January 21, 2020 marked the date of the first case of coronavirus for both South Korea and the United States. The similarity ended there, as this animation illustrates.
The final image, where the number of cases in New York dwarfs those in South Korea, disguises a key fact: New York’s population of 20.1 million is less than half of the South Korea population of 50.1 million people.
News organizations are spending a lot of time looking back at what didn’t happen after early January or 21 January (our first case). Or what was said or wasn’t said. Dr. Anthony Fauci said this on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday:
We make a recommendation. Often the recommendation is taken. Sometimes it’s not. But it is what it is. We are where we are right now.
This illustration makes the point of what has happened by rejecting those recommendations with very few words.
