Microsoft launches its Bing Coronavirus Tracker
Keeping track of Coranavirus news can be quite the time-consuming process and a burden as well considering that you need to find reliable information.
Microsoft just launched its Coronavirus tracker on Bing. COVID-19 Tracker provides statistics and information about the spread of the virus in the world.
The startpage lists the total confirmed cases, cases by country, and each of these divided into active, recovered and fatal cases. There is also a map which highlights how individual regions are impacted by the virus.
Microsoft is pulling data from several sources including CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), WHO (World Health Organization), and ECDC (European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control).
A click on a country lists active, recovered and fatal cases for that country. More interesting is the news section that provides a chronological list of news bits for the selected region.
If you select Italy, one of the countries hit the hardest by the virus at the time of writing, you find a list of news pieces that you may find useful. The news section is powered by Bing News; I saw German and English news articles listed by Bing and the filtering seemed to work fairly well. Chance is that you may get different languages based on the language settings of your computer.
There is also a video section below the news part, powered by Bing Video, with videos about the virus and the selected country.
One thing that is missing is an option to receive updates. The Coronavirus tracker site does not provide options to receive news updates, e.g. by email, RSS, or messaging service. What you can do, however, is use the Bing News or Bing Video RSS option.
All you need to do is append &format=rss to the URL, e.g. turn https://www.bing.com/news/search?q=coronavirus%20Italy to https://www.bing.com/news/search?q=coronavirus%20Italy&format=rss to get a RSS feed of the filtered news. You may then subscribe to the news in a RSS feed reader, e.g. QuiteRSS or the browser extension Smart RSS Reader, or any other program, extension or service, to receive updates as they become available.
Now You: how do you keep track of the virus and news?
Rename this virus to Paranoiavirus already. I can’t even find wet wipes or toilet paper in stock no more ffs.
It could be worse. At least we are not fighting zombies: https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/fjutwc/state_of_decay_1_called_it_back_in_2013_ubjat93/
So far you are correct, that may or may not change, the media are mainly to blame as usual. I’m not saying that nothing should be done about it but as things stand flu is killing far more people and has been for centuries yet there isn’t this whipped up hysteria every time flu season comes around.
All the more reason to stop shaking hands.
I have to my towels to wipe :(
@Yuliya: Can’t find toilet paper? Not to worry! There’s always the local newspaper! ;-)
My local newspaper is digital only. I’ll need to wipe with a tablet or mobile.
This is pretty bad compared to the already functional https://covid19info.live/
The traditional Microsoft UI doesn’t let you choose the coutry you want to see.
Bing shows 101,860 total cases in one place and 190,198 in another place. Arcgis shows 190,535 total cases. I do not know if this comparing apples to oranges, or whether Bing is just behind in its updating.
https://infographics.channelnewsasia.com/covid-19/map.html
https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
Bill Gates patents the virus then creates a tracker….Hmm..
i like how canada is just one blob in the middle of sask.
@Anonymous: I really liked that blob, too! Super-useful, knowing that all of Canada’s cases are in Saskatchewan! ;-)
The whole frenzy about this flu is a huge scam run by Bilderbergers to push taxpayers’ money into the pockets of big business. The virus itself is a joke (not even worth to be mentioned) and more people will get infected and die by the seasonal flu.
@TarAndFeather
True that about 4x as many people have died from the flu so far this season, but it doesn’t need to be that high as there are vaccines for the flu. Yet many folks don’t get vaccinated, thus many needlessly die.
The fact is, COVID-19 is a pandemic, is still on the rise, we have no vaccine, and we don’t know when this will get better.
Also, if you get the flu, your chances of dying are lower than with COVID-19.
Furthermore, it’s worth noting that you’re predicting of the future here:
“more people will get infected and die by the seasonal flu”
.. then that claim makes you a prophet.
As such, consider that if you’re wrong, then that would make you a false prophet.
I use this site for tracking (Johns Hopkins University):
https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
And I get aggregate news from here:
http://theautomaticearth.com/
Our local tv signals providers (cable boxes) have unblocked a few of our national (Quebec, Canada) 24-hour news channels so we can keep up.
Our provincial Premier, Francois Legault, along with his public health ministers, gives a news briefing every day around 1300 hours local time.
As of yesterday, the province is on semi-quarantine (I don’t use the US term “lockdown”); all schools and non-essential busineses are closed, we cannot visit hospitalised people nor people in old-age & retirement homes. No gatherings of more than 5 to 50 people; restaurants to be filled at only 50% capacity The health minister keeps us appraised of # of cases and hospital statistics & bed/ICU availability. People are urged to stay home for two weeks (me thinks it will be minimum one month), both levels of government are working up plans that will help with lost salaries and reduced customer traffic. The federal government has issued special border control procedures and a list of designated airports where travelers can go as well as forbidding entry to all but US citizens and returning Canadians. All must self-isolate for a minimum of 14 days and contact health authorities if they have potential symptoms of infection.
Not much different than elsewhere in the world. The idea is to “flatten the curve” of infections so the health system can cope with it.
We are in the northern part of the world, spring is on its way and there is plenty of sunshine and fresh air on most days. It is however, still quite cold at times. I wish it was warmer, I’m an outdoors person and sorely miss the warmth, the leafy trees, the freedom of hiking in the woods; biking around and fooling around on water.
John Hopkins quietly down plays the Total of Coronavirus Deaths in the US. It does this under the total deaths column on the page:
https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
It is listing total deaths by country except for the US where deaths are listed “per state” rather than total US deaths.
… and I forgot to add:
Fresh air and sunshine are good for you, the covid-19 virus likes neither of those goodies.
The chinese should change their eating habits.It was only a matter of time until a zoonotic spillover would occur with disastrous results.Large majority of the species brought into chinese wet markets would never meet in the wild and so will not be immune to each other…hope the chinese learn from this.
@Kubrick :
Bill Gates Funded the PIRBRIGHT Institute, Which Owns A Patent On Coronavirus; The CDC Owns The Strain Isolated From Humans : https://bit.ly/2IR4dTE
@stefann: Please can we stop with the hysterical conspiracies?
If you believe “experts” and that’s a big if as they seem to be wrong more often than right then this is yet another thing caught from bats. It is strange that all of a sudden humans are catching things from them despite being in contact with them for ever. So is there more to it than that, if not then why multiple things in recent years?
I use https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ to track the virus. I’ve looked at several other sources and find this one to be more up-to-date than any of them.
I like *this* site:
COVID-19 #CoronaVirus Infographic Datapack — Information is Beautiful
https://informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/covid-19-coronavirus-infographic-datapack/
It doesn’t pull in any related general news links, but it does help put the disease in perspective.
Hey, how about some first-person commentary? My 93-year-old father and I both live in Seattle, and the Greater Seattle Area was the epicenter of the first US outbreak. (We’ve been overtaken by New York in number of officially diagnosed cases since then.) As soon as news of the outbreak and of community transmission came out, my dad flew down to LA (wearing an N95 respirator!) to stay with my sister, where he can be more effectively isolated. My dad remains symptom-free, but one of his colleagues up here subsequently tested positive for SARS-COV-II. That colleague is now on a ventilator in intensive care and is not expected to live. I’ve been sick for around a week and a half with all of the symptoms *except* high fever and pneumonia, so apart from feeling weak, bored, cranky, and stir-crazy, I’m doing okay.
SIDE NOTE: As a long-time advocate for comprehensive national health insurance and universal paid sick leave, I’ve gotten a *lot* of cynical vindication from watching federal, state, and local government’s utterly inadequate response to the crisis. As Walter Cronkite said of the US healthcare system back in 1990 — in the CBS primetime special “Borderline Medicine,” where he compared it to the Canadian system — “It’s not healthy, it doesn’t care, and it’s not a system.” Well said, Walter. I wish we still had reporters like you instead of PR flacks sandwiched between ads for prescription drugs.
QUICK UPDATE: My dad’s colleague died. I seem to be over the hump.
Hello Peterc,
Thank you for sharing. Be strong, be safe and try to be as happy under your circumstances as you can, it will help to improve your well being and of those around you.
Wishing you and everyone well!!
@Gianni in SF:
Thanks! I’m doing okay, although I’m *really* weak and tired, and my lungs still feel “funny.” I’d love to be able to get tested to know for sure whether I’m now presumably immune — which would also be *really* useful to know from a public-health point of view — but this is America. My dad is still symptom-free, which is a relief. He’s still reasonably sharp and making contributions to his field. Plus, you know — he’s our *dad*. ;-)
Everything is pretty much shut down here in Seattle (as in California). Lots of low-wage service workers have been laid off, which is worrisome in a city with some of the highest rents in the country (though not nearly as high as in San Francisco), notwithstanding a temporary 30-day moratorium on evictions. Washington is the state with the second fewest hospital beds per capita in the country, after Oregon — a little over half the number Italy has, a country that is now overwhelmed — and temporary field hospitals are being put up on soccer fields. Additionally, a US Navy hospital ship is due to arrive, to handle non-COVID-19 cases to free up capacity in regular hospitals. I’m thinking things are probably going to get a *lot* worse in the coming weeks.
The *good* news is, the 2020 LG Gram 17 is on sale at Costco (for less than the cost of a SARS-COV-2 test, if you qualify) and I ordered one! I’d been holding off for *years*! My current assortment of computers don’t even support USB 3.0, let alone Thunderbolt 3, and the time it takes to back up to external media has been driving me *INSANE*! I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I’ll be able to run Linux Mint Cinnamon on it. (Fedora has been a pretty reliable bet on the 2019 model, but I’ve never really cottoned to Fedora.) I’m in my mid-60s, and my eyesight is not great, so I’m ready to *love* that 17″ 16:10 aspect-ratio screen!
Anyway, I *really* appreciate your kind wishes. Mostly, I’m just tired and stir-crazy, and *deeply* disappointed (but not remotely surprised) at the inadequacy of the government response. However, despite having a *long* history of chronic bronchitis, I no longer have a nagging wory in the back of my mind that I might die. I’m a Russian optimist! (The Russian pessimist thinks things can’t possibly get worse; the Russian optimist thinks they can. ;-) I hope you, your family, and your friends are well!
@Peterc
Wow, I hope you get better soon. I had no idea idea you were in your mid-60s.
After talking with you before (all good), I had imagined you were much younger, for some reason.
Regardless, I have always enjoyed reading your comments.., well, until now with this rather bad news.
Well, I hope you do MUCH better soon.
Personally, I’m in my mid-50s in southern California. I’ve had the luxury of being at home this whole time, as I work from home and am well stocked, even before this all started.
Yet I share a house with one housemate, who goes out a lot and never washes his hands, so I try to avoid where he has been.
My worry is if get COVID-19, then I imagine there’s a good chance I will die, as I have a heart condition.
Other than that, as my work has slowed down, I’m looking to get back into the stock market for some wins, but I’ve found nothing clear yet, where most everything is still too high for what I’m looking for.
My main focus of late is backbone IT and web security related stocks, as that’s part of my gig, and it’s becoming very important right now as more and more IT professionals desire to work from home now, as well as all the extra traffic. Yet due to various security risks with remote access, some IT folks simply don’t have the option to work from home right now.
As such, I’m looking for solutions that can address this growing demand, such as with Citrix Systems, but IDK much yet.
Regardless, I’m expecting most stocks to decline, with the whole economy to crash within the next year or so, so I’m not buying any stock now. Yet I’m still looking for some clear wins, while trying to stay alive, ha.
@yet another old dude:
Thanks for your kind words and wishes! While my *physical* age may be in the mid-60s, some say my *emotional* age is at least five decades younger and my *cognitive decline* at least two decades more advanced!
I mentioned a long history of chronic bronchitis, and in fact I did spend my early 20s, much of my 40s, and my entire 50s with *severe* bronchitis for about half of each year. (This story is actually going somewhere relevant.) I got fed up and sought guidance from the *real* experts in the field, Niles Crane and Adrian Monk. Like them, I began disinfecting everything “public” I touched *before* I touched it (and *after*, too, to be nice) — shopping-cart and shopping-basket handles, door knobs, gas pumps, buttons, flaps on coffee machines, you name it — and I regularly disinfected my hands with sanitizer when I was out and about. In short, I began diligently practicing “infection control.” The payoff was *immediate*. I haven’t had a single episode of bronchitis, let alone an ordinary cold, since then … until now.
(And that, along with the symptoms, is what makes me strongly suspect that what I have is SARS-CoV-2, because SARS-CoV-2 is much more contagious than ordinary colds and flus, especially in aerosol form. I feel reasonably confident that my infection-control habits would have protected me from an ordinary cold, but you can’t sanitize the air you breathe. Additionally, I got a flu shot last fall, and the symptoms don’t really match as closely. I wish I could get tested to know for sure, but … I refer you back to Walter Cronkite.)
Anyway, my personal infection-control experience makes me worry about *you*, with a heart condition and a roommate who goes out in the world and never washes his hands. One thing I did very early on, before my dad took off for LA, was to put a big pump dispenser of hand sanitizer right next to the entryway door of his apartment, to make it easy for him to develop the habit of disinfecting his hands *as soon as he got home*. (Washing with soap and water is probably better, but you have to make it all the way to the bathroom or kitchen sink to do that, and there are *so many* potential distractions and things to touch along the way. ;-) Anyway, do something like *that*, along with regularly disinfecting your entryway-door knobs and push/pull surfaces, as well as light switches, and you might improve your odds, at least against picking it up from something your roomie has touched. To reinforce compliance, I suppose you could camp out behind your entryway door with a shotgun — in a rocking chair, wearing overalls and a tattered hat, with a sprig of hay in your mouth — and every time your roommate comes home, rack the pump and say, “Where d’ya think YER goin’ with them un-disinfected hands, mister?” ;-) Ideally, you two would *not* be sharing a living space until this is over, but this is the real world, with real-world practical and economic constraints… Let’s hope you manage to stay safe and healthy until an effective vaccine comes out. In the meantime, please continue to take every precaution you can.
PS: Doing about the same. My lungs still feel iffy, but not scary iffy. From what I’ve read, I *might* remain contagious for up to 37 days (arrgh!) after symptoms subside, so my cabin fever isn’t going anywhere any time soon.
PPS: Still pumped about my LG Gram 17, which is supposed to be delivered mid-week! It’s my first new computer in … 11 years? My current two main computers are ten-year-old ThinkPads that my brother literally retrieved from the recycling bin at his company, a few years back. It will be *awesome* to have a computer than you can boot by pressing a button instead of a waling away at a hand-powered crank. (I hear you can actually *break your wrist* if the bootloader backfires. ;-)
@Peterc
Thanks for those tips. I do have my own restroom, and my own entrance to the house, which is great. I also put a microwave oven in my room, with water, canned food and such. So, I’m feeling rather comfy, with no cabin fever, yet.
I had chronic bronchitis in my teens, but I grew out of it for some reason.
So, my eyes are also rather poor, so I have a 50″ LG TV hooked to my desktop, that looks great. As for cheap tech deals, I’m looking to buy some 10 TB drives.
I’m a frugal geek with 7 computers, ranging from 3 to 8 years old, with Linux Mint, Zorin OS, Android, and Windows 10.
As for *cognitive decline*, it’s reported that certain personality traits likely prevent Alzheimer’s disease. Hmm..
I’m not sure what personality trait I am, but my kid nephew once told me, “you’re the oldest kid I know”. Ha.
I do know I’m smart enough to know I’m just another human idiot, but still dumb enough to think I’m an elite polymath. ;-)
Yadda yadda..
I could go on.. As I said, we have chatted here before at length, but note I use different names here.
But instead of chatting more here, I welcome/suggest you to reach my here:
https://www.reddit.com/user/xynkttje
From there I will give you my email via PM, or we can just chat on reddit whenever.
If you’re not on reddit, it’s easy to sign up, and for the account verification, you can use a temp email from here:
https://dropmail.me
Since the virus is new, there is no natural immunity in the population yet and no vaccine. This leads to greater infectability. The fatality rate is estimated to be at least 10x that of a common flu overall while the hospitals don’t have the capacity to handle the potential numbers of seriously ill people if the disease is allowed to spread unabated.
The fatality rate increases with age to high levels at 80 years plus. People with some pre-existing conditions at any age also experience high fatality rates.
Thanks for repeating what has been said over and over, just incase we didn’t notice the other million times except it’s not “at least 10x” meaning 10 or more it’s less than 10x.
One thing you didn’t repeat because it hasn’t really been mentioned in the media is that you don’t become immune to a virus that mutate and this already has once. If you did everyone would be immune to the flu now but flu isn’t a single thing it’s multiple strains so we aren’t. In this instance this idea of herd immunity is nonsense.
Stock traders are making a fortune off the paranoia. Some stocks dropped $40 in one day only to rise back up $40 the next.
@Anonymous
Yup, yet many trying to play this game right now are losing, or will lose. Yet if you are willing to place some bets, it’s questionably not the worst time to jump in.
Personally, I’m mostly waiting for a MUCH bigger drop before I get in again, and then hope that whatever I buy doesn’t go under.
That said, it’s a good time to at least have some stocks picked out for a cheap buy down the road.
TIP: Don’t think that online services like Netflix will see more profits, as it’s likely that people out of work will tend to cut such expenses and just use free services.. In other words, look at the big picture, instead of some narrow-minded stock tip that seems like a good idea at the time.
I think at least one thing is for sure in the USA, that if you have money in the bank, then you can expect that to be devalued as the gov basically prints money to help deal with this crises.. But ultimately, we don’t have an economy if most people are not working.
As I have said many times, MS is focused in to many directions. They are tripping over issues to come up with new things.
Someone needs to give MS senior management a huge shake.
Could someone please send these links to MS executive so they don’t have to keep searching with their knarly Badda-boom badda-bing?
https://ncov2019.live/data?fbclid=IwAR1CkoQUXLz3km1F0DTIVzElQbdAkv8wQkMJ_flZNEj4w84oNOCf-IAdmn0
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
@pHROZEN gHOST
You talk as if you know it all, but I doubt you do.
For example, perhaps this Bing service was done to help deal with all the extra web traffic that is indeed thwarting many sites and services.
I think it’s silly to see this any other way than a good thing.
Bet we get it. You have some imperative need to attack Microsoft whenever you can.
Please, just give it a rest already, as your redundant hyperbole is getting old.
I hope the Bing Coronavirus isn’t as contagious as the COVID-19 variant.
This is pretty bad compared to the already functional https://covid19.onl
google for:
bill gates id2020
just say no to the microchip
Actually, I’ve noticed quite a delay on updates on this sites. I’ve been checking covid-19 numbers on http://www.coronavirus-stats.live, which also provides dedicated pages with graphs for every country.