FRED has more than 765,000 time series of data from 96 sources—some old, some new. One of the newest is a frequency analysis of the word “pandemic” from the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) country reports. Economists Hites Ahir, Nicholas Bloom, and Davide Furceri built the index number by counting the number of words related to pandemic episodes appearing in each country’s report, dividing that figure by the total number of words in the report and multiplying that ratio by 100,000.

These two GeoFRED maps show the index number for each country report during the fourth quarter of 2019 (above) and the first quarter of 2020 (below). Mentions of pandemics (disease outbreaks affecting many people at once) were identified only in certain countries in late 2019. Today, those mentions have spread worldwide.

How these maps were created: The original post referenced interactive maps from our now discontinued GeoFRED site. The revised post provides replacement maps from FRED’s new mapping tool. To create FRED maps, go to the data series page in question and look for the green “VIEW MAP” button at the top right of the graph. See this post for instructions to edit a FRED map. Only series with a green map button can be mapped.

Suggested by Diego Mendez-Carbajo and Maria Arias.