https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj-2021-068094
While visual depictions of epidemics have existed for centuries,31 covid-19 is the first one in which real time dashboards have saturated and structured the public’s experience.
Some historians have observed that pandemics do not conclude when disease transmission ends “but rather when, in the attention of the general public and in the judgment of certain media and political elites who shape that attention, the disease ceases to be newsworthy.”8 Pandemic dashboards provide endless fuel, ensuring the constant newsworthiness of the covid-19 pandemic, even when the threat is low. In doing so, they might prolong the pandemic by curtailing a sense of closure or a return to pre-pandemic life.
Deactivating or disconnecting ourselves from the dashboards may be the single most powerful action towards ending the pandemic. This is not burying one’s head in the sand. Rather, it is recognising that no single or joint set of dashboard metrics can tell us when the pandemic is over.
thx @digit@joindiaspora.com that pointed to that article, it's about time this is discussed.
