Fun with GIS 286: One COVID Year

[CharlieFitzpatrick]

A year ago, on my way to the first of two education conferences, COVID forced each closed. I headed home, and haven't left my community since. In this difficult year, I have seen some lessons anew.

1. Maps have enormous power. The Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus maps, particularly the dashboard (at JHU, click Tracking, then Global Map) of graduated red dots atop a black canvas, and surrounded by related tables and charts, helped many grasp the problem. I have seen it time and again over decades: interactivity adds orders of magnitude to the power of each map, dashboard, and storymap. One can watch viewers scan, zoom in, click their home region, read, zoom out, change tables, click the region of a loved one, study, and repeat. If a picture is worth a thousand words, an interactive map presents galaxies of patterns and relationships.

2. Science is a process. It is a conscious journey, with meanders, occasional waypoints, likely a formal direction, perhaps even an identified goal, but an end only when one stops seeking. This includes geography, "the science of where." Humans have immense capacity for learning. We have devised powerful ways to gather, explore, manage, analyze, display, and distribute data. Science depends on data, carefully sought, honestly treated, holistically viewed … about a virus, a vaccine, testing, treating, communities facing unusual threat, and so on.

3. Some people are not interested in learning. This one is painful. Learning is a process of recognizing and accepting new information, new ideas, new ways of thinking. Not everyone wants or accepts those. Some will work to impede the progress of others. Some will even deny facts, not just their interpretation but the facts themselves; there are some who deny the Coronavirus is real, can be deadly, and can mutate, just as some do not believe racial bias exists, or accept the world as a sphere. Faced with competing visions -- reality of facts or of fancy -- each of us must choose. One of my teachers once asked "Is he wrong to say 'Blood flows up one leg and down the other'? It is not factually erroneous, but is factually incomplete, a lie of omission." True learners always seek the most complete picture, not just the most convenient one.

4. Humans don't control the world, but can change the world, and have. This one is painful too. People have built cities, dammed rivers, wiped out species, and engaged in unjust campaigns to dominate or eliminate other peoples. For some, "progress is a 'zero sum game' -- my advancement depends upon someone else paying the price." Short-term egocentric, ethnocentric, or "present-centric" action yields imbalance, intolerance, and abuse, with feedback cycles that can destroy entire systems in short order. The "tragedy of the commons" happens. And seers who warn of threats, as in the poem "A Fence or an Ambulance," may be vilified, or worse.

5. Nature does not pick sides. This one also is painful. Nature's rules play out in ways trivial to titanic, and do not play favorites, though humans can and do. It is good to be lucky, but relying on hope alone is not adaptive (something that improves family survival). Humans are pressuring more of earth's systems more severely than ever. We are witnessing unprecedented impact from centuries of humans violating nature and each other. We need to prepare for more cases of collision and collapse (more ambulances) but also better constraints (better fences). We can survive, but only with better learning. We must emphasize #1 and #2 above, starting with kids in school.