Note: The New York Times made some great changes to their maps, and this extension no longer works. I don't plan to update it.
Some us are statistics stalkers, checking the number of coronavirus cases and deaths probably way more than we should. Read Ellen Peters' piece on this on nytimes.com.
This is a Chrome extension to modify the New York Times coronavirus maps to maybe make them a little less anxiety-inducing. The red circle markers are changed to blue, and the background of the map is changed to gray. The number of cases in each U.S. state is also a little big larger.
I'm not a designer, but this made things feel better to me.
To install on desktop Chrome, download these files, go to chrome://extensions/, turn on Developer mode
in the top right corner, and then either drag the directory onto the extension page, or select the Load unpacked
button near the top left corner. Browse to the directory of the downloaded files and hit Select
.
Also, if you can, subscribe to the New York Times or other media outlet of your choice. I know that most news services are making their coronovirus coverage free, which is absolutely the right thing to do. But it's also more important than ever to support the independent journalism that keeps us informed.