A GIF-splainer to inoculate you against the coronavirus infodemic
Hi there,
Sorry for the clickbaity sounding subject line. But I actually believe it's true, and I want to help spread this GIF, because it really helped me.
The trouble with coronavirus news and information is that it's all trees, no forest. Actually, it's worse: like having a leafblower pointed in your face.
This GIF is the forest: A framework for making ongoing sense of the coronavirus situation in a way that's simple, reality-based, but not anxiety-stoking.
Voilà:
The information density in there is surprisingly high, even though it looks approachable. So here's the gist:
Your personal risk is almost certainly low, but the risk to society as a whole could be high.
How can both of these things be true at once? That's the genius of this GIF.
See that guy saying "Whatever, it's just like a cold or flu"? That was me, 48 hours ago. It's a perfectly normal way to integrate what feels like conflicting information. When the WHO and news are treating coronavirus like a global crisis, and urging people to "not panic" while accurately describing its non-scary symptoms and fatality rate, it makes sense to simplify everything thusly:
"Coronavirus" = me not 💀Probably true, but the trouble is that it only captures half of the story. The risk is in what happens if too many "me not 💀"s are happening at once. Sure, it's unlikely you'll die. But what happens if you get sick and need to be hospitalized—from coronavirus, or something else entirely—while the healthcare system is overwhelmed with all the other coronavirus-plus-everything-else patients?
It's a timing and capacity issue. The risk isn't getting coronavirus. The risk is how and when you (and me, and everyone else we know) might eventually (OK, probably) get it: smoothed out in a low, gentle curve over a long period of time, or spiked up all together at once in a huge traffic jam?
It's rather unintuitive and hard to visualize. But that's what the GIF does so brilliantly:
Flatten. The. Curve. "Dealing" with the coronavirus "situation" simply boils down to this: spreading out the sick people over time so that the number of cases at any particular moment stays under that dotted line. Because then the coronavirus does look "like the flu" (operationally speaking, in aggregate, more or less). It won't break the system while mostly-not-killing people.
Flatten the curve. These three little words are how to put everything about coronavirus into context (as opposed to ignoring it, like Trump and Pence are saying) but without going slowly crazy with anxiety (which is easy to do if you don't want to ignore it).
The phrase also provides a concrete method of action—a reason "why"—for making choices about coronavirus on the personal, individual, doable scale. I just canceled a trip to visit my sister on the other side of the country. Why? Not out of some inchoate fear of catching a scary disease or society falling apart: because avoiding non-essential air travel makes me less likely to be exposed right now. I might end up being exposed later—who knows—but canceling my trip now helps flatten the curve.
Washing your hands all the time and assembling a self-quarantine stash feels tedious, but it's worth doing because it helps flatten the curve.
I keep saying this phrase. That's because it should become the "keep calm and carry on" of 2020. It should be everywhere. It should be a meme, a slogan, as recognizable as a MAGA hat and as "influencer-y" as whatever is on Ariana Grande's Instagram.
But in order it to mean anything—which it has to, in order to motivate your actions—you need to be able to picture it. I know I did.
Incidentally, I could write another entire newsletter about the design of this GIF as a popular explainer, and how massively it improves on something like, say, this. But for now, just share it!
Take it easy,
J