking on this task, mw:Help:Extension:ParserFunctions may be helpful. Watch out for division-by-zero errors. Also, "0" may not mean zero, it may mean data is not available. In such cases, math should not be done at all. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 16:38, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

WikiProject COVID-19

I've created WikiProject COVID-19 as a temporary or permanent WikiProject and invite editors to use this space for discussing ways to improve coverage of the ongoing 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic. Please bring your ideas to the project/talk page. Stay safe, ---Another Believer _(Talk) 16:53, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

Bug

On the map, mousing over Taiwan shows the value as NaN, rather than showing a value like other countries (eg "China 57.45"). Can this be updated? Plokmijnuhby (talk) 10:49, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Geography

The geographical regions throughout the timeline are China, Europe, North America, and Elsewhere.

And the last time I checked, neither Brazil nor Guatemala were in North America. And the WHO itself has

six regions:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Health_Organization#/media/File:World_Health_Organisation_regional_offices.svg So, should we use it, the six continent model, the seven continent model, or what? kencf0618 (talk) 21:28, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Regarding consensus on tense in all linked timeline articles

I want to seek a consensus on which tense should be used in all of the COVID-19 month-specific/country-specific timeline articles. Currently, the articles use a mixture of present and past tense. Should we:
a. use present tense
b. use past tense
c. use either

I don't think there is a general consensus on Wikipedia about which tense to use in timeline articles, so I'm hoping to form a consensus here for these articles. Open to other suggestions. Acalycine (talk) 03:38, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

• Support b - a timeline is a list of events in the past, and therefore we should use past tense and be consistent. Acalycine (talk) 03:38, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

Could somebody please apply protection to this page?

Due to this page being directly accessible from the main page, it seems to be a common target for vandalism (for instance, see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Timeline_of_the_2019%E2%80%9320_coronavirus_pandemic&diff=945823650&oldid=945602157). As such, I believe that page protection, at least the semi-protection level (the one with the grey lock) is necessary in order to prevent this. Victionarier (talk) 13:39, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

@Victionarier: requested here. Acalycine (talk) 05:17, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

Lauren Orlando

Lauren Orlando IS JOHNNY ORLANO'S LITTTLE SISTER — Preceding unsigned comment added by NIRANJANA ANOOP (talk • contribs) 10:16, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

Page for November?

The December article has information for November. Shouldn't there be a new page for that? Robin Patterson (talk) 02:53, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Duplicates for Timeline links in See Also

Hi, I would like to ask, should the timeline links be retained for see also, or removed as there is a duplicate. Thanks. TheGreatSG'rean (talk) 07:54, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

Yes, hi again User:TheGreatSG'rean. As you know I have looked over the timeline for December, now almost a month, and I must say the article is in good shape. I am not in a hurry to remove the duplicate links you added, but I hope you understand I will do so, if I not see some real good arguments, within a day or to. Good luck with the timelines, Sechinsic (talk) 17:42, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

Alright. After looking at the Timelines, I would propose to simplify links to a single page for "See Also" to cut clutter. TheGreatSG'rean (talk) 17:44, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

Ay, that's great Sechinsic (talk) 18:09, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

Alright, will carry that out ASAP. TheGreatSG'rean (talk) 14:59, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Damaged introduction

I've tried to restore the introduction to the article. Could you please check whether the references I deleted are worth retaining? I'm not sure because I have not followed COVID-19 reporting on enwiki. Thx!--Aschmidt (talk) 14:50, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Time Line

The mapping video seems to tell us, that current situation is nearly the same in all countries of the world (nearly all countries red). Is that the message that should be conveyed to the reader? Maybe the legend and color encoding of cases could be used to visualize differences in cases even beyond July 10th 2020. --Bert Niehaus (talk) 13:34, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

Slider doesn’t work on mobile app

Official Wiki app, iOS 14.2 • iPhone X Editor8778 (talk) 19:23, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

Possible timeline from 2012

According to one hypothesis:

We refer to this COVID-19 origin hypothesis as the Mojiang Miners Passage (MMP) hypothesis.... 
We further know that, on June 27th, 2012, the doctors performed an unexplained thymectomy on patient 4. ...
... one of the miners, most likely patient 3, or patient 4 (whose thymus was removed), was effectively patient zero of the COVID-19 epidemic...
(...) the researchers were awaiting BSL-4 lab construction and certification, which was underway in 2013 but delayed until 2018.

Etc.

See https://www.independentsciencenews.org/commentaries/a-proposed-origin-for-sars-cov-2-and-the-covid-19-pandemic/ Zezen (talk) 04:27, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

Speculation? WP:NOT Editor8778 (talk) 19:24, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

"Wuhan Flu Timeline" listed at Redirects for discussion

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Wuhan Flu Timeline. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 May 20#Wuhan Flu Timeline until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Bangalamania (talk) 16:33, 20 May 2021 (UTC)