Counting deaths during a pandemic.

Observations for a comparison between Argentina’s and England’s Covid-19 experience

Abstract

During a pandemic, statistics become an object of general interest and take on an unusual leading role both in public discussion and in everyday life. Focusing on the reciprocal relationship between the number of deaths and the pandemic as it is lived or experienced, this paper reconstructs, from the perspective of the sociology of quantification, some dimensions that, in the wide circulation of death numbers from Covid-19, contributed to shaping the social experience of the pandemic during 2020 in Argentina and England. These two countries had very different economic, cultural, and political conditions, but collected globally homogeneous metrics. The objective of the paper is to describe and compare some aspects of the production process of pandemic statistics, as well as the effects of their intervention in the political management of the social and health emergency in both countries. We consider that the exceptionally intense circulation of these numbers in scenarios of bewilderment and uncertainty makes them significant means in the construction of a social imaginary around the crisis that society is experiencing.

ARK CAICYT: https://id.caicyt.gov.ar/ark:/s16688090/vpvxzpfs4