World Covid Deaths

Map animation of daily deaths from covid, per country visualized by density. Please take two minutes to view and start to grieve for the six million people who have died over these two years of pandemic. Every person whose death was recorded in the COVID-19 Data Repository by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University contributes to a color representation in these pixels on the day of their death. I did not include a time indicator, as I hoped to prevent you, the viewer, from intellectualizing: “I wonder if you can tell when the vaccines kicked in in the West? Look at New Zealand!” For the same reason, I did not normalize by population. This visualization is not for scientific comparison; it’s to impress upon us all the number and relentless pace of the deaths. It is my hope that you will see the Covid-19 pandemic in this video as a demon, an alien, an inhuman presence attacking our one world. I hope that it leaves you more ready to take up an active defense against it — in all your personal, social, and political contexts.