Flatten the Curve became a meme, with websites dedicated to the phrase, which would make Harris proud but also a bit annoyed he didn’t draw the graph better. So he went back and rebuilt it with ...

The “flatten the curve” graph is doing something a little different from Nightingale’s and Snow’s visualizations. ... It’s simple. “That’s what makes it so powerful,” Cairo says.

A sample epidemic curve, with and without social distancing. (Image credit: Johannes Kalliauer/ CC BY-SA 4.0) The curve takes on different shapes, depending on the virus's infection rate.

Flattening the curve: How staying at home helps fight coronavirus. A curved graph showing how to “flatten the curve” of the coronavirus spread has gone viral, potentially saving many lives.