Data Vis Dispatch,
November 23

Let’s kick things off with charts on political and economic issues. Of course that includes elections:

But the biggest single story in political charts was legislative — the contents and would-be effects of the U.S. “Build Back Better” bill:

And even more charts looked economically downstream at issues of poverty, equality, and cost of living:

COVID cases are soaring in Europe — and as the Süddeutsche Zeitung points out, what we’re seeing is exactly what was forecast for the current level of vaccination:

So yes, vaccines work really well. Unfortunately, the pace of booster vaccination is lagging well behind the speed of the first rounds. And even more unfortunately, even that limited rollout has already surpassed first-dose vaccination in poor countries:

Besides vaccines, what else is helping us through the pandemic? Testing helps, as an unfortunate natural experiment in Britain has shown. And a new analysis shows that the drug ivermectin may have helped some patients after all — for a very straightforward reason:

November’s #30daymapchallenge continued this week with the theme “water”:

The Washington Post got in on the water maps action too:

Clean energy was major topic this week:

And we also got a reminder that environmental issues have a broader base than people think:

These charts put a spotlight on maternal mortality in the U.S.: