As the United States reaches this grim milestone, I prepared this visualization of what the number 100,000 looks like. (You will need to zoom in to see the individual squares.)
Please be safe and stay healthy.
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Very somber visual - and this is only the US. Worldwide suffering.
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I just read today that Latin America has surpassed the United States in cases.
Reference for large numbers is helpful in understanding them, especially those that are difficult to grasp. A billion is familiar, but a frame of reference helps bring it into focus.
For example, a billion seconds is 32 years, a trillion is 32,000 years 
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Latin America as a whole has twice the population of the US so sadly we’re still “winning” the race to the bottom. 
But Brazil has skyrocketed to the the second place country (in terms of reported cases, which is of questionable accuracy). Very concerned for them!
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My phone browser can’t even open this webpage without freezing up. A friend of mine said that another easy way to visualize it is like losing a small city of people. I spent my teenage years in a town of like 10k people, so I can’t imagine losing ten times that amount…
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Sorry about that. My computer had a bit of trouble crunching some of the visualizations I generated. I tried to keep it simple, but it is a really big number.
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That is a lot of countries, and Brazil alone is likely to pass us. It is not a Darwinian competition, and Latin America does not come close in medical technology in even the best of cases. New Zealand never had need of a ventilator.
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A bigger factor than just raw number of people is the population density, coupled with adherence to social distancing protocols. The virus can only spread when we get within spitting distance of each other.
As a matter of scale, each individual square is defined at 1 millimeter, with 1 millimeter spacing between them. This means that the drawing would be more than 60cm square, which is over 2 feet on a side. You could not print this on your Glowforge at full scale.
I have this visualization displayed on my 27" monitor, and I still need to scroll to see it all.
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The sobering fact is the US is 1/3 of the Global number. GLOBAL…It pains me to see people just act so nonchalant about it. Great visual!
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Horrifying, and I’ve decided to do something about it.
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Our daughter-in-law is part Brazilian and has lots of family down there, so of course they are all in our thoughts and hearts.
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And 1/20th of the global population.
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It truly is frightening.
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I’m still waiting for the people who have been claiming the globe has been overpopulated for decades to say its a good thing.
In CT we’re killing a generation. Nearly 70% of the deaths are nursing home residents. 
Our history is dying.
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80% in the US are 65+. They will have to come up with a different excuse to “save” Social Security now. That 20% would be a horror even if that was all the cases,
I was just thinking about what 100,000 people looked like so I found a football stadium with that many. Just think of all these people died at once. Just devastating.
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And what is even worse is that the numbers are so inflated we will never know the real casualty rate.
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As in extremely undercounted? The numbers that died of things like pneumonia because they were never tested were a huge spike not included and the many that died in nursing homes not counted at all for anything?
The actual numbers will never be counted, but the numbers reported is the lowest minimum specifically and totally documented.
The most specific detail here ArcGIS Dashboards
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There is some room to question the accuracy of the numbers in either direction. Some deaths may be incorrectly attributed to COVID, while others will never be diagnosed. What cannot be questioned is that this health crisis has overwhelmed our hospitals and morgues.
At the scale I drew this, even the number 50,000 would not fit onto the bed of your Glowforge. I guess I should have gotten the Pro so I would have passthrough.
Please do not underestimate the difficult challenge we (the human race) are facing right now. Be safe, and stay healthy.
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