COVID-19: What approach works for modern pandemics?

Chapter 1

A Virus Goes Global

In late 2019, a novel coronavirus emerged in Wuhan, China. Within months it had crossed every border on earth. By March 2020, the World Health Organization declared a pandemic — the first in over a century to bring global society to a near-standstill.

The map below shows how confirmed cases accumulated country by country over the course of the pandemic. Watch the virus trace the routes of global travel, then fan out into the interior of every continent.

Chapter 2

Three Countries, Three Strategies

To understand what made the difference, we narrow our lens to three European neighbours: Denmark, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Each country faced the same virus, the same variants, and broadly similar healthcare systems — yet their epidemic curves diverged in telling ways.

Denmark moved swiftly and decisively, closing schools and borders before most of Europe had registered its first deaths. Germany leaned on its federal structure and strong ICU capacity to absorb successive waves. The UK endured one of the highest death tolls in Western Europe before eventually leading the world in vaccine rollout speed.

The chart below tracks the 7-day rolling average of new confirmed cases across all three countries through to late 2022. The Omicron wave of early 2022 stands out as a unifying shock — but notice how differently each country entered and exited that peak.

Chapter 3

The Full Picture

Cases alone don't tell the whole story. The interactive dashboard below layers confirmed deaths, vaccination progress, and government stringency alongside case counts — revealing how each country's policy choices and vaccine rollout shaped the trajectory of the pandemic.

Use the range selector or drag the slider at the bottom to zoom into any wave. Toggle individual countries in the legend to compare directly.