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A Note on Obsessing Over Wuhan Coronavirus Infection Counts
Like you, I've been watching Wuhan Coronavirus infection numbers “in real time” with morbid curiosity.
An unprecedented number of digitally connected people are paying very close attention to this situation worldwide, making all manner of charts, graphics and social media posts (ourselves included) with what they find.
Many are updating these items every minute of every hour, and hold in their hands the world's most powerful publishing tool: a web-enabled mobile phone.
But let's stop for a minute and think: the data we're obsessing over is assembled via a fairly antiquated and bureaucratic hospital structure spread out over a massive nation that is working in some areas under pandemic conditions.
Therefore, hourly and even daily blips in the data need to be taken with a major grain of salt. A sudden jump in numbers from yesterday, or a decrease in the rate of growth from one day to another, is not a significant indicator of things getting better or things getting worse.
Only trends over several days -- actually more like weeks -- are likely to tell us how things are going to turn out in the end. A trend of one hour or even one day at this point is more indicative of ineffectual reporting lines rather than the spread of the actual virus.
All we can do in the meantime is play it safe and try to avoid being part of the chain of transmission -- of both viruses and, more important, of panic.
When we started our live blog with infection counts at the top, we were reflecting on our own experience with SARS in 2003 -- light years ago in terms of technology (we didn't even have our own website until 2004). I remember each morning on my way to work during SARS I'd pick up the daily paper (the only source of information at that point aside from rumors that traveled by text message on our now-antique Nokia phones), stick the daily infection counts in an Excel spreadsheet and print out an update to post to the wall of our office, in hopes that transparency to my staff would not cause them to flee the city in panic.
As this deja-vu like situation has developed again in 2020, there now doesn't seem to be a single Chinese media outlet, fellow expat rag, ＷeChat account, or major Western media outlet that is NOT tracking infection counts and updating them by the minute in a neverending race to be the first to report, for instance, that one more poor soul in Gansu has just been reported as contracting this new strain of flu.
All of this fire hose of information is now a simple Google / Bing / Baidu search away.
Each piece is useful in some regard, and I'm glad to have multiple sources of this info (god knows the pros are doing a much better job keeping up with the data than we are). But in general, I think we all (myself included) are getting way too obsessed with numbers and a lot less focused on what we should be doing: providing practical, local, relevant community assistance to our readers in this time of difficulty.
To be blunt, sharing yet another link to updated numbers or trying to keep our numbers up-to-the minute is beginning to feel a bit like trying to tell you the weather forecast. It's information commodification, and serves only to repeat what people already know.
We're totally prepared to be roasted in the comments over this -- perhaps you think we're hypocritical in this stance -- but we're being totally honest, this is only our second go-round in Worldwide Pandemic and the first time we're doing it live. We're second-guessing ourselves all the time and would love your advice on how we could better serve you, our community in Beijing.
Michael Wester is the Founder and CEO of True Run Media, the parent company of the Beijinger. To reach him, send an email to: info@truerun.com, or find him in one of the Safe & Sane WeChat groups that he is managing together with his team.
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