This is a strange case of difference in [fatality rate][1] between Chinese and Italian covid-19 outbreak. In my knowdledge, fatality rate is a ratio between *deaths* from a certain disease compared to the *total number* of subjects diagnosed with the disease. Starting from this assumption, I attempted to analyze difference in fatality rate between Chinese/Italian outbreak. Herein, I propose a reproducible R example for exploring this variable: # Import dataset from authoritative source covid <- read.csv("http://cowid.netlify.com/data/full_data.csv") # Subsetting only data from China and Italy dataset <- subset(covid, location == "China" | location == "Italy") # Fatality ratio: is the proportion of deaths from a certain disease compared to the # total number of people diagnosed with the disease for a certain period of time. dataset$fatality <- round(dataset$total_deaths/dataset$total_cases*100, 2) # Generating plot library(ggplot2) ggplot(dataset, aes(as.numeric(date), fatality, color = location, group = location))+ geom_smooth(size= .5, alpha=.25, color = "gray65")+ geom_line()+ geom_point()+ labs(x="Outbreak duration (days)", y= "Fatality rate (%)", color = "Location")+ theme_light(14) **EDT:** [![enter image description here][2]][2] From this basis, I'm a little bit confused about such difference in terms of fatality rate between the two analyzed countries. In fact, China has the maximum fatality rate at 4%, while Italy at more than 6%. For this reason I've two questions: 1) Is my computation correct? 2) If yes, why such a huge difference in terms of fatality rate? [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_fatality_rate [2]: https://i.sstatic.net/02hyL.png