Since the COVID-19 lock down began in earnest roughly five weeks ago, healthcare authorities and the news media have repeatedly failed to help society protect itself.
News has been grim. Indeed, you would think there is nothing else going on in the world. The statistics continually made available paint a picture of almost certain doom. All of the social media realms wallow in it, further perpetuating the surrounding negativity, hyping that which is not hype-worthy, based on incomplete or poorly presented information.
Consequently, I contend that what we are reading everywhere most certainly qualifies as “fake news.”
Organizations involved from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to The New York Times to Google to Johns Hopkins are leveraging lessons from the same manual by Mark Monmonier, “How to Lie with Maps”.
The spatial data community should be most ashamed of itself for enabling the situation. Those in the industry have allowed themselves to be manipulated by healthcare authorities and the news media, thereby crippling their ability to seize the moment and show off real Spatial Information capability.
Review the following maps and ask yourself one simple question. What does this tell me about my community? Think local, not global. Note that all maps were captured at the time of this writing on April 16, 2020
 |
| World Health Organization Coronavirus Map |
 |
| Google Coronavirus Map |
 |
| Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Map |
 |
| New York Times Coronavirus Map |
 |
| Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Map |
Attempting to discover how many cases there are in my little community of about 30,000 people, I was unable to uncover any data at all.
County level data is all that is seemingly available, and it is no help. For anyone in a similar situation it paints a bleak picture, but perhaps that is the intent of these organizations.
My county covers over 400 square miles (1059 square km). It is about 50% rural/urban. One could easily draw a line between the two areas on a map. Currently, there are 128 cases, and I would hazard a guess that 95% of them are confined to the urban complex.
 |
| San Bernardino County, California — Google Maps — April 2020 |
San Bernardino County, California is the largest county in the United States, covering just over 20,000 square miles (51,936 square km). A very small portion of this area is urban, and I mean very small. They have 996 confirmed cases in that county. Even the sand dunes in the Mojave Desert are not safe.
 |
| Coconino County, Arizona — Google Maps — April 2020 |
Coconino County, Arizona is the second largest in the United States, covering 18,661 square miles (48,330 square km). They have 299 cases. Where are they in that massive county area? I suspect Flagstaff, the largest urban area, which consumes a mere 66 square miles (171 square km).
The list goes on. Comparisons could be made around the world. Identifying and analyzing county-equivalents in other countries is more of a task than necessary to make the point though.
Healthcare authorities across the country, in concert with the CDC and local governments, with full support of the news media, and plenty of backing hype from social media, seem to be taking pains to hide data. It appears that they desperately want everyone to believe that the world is facing the greatest pandemic since The Black Death of the 14th Century.
We need these organizations to help us help them.
If the true goal is to stop the spread and ensure the safety of every individual, then give citizens the data to do that. We do not need an App tracking each other. Report data in the most relevant format to individuals. Most are smart enough to know exactly what to do to avoid danger.
People need to know where cases are, specifically. County by county is wholly insufficient. Data should be displayed city by city, and in cases such as New York City or Los Angeles, we need to know borough by borough. (New York has actually begun to do that, finally.)
This method of aiding social-distancing worked well during the plagues of Europe. If one knew a town was riddled with the plague, they simply did not go there or did so at their own risk.
The world has suffered enough at the hands of misinformation in this age of technology and “big data.” It is time for governments and news organizations to quit lying with maps, and this is the best time and place to start. We need those with the data to be more honest with that data and share it, just as they ask us to share ours.
Let’s do this right for a change. Stop trying to scare everyone!
. . .
In case of curiosity, my background is in Geography, Cartography, Spatial Analysis, and Geographic Information Systems Architecture, forever with a mind towards the lessons taught by the Mark Monmonier in that one simple book, “How to Lie with Maps”
No comments:
Post a Comment