The designer misinterpreted the CDC numbers for vaccinations administered and relabeled these as percentage of people who have received a vaccine shot. There is a difference between vaccinations administered, percentage of people who have received a single vaccine shot, and percentage of people who are fully vaccinated. Using the corresponding CDC data, for example:
And here’s how the CDC labels its corresponding chart:
[https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations]
Going back to the Yahoo News chart, I might have used a diverging color scale instead – perhaps at 50% to provide a reference point as we start to think about “herd immunity”.
The designer used a simple map of the United States and a continuous single color to show “percentage of people who have received a shot” (sic) along with a graduated bar to reference values at each end (52.9% - 90.3%). This made it easy to get an approximate sense of the relative % between states.
Bonus points for allowing the user to hover over states to get more details.
However, this does not justify or cancel out the weakness pointed out earlier.
Covid-19 Vaccinations in the U.S.; Covid19 “By the numbers” landing page for Yahoo News; Yahoo News Website; Accessed 4/30/2021
https://news.yahoo.com/coronavirus
https://github.com/yahoo/covid-19-data
Total Doses Administered Reported to the CDC - COVID-19 Vaccinations in the United States; US CDC Website; 4/30/2021 0600 ET accessed 4/30/2021
https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations
Percent of People Fully Vaccinated Reported to the CDC - COVID-19 Vaccinations in the United States; US CDC Website; 4/30/2021 0600 ET accessed 4/30/2021
https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations
Hicks, Lucy; FAQ: Herd Immunity and COVID-19; WebMD Website; 4/14/2021 accessed 4/30/2021
https://www.webmd.com/vaccines/covid-19-vaccine/news/20210414/faq-herd-immunity-and-covid-19
Lipsitch, Marc; COVID-19 Vaccines and Herd Immunity; Harvard School of Public Health Website; 12/17/2020 accessed 4/30/2021
https://ccdd.hsph.harvard.edu/2020/12/17/covid-19-vaccines-and-herd-immunity/