Total confirmed COVID-19 deaths per million people
One would normally expect the total deaths to be growing exponentially (going viral) or to be damping down and approaching a constant (zero new deaths).
But for the last three months, this graph appears almost linear, indicating a constant world-wide per capita death rate.
Linear growth is very rare in nature, so what factors account for the phenomenon in this case?
UPDATE:
It's nine months later, and except for a slight bend in November, the graph still looks very linear (and definitely not exponential as one might expect):
