It’s been two years since I posted about my 2020 US COVID daily fatalities handwoven visualization . I have had many interesting conversations about that piece ( for examples, see here ) and it’s one of my handmade projects for which I am most proud.
The thing is, though, the pandemic is not over. And the ongoing US COVID fatalities have been as numerous and terrible and just as worth of highlighting as the 2020 deaths. So I made the 2021 version of the visualization.
I finished the visualization in March of last year and finally hung it up in my office, directly below the 2020 version. The color representation is the same between the two visualizations, though 2021 version only uses red hexagons (100-999 deaths) and dark red hexagons (1000+ deaths). If anything, the 2021 version is more depressing because of the advances in science (e.g., vaccines) that were countered by disregard for that science (e.g., anti-masking sentiments), leading to thousands of deaths.