Covid-19: Lost in Translation

If there is anything to be learned from the current global pandemic, it’s that the truth is not only difficult to find, but a lot of the time it might as well not exist. Of course, we are learning personal truths: what life is like without commutes, schools, and physical contact. These things can all teach us a lot about ourselves, but the truth of the pandemic itself is something far less easy to discern. 

Re-opening schools will herald a return to some form of normality, whatever that will look like.

Overabundance of Data

One way we are able to access and understand the pandemic is through the numbers associated with it: infection rate, daily death-tolls, hospital capacity, numbers of hospital staff, the list goes on. We are living at a time in which newspapers publish the deaths from the virus on a daily basis. They are put onto graphs, overlaid with talk about flattening peaks and comparisons with other countries (in lieu of the Olympics, at least the UK might claim the worst reported case rate in Europe). The question is, though, what do these numbers actually mean? Sky News reported the number of deaths from the virus in relation to the actual number of deaths expected at this time of year. In a presentation that looked more like a weather report, Covid-19 was said to account for “excess” deaths— extra deaths, additional helpings, a side potion. The idea that thousands of people would have died regardless of the virus obscures our interpretation of it. The fact that these deaths are merely extra is terrifying in its own right. Much like we pretend that there are not abattoirs to kill the animals and butchers to remove their heads and portion them out, we also like to pretend that people don’t die. The sobering realisation is that not only do hundreds of people die every day, but now that number is higher than ever before. It is uncomfortably lifting the veil that we have placed between ourselves and death- now the veil has been replaced with numbers, the very numbers that removed it. 

Source: Sky News

Numbers seem as if they are reporting the truth, in this case the truth about death, but numbers are always at the mercy of their presentation. They cannot be understood without rhetoric that surrounds them, but they cannot be separated from it either. Between the death of a person, a real event that happened somewhere in the country, and the news of us hearing it, something changes. The numbers every day do not tell us that close to 1000 people have died; they can’t. Who could mourn that many deaths? Who could understand the pain of that many families? So that number must be translated into something personally tangible. For some that translates to fear. How afraid should we be, today? Recently, the UK press latched onto the fact that the daily death figures only include numbers from hospitals, and not from nursing homes. It is as if we have been to lied about the severity of the outbreak and now we must adjust how afraid we are accordingly. Or we could translate this data into anger: anger at the Conservative government who are now desperately trying to protect what some of them were so determined to destroy; anger at the people who flout the rules and ignore social distancing to buy chocolate and cigarettes from Tesco; anger at scientists who don’t understand that the economic problems will kill far more than the virus itself. Numbers must be translated into something or they are meaningless. Ironically enough, the only way they can be true is not to obscure them with meaning.

Nothing to Report

Of course, reporting exists beyond numbers, but then we enter a realm where truth isn’t something that was once there and has been perverted, it is something that never existed in the first place. The goal to continually report news has lead to reporting a lack of news, as well. A common story that reports nothing is about when the country will be able to leave lockdown. This is a common and reasonable question that should be asked. The answer? We don’t know yet, but that doesn't stop news outlets trying to answer the question daily, cultivating anger and frustration in those of us already afraid and angry. The rhetoric surrounding the delay in revealing an exit strategy is like a spoiled child: "Other countries have been very open about what they've done." so why can't we? But like children waiting for Christmas morning, we must know what will happen next, and the media are happy to provide us with speculation. The same rules and logic apply to the reporting of the pandemic as leaks about Marvel movies, only in this case the over saturation of a lack of information breeds fear and frustration, not excitement. Of course, we all want certainty, but sometimes there is no certainty to be had, and demanding it, claiming all the other countries have said what they will be doing, is as childish as it sounds. It may sound like I am defending the government, but really all these articles are doing are filling silence with noise. 

These articles about escaping the crisis are there to translate our frustration and anger into a question. But we aren't really asking “How long will all of this last?” but instead: “How much do you trust the government to handle this?” And because we are reading the article, the answer is already “We don’t.” But now we have at least some feeling of solidarity to accompany our mistrust. We might bang pots together for the NHS, but what we really want to know is that everyone else is just as afraid and angry as we are. 

The truth of the matter is...

Truth is elusive at the best of times, but when we are surrounded by numbers, speculation and information, it seems that the truth becomes more obfuscated than ever. We want the truth, the raw numbers of empirical data, uncorrupted and pure, but they don’t help, because what we need is not the truth, but something to believe in, and the truth has no business in belief. What Covid-19 means for us, for the world, for society, will depend on how the events of this outbreak are used in the coming months and years. What actually happens will not be of much consequence, because what comes out of this will depend very little on the truth, because the truth isn't important— what is important is how it is translated, and that is what the media is for, to translate reality into something easily absorbed and ready to be converted into some emotion that you already had before, but wanted to know others felt. 

You can take some comfort in the fact that Covid-19 has not changed everything. The narratives have not stopped and they will not stop- they haven't even been put on pause: The Guardian still push their liberal agenda, the red tops still use war rhetoric and rally against whatever pariah is to be symbolically lynched this week, Donald Trump is still an egotistical maniac. The only truth about the virus is that it is already becoming a political tool and it will continue to be used as such until it loses any meaning what-so-ever.