PROF. JACQUE WERNIMONT ARTICLE IN WIRED MAGAZINE

Pandemic Death Counts Are Numbing. There's Another Way to Process

Data visceralization goes beyond mortality statistics to help people grieve.

By JACQUELINE WERNIMONT

Published on JUL 21, 2022,  WIRED Magazine. 
 

WHAT DOES THE incalculable look like? How does the unfathomable feel? Can you listen to the unimaginable?

We are in the midst of the single largest mass mortality event in the history of the United States, and our ability to make sense of the situation is challenged by both the scale of the disaster and the dominance of a particular kind of rationality. More Americans have died from Covid-19 than from World War I, World War II, the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Vietnam War, the Korean War, 9/11, the war in Afghanistan, and the Iraq War combined. As of July 13, 2022, the CDC reports 1,018,035 deaths due to Covid-19 in the US. We will continue to see COVID deaths into the foreseeable future: As I write, hospitalizations and deaths in the US are beginning to inch upward as the BA.5 strain takes hold.

Read the full article on https://www.wired.com/story/covid19-data-visceralization-death-statistics/