Project 4 - Recreating Our World in Data

Protecting health and economy during COVID-19

During the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a great need to pose various restrictions on many aspects of our lives to mitigate the spread and the consequences of the pandemic. However, there were countries that had implemented less strict restrictions in efforts to protect their economy and some countries had much more stricter restrictions. Do countries with lower deaths rates have experienced a larger decline in economy?

The chart below illustrates the economic decline expressed as decline of GDP relative of the same quarter in 2019 and adjusted for inflation. Some countries had suffered a severe economic decline such as Peru, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Tunisia. Others, on the contrary, had experienced a slight decline such as Taiwan and South Korea.

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Continuing the discussion above, would countries with more strict restrictions and lower death rates have a larger decline in GDP? As we can observe from the plot below, countries with lower deaths rates, also experienced lower decline in GDP, managing to protect both health and the economy. Additionally, countries with highest death rates such as Peru and Spain had experienced a high decline in gdp.

Financing Healthcare.

Global pandemic has exposed health care systems all over the world to massive challenges. During challenging times like these, would everyone be able to afford to get treatment from one or another pandemic disease in the US? The plot below illustrates the percentage of people without health insurance in the US. There is a sharp drop in 1965 when the Medicare and Medicaid were implemented, and after 2012, when the ACA was introduced. It is safe to asssume that ACA has helped to decrease the rates of uninsured people, but still less than 9% of population was uninsured in 2015. During the start of the pandemic, millions of individuals had been layed off from work or had lost income, what could potentially leave more persons without health insurance.

The plot below illustrates the change in the US Healthcare Expenditure as a percent of GDP. In contrast with some other countries, United States does not fully fund health care for everyone and relies on private funds as well. Overall, we can observe an increasing trend in both private and public sectors. Even though the US does not provide a universal health care for everyone, already in 1994, it spent more public funds on health care than the United Kingdom or Japan for example. this observation was assumed by looking at this