The coronavirus pandemic has already affected people around the world in one way or another. Pollution levels declined as people stayed at home, a trend that can be observed in research. The way we work, communicate, and relax has changed. Here are some graphs that clearly demonstrate how the world has changed and how people's lives have changed.
People stopped going anywhere
People in many countries stay at home. This is arguably the most significant change in our behavior during the coronavirus crisis. In the chart, Descartes Labs, a data-visualization and forecasting company based in New Mexico, shows aggregate mobility at the country level. Using data from mobile devices, the company calculated the maximum distance traveled in kilometers from the first registered location in the day. Note that mobility in the United States seems to have declined only since March 14, which roughly corresponds to the beginning of massive school closures and social exclusion. Mobility in Hong Kong, where significant viral restrictions were previously imposed, has plummeted since around January 25 - from about three kilometers a day to less than one.
China's carbon footprint is down 60%
This chart shows the average levels of air pollution containing fossil fuels, nitrogen dioxide, or NO2, across China. Annual levels decline in 2019 and 2020, starting from the Chinese New Year, although the decline in 2020 is much more pronounced - with a drop of about 60%. This chart reflects that people travel much less and remain in much greater numbers, either by choice or by order of local authorities.
Two-thirds of American workers have gone to work remotely
US cloud data and security company Netskope tracks the percentage of US employees working remotely. On Friday, the level of teleworking exceeded 60%. The company predicts that teleworking will increase this week to about 66%. Netskope calculates the percentage of telecommuters based on the number of IP addresses users are working from in relation to the total number of users. In the office, many employees work on the same IP address.
Explosive growth of Zoom web conferencing customers
Cloud-based company Wandera monitors remote tools and shows Zoom users growing from 300% to 600% on an average day a month ago. Zoom Video Communications Inc. have also been growing for three months in a row. Investors believe Zoom will be one of the few companies to win amid the spread of the coronavirus, Bloomberg reports. The company rises in price amid unprecedented demand from users working from home. Last week, company officials announced that the service's throughput had been increased to cope with the influx of customers.
Doubling the number of Microsoft Teams clients
Microsoft announced "an unprecedented surge in Teams usage" and that its telecommuting platform currently boasts more than 44 million daily users. Wandera found that Teams users have doubled and data volume has tripled since last month. Microsoft made Teams free for some users during the virus crisis.
Employees left major cities to work remotely in the suburbs
Cloudflare, a cybersecurity cloud computing company, created this heatmap to show how daily internet traffic on March 18 was different from what it was a month earlier. Green areas show where daytime internet use has increased, and red areas show where traffic has dropped. The graph shows that city workers are retiring in the suburbs of the San Francisco Bay Area, where IT giants such as Apple, Google and Facebook have their headquarters.
Wall street is empty
This is a New York City heat map showing the decrease in daily internet traffic on March 18 from the previous month. Note the red in the Wall Street area of Manhattan. The glowing green around the city shows where employees have moved to work from home.
Traffic at university research centers fell
With the closure of universities, Cloudflare notes that some national research networks have barely used the Internet. Traffic is comparable to the weekend level (highlighted in purple). Current traffic is shown in red, and traffic from previous days is shown in gray.
Data from Descartes Labs, Cloudflare, Netskope, Wandera, BusinessInsider.
