Adding country flags to reproduce chart with gganimate

Question

I'm attempting to show my students how to replicate this animated COIVD-19 chart in {gganimate}. I've found this tutorial post to be quite helpful.

Only showing a snippet here because I could not figure out how to keep the upload size small:

I'm struggling a bit with two things:

1. Getting country flags and tile labels placed correctly. Here's the example I'm trying to follow.
2. General look and feel (transitions are not as smooth, counter text is not positioned in body of chart, counter text styling is not as nice)

Here is my code:

# load packages
  library(tidyverse)
  library(gganimate)   # install.packages(c("av", "gifski"))
  library(viridis)
  library(ggflags)     # devtools::install_github("ellisp/ggflags")
  library(countrycode) # install.packages("countrycode")

# get and prep the data
  library("rio")
  url <- "https://gist.githubusercontent.com/ericpgreen/123599c21fae4a2a653ae3b7795236d0/raw/0584ff1769adc9c1fb8062012699bdccffe1d170/animate.R"
  df <- rio::import(url)

  static <- 
  leaderboard %>%
# convert to factor
  mutate(monthDay = factor(monthDay, 
                           levels = monthDayLevels,
                           labels = monthDayLevels)) %>%
# plot
  ggplot(., aes(x = rank, group = country, 
                fill = country, color = country
                #,country = cc) # needed if embedding flags
       )) +
  geom_tile(aes(y = cases/2, height = cases,
                width = 0.9), alpha = 0.8, color = NA) +
# if trying to embed flags
  #geom_flag(aes(y = cases+50), size = 20) +
  geom_text(aes(y = 0, label = paste(country, "   ")),
                vjust = 0.2, hjust = 1, size = 10) +
  geom_text(aes(y=cases+50, label = label, hjust=0),
                size = 10) +
  coord_flip(clip = "off", expand = TRUE) +
  scale_x_reverse()

# define animation
  animate <- 
  static +
  transition_states(monthDay,
                    transition_length = 4,
                    state_length = 1) +
  ease_aes('cubic-in-out') +
  view_follow(fixed_x = TRUE) 

# render
  animate(animate, fps = 10, duration = 50, width = 1000, 
          height = 600,
          renderer=gifski_renderer("gganim.gif"))

Additional plotting code to reproduce my gif. Add this static plot to reproduce my gif:

  scale_fill_viridis_d(option = "plasma") +
  scale_color_viridis_d(option = "plasma") +
  theme_minimal() +
  theme(axis.line=element_blank(),
        axis.text.x=element_blank(),
        axis.text.y=element_blank(),
        axis.ticks=element_blank(),
        axis.title.x=element_blank(),
        axis.title.y=element_blank(),
        legend.position="none",
        panel.background=element_blank(),
        panel.border=element_blank(),
        panel.grid.major=element_blank(),
        panel.grid.minor=element_blank(),
        panel.grid.major.x = element_line(size=.4, 
                                          color="grey" ),
        panel.grid.minor.x = element_line(size=.1, 
                                          color="grey" ),
        plot.title.position = "plot",
        plot.title=element_text(size=20, 
                                face="bold", 
                                colour="#313632"),
        plot.subtitle=element_text(size=50, 
                                   color="#a3a5a8"),
        plot.caption =element_text(size=15, 
                                   color="#313632"),
        plot.background=element_blank(),
        plot.margin = margin(1, 9, 1, 9, "cm")) +
  labs(title = 'Cumulative number confirmed COVID-19 cases by date and country',  
       subtitle = '{closest_state}',
       caption  = "Data: Johns Hopkins CCSE")