I suppose from anecdotes I’ve heard that there are still some people who in the midst of a pandemic are largely unaware of its spread. Even though I am locked down in my rural neighborhood and property, I’m still connected to the world through my TV, computer, and smart devices, so I believe I can count myself among those who are aware of the geography of this disease. Those venues of news provide updated maps of Covid-19 cases and deaths. Some are interactive maps, such as that put out by the government of Pennsylvania. With a hover of my cursor and a click, I can see county-by-county tallies, a map of Death’s movement across the Commonwealth, at first a rapid pace in the East with its dense population and now a seemingly slow walk or even a standstill in my western county and nearby counties.
And yet, according to friends and family who have ventured out in gloves and masks to seek necessities, there really are still people who act as though little has happened: Some reportedly shopping without any protection and not even using disinfectant wipes provided by grocery stores, and others indiscriminately touching anything and everything with bare hands; even one, I’m told, observed to be pushing a similarly unprotected child in a grocery store cart seat.
Add to the above anecdotes to stories of partygoers “celebrating” in supposed immunity the disease in defiance not only of governmental suggestions and restrictions but also in obvious defiance of commonsense: In sum, what you get is a show of hubris and folly perpetrated by ignorance. If only more people could read a map! Although some might demonstrate general ignorance of all things practical—and we’re all a bit guilty there—in this particular time some exhibit their ignorance of cartography in its modern manifestation as geographic information systems. Strange that in the Digital Era, so few know the significance of digitizing. It’s like watching one of those B-movie tales of horror in which the audience is aware that over there in the dark shadows some monster is lurking while the unaware character backs toward those same shadows. (Maybe in the theater of my life, I won’t yell a scream of surprise, but, rather, a cough. Sorry if that seems like very dark humor over a disease that isn’t relegated to shadows) No, Covid-19 can hide in the brightly lighted aisles of a grocery store or in the air of a queue outside a Walmart. But that’s what makes mapping its presence so important. Wouldn’t it be better to know where its presence is more likely than not?
Now, I know that not everyone likes reading maps, what with all those symbols, shapes, and colors. And I also know from years of teaching the earth sciences that people are generally unaware of geographic relationships, many of my former students having the belief that the Mississippi River empties into the Pacific Ocean and that “north” means “up.” Many of them, also, incapable upon entering college of pointing to where they live on a map. I also know that on a planet occupied by humans for hundreds of thousands of years that there are just too many places to keep track of, especially since so many have undergone name changes: Peking/Beijing? Burma/Myanmar? Upper Volta/Burkina Faso? Constantinople/Istanbul? Petrograd/Leningrad/St. Petersburg? Or, even in my area: French Hangard/English Fort Burd/Redstone Fort/Redstone Old Fort/Brownsville? I can’t fault anyone for not keeping track.
But when a creeping, and at this time onrushing, threat starts in China and makes its way across the Pacific to Washington and then also hopscotches across Europe and the Atlantic to infect Americans from two directions, one might think that paying attention to maps is a matter of health—or even a matter of life. When the pandemic subsides as it will through both natural and human interventions, will geographic information systems and cartography rise to the foreground of public knowledge? Will people understand that knowing the nature of places and their relationships to one another is important from a very practical standpoint?
One more anecdote. Obviously, many people now associate certain places with Covid-19 cases. As one of my relatives drove west on I-70, he saw four cars with NY license plates pass him. They were headed west. Now that might be just one of those coincidences that, as so many coincidences prove to be, is meaningless, but I can’t help but think that four cars at night aren’t carrying people to Wheeling for a visit with relatives or a stopover at the local, now closed, casino hotel. In a useless gamble, I’d wager that those cars contained people fleeing a place where a concentration of cases meant a serious threat of death. The passengers in those cars probably followed a map to safety or relative safety, since West Virginia was the last among the states to record cases of the disease.
You might be thinking that all this is irrelevant. Why bother checking an interactive map that contains at this time more bad news than good? Isn’t that the action of a pessimist? Of a sick mind? In answer, I go back to those place name changes. The character of place changes as people change, and one change that alters the nature of a place is a plague. It alters the social ecology. Sure, the houses remain, but as in natural settings when one species exits, so in human settlements another individual or group eventually fills the niche left empty. That will apply to the map of businesses, as well. The mental maps of many Americans—of many people around the world—will change: People will for at least a while map social distances differently from their previous mapping. People will for at least a while map places differently. New York City will not immediately return as the center of tourism it has been. Disney World will be seen as much for the dangers it presents in thousands of people gathered together as it has been seen for entertainment worth standing in shoulder-to-shoulder lines.
All maps are about to change temporarily, and some will change permanently. We might not rename places, but we will re-map them. Now that I think of it, because of the pandemic just about everyone will be forced to consider information that maps convey.
And yet, according to friends and family who have ventured out in gloves and masks to seek necessities, there really are still people who act as though little has happened: Some reportedly shopping without any protection and not even using disinfectant wipes provided by grocery stores, and others indiscriminately touching anything and everything with bare hands; even one, I’m told, observed to be pushing a similarly unprotected child in a grocery store cart seat.
Add to the above anecdotes to stories of partygoers “celebrating” in supposed immunity the disease in defiance not only of governmental suggestions and restrictions but also in obvious defiance of commonsense: In sum, what you get is a show of hubris and folly perpetrated by ignorance. If only more people could read a map! Although some might demonstrate general ignorance of all things practical—and we’re all a bit guilty there—in this particular time some exhibit their ignorance of cartography in its modern manifestation as geographic information systems. Strange that in the Digital Era, so few know the significance of digitizing. It’s like watching one of those B-movie tales of horror in which the audience is aware that over there in the dark shadows some monster is lurking while the unaware character backs toward those same shadows. (Maybe in the theater of my life, I won’t yell a scream of surprise, but, rather, a cough. Sorry if that seems like very dark humor over a disease that isn’t relegated to shadows) No, Covid-19 can hide in the brightly lighted aisles of a grocery store or in the air of a queue outside a Walmart. But that’s what makes mapping its presence so important. Wouldn’t it be better to know where its presence is more likely than not?
Now, I know that not everyone likes reading maps, what with all those symbols, shapes, and colors. And I also know from years of teaching the earth sciences that people are generally unaware of geographic relationships, many of my former students having the belief that the Mississippi River empties into the Pacific Ocean and that “north” means “up.” Many of them, also, incapable upon entering college of pointing to where they live on a map. I also know that on a planet occupied by humans for hundreds of thousands of years that there are just too many places to keep track of, especially since so many have undergone name changes: Peking/Beijing? Burma/Myanmar? Upper Volta/Burkina Faso? Constantinople/Istanbul? Petrograd/Leningrad/St. Petersburg? Or, even in my area: French Hangard/English Fort Burd/Redstone Fort/Redstone Old Fort/Brownsville? I can’t fault anyone for not keeping track.
But when a creeping, and at this time onrushing, threat starts in China and makes its way across the Pacific to Washington and then also hopscotches across Europe and the Atlantic to infect Americans from two directions, one might think that paying attention to maps is a matter of health—or even a matter of life. When the pandemic subsides as it will through both natural and human interventions, will geographic information systems and cartography rise to the foreground of public knowledge? Will people understand that knowing the nature of places and their relationships to one another is important from a very practical standpoint?
One more anecdote. Obviously, many people now associate certain places with Covid-19 cases. As one of my relatives drove west on I-70, he saw four cars with NY license plates pass him. They were headed west. Now that might be just one of those coincidences that, as so many coincidences prove to be, is meaningless, but I can’t help but think that four cars at night aren’t carrying people to Wheeling for a visit with relatives or a stopover at the local, now closed, casino hotel. In a useless gamble, I’d wager that those cars contained people fleeing a place where a concentration of cases meant a serious threat of death. The passengers in those cars probably followed a map to safety or relative safety, since West Virginia was the last among the states to record cases of the disease.
You might be thinking that all this is irrelevant. Why bother checking an interactive map that contains at this time more bad news than good? Isn’t that the action of a pessimist? Of a sick mind? In answer, I go back to those place name changes. The character of place changes as people change, and one change that alters the nature of a place is a plague. It alters the social ecology. Sure, the houses remain, but as in natural settings when one species exits, so in human settlements another individual or group eventually fills the niche left empty. That will apply to the map of businesses, as well. The mental maps of many Americans—of many people around the world—will change: People will for at least a while map social distances differently from their previous mapping. People will for at least a while map places differently. New York City will not immediately return as the center of tourism it has been. Disney World will be seen as much for the dangers it presents in thousands of people gathered together as it has been seen for entertainment worth standing in shoulder-to-shoulder lines.
All maps are about to change temporarily, and some will change permanently. We might not rename places, but we will re-map them. Now that I think of it, because of the pandemic just about everyone will be forced to consider information that maps convey.
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