{"id":162190,"date":"2020-03-19T16:20:49","date_gmt":"2020-03-19T20:20:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/?p=162190"},"modified":"2020-09-17T10:19:31","modified_gmt":"2020-09-17T14:19:31","slug":"stick-figures-vs-covid-19","status":"publish","type":"bu-article","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/news\/articles\/2020\/stick-figures-vs-covid-19\/","title":{"rendered":"Stick Figures Fighting COVID-19"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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March 19, 2020<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
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Five Tips (click to expand)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Boston Medical Center (BMC) patients now receive factsheets about how to protect themselves and others from the new coronavirus, what to do while waiting for test results, and what to do if they test positive\u2014all in the form of cartoons created by School of Public Health faculty.<\/p>\n

Eleanor Murray<\/a> is the first to admit that she doesn\u2019t draw very well. A few years ago, to de-stress, she decided to work on at least being able to draw good stick figures. And soon, she realized that those stick figures had a job to do.<\/p>\n

Murray joined SPH as an assistant professor of epidemiology last year, but she was already known to much of the school community on Twitter as @EpiEllie<\/a>, where she communicates often-complex epidemiological concepts in simple and often funny ways on #epitwitter. Gifs have long been the go-to for her epi threads, but her stick figures soon took off.<\/p>\n

So, when Benjamin Linas<\/a>, associate professor of epidemiology at SPH and of infectious diseases at the School of Medicine, was tasked by BMC with creating a fact sheet on COVID-19 for patients, he reached out to Murray.<\/p>\n

\u201cRather than just giving people another text page that they’re probably not going to look at, he thought it would be way more useful to give them something fun and visual,\u201d Murray says.<\/p>\n

The first cartoon shows Murray\u2019s stick figures enacting Linas\u2019 five tips. With the help of BMC and Twitter crowdsourcing, the cartoon is now available in over a dozen languages (and multiple Spanish dialects).<\/p>\n

\"AvoidLinas and Murray are now working on a whole series of these cartoons, with instructions for patients who have tested positive for COVID-19 and for other scenarios.<\/p>\n

\u201cCOVID-19 is really scary for people, and there\u2019s a lot of uncertainty and a lot of discomfort, so being able to inject some levity and some clarity into the messaging around it is really useful,\u201d Murray says.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople can actually do things to protect themselves, and those things are really simple\u2014stay a little further away from people than you normally would, and wash your hands with soap and water,\u201d she says. \u201cIt’s a really simple message\u2014but, if you just put it on a piece of paper, it sounds too<\/em> simple.\u201d<\/p>\n

Putting it in a cartoon, on the other (well-washed) hand, makes it clear that the message is a real set of important instructions.<\/p>\n

\"Cover<\/p>\n

The distrust of simple-looking epidemiology is the reason Murray started using gifs and stick figures in the classroom and on Twitter in the first place.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes really simple mathematical tools will get us the right answer, and sometimes we need really complicated tools\u2014but a lot of people have this misconception that, if it\u2019s not really complicated, then it’s not right,\u201d she says. \u201cThat’s just not true.\u201d<\/p>\n

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What to do if your COVID-19 test is positive\u2014in Massachusetts (click to expand)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It\u2019s a misconception now running rampant as the phrase \u201cI\u2019m not an epidemiologist but…\u201d becomes a common refrain among people trying to make sense of the spread of COVID-19.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose really specific, really mathy, really technical-looking graphics are much more likely to be wrong,\u201d Murray says.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of people are saying, \u2018Hey, this is a topic people are interested in hearing about, and the data are accessible, so I’m going to run a model that I’ve never run before, or a type of model that I’ve never run before, or a model I know how to run but never for an infectious disease before. I’ll make a graph. It will look really specific.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cBut, it will be based entirely on assumptions, because, at this point, we really know very little about the SARS-CoV-2 virus\u2014and people who have never done any infectious disease epi know even less than the infectious disease epidemiologists who are spending all of their time working on this.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Clean<\/p>\n

That\u2019s dangerous, Murray says: Whether those technical-looking graphics say that everything is fine or that it\u2019s time to start panicking, the bottom line is that people will act on something other than the best information available.<\/p>\n

Instead, Murray encourages the epidemiology community to take advantage of the unprecedented attention turned their way, \u201cand help people understand what we do, and put out good explainers,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

In uncertain times like these, Murray says, the best information to share is the vetted, tried-and-true epidemiological concepts, such as \u201cflattening the curve,\u201d or what \u201crisk\u201d actually means, in simple, clear, and engaging ways.<\/p>\n

\"Stay<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would be so valuable if doctoral students, or postdocs, or faculty, or people who are thinking about getting into science communications, started with some of these really simple concepts and tried making their own versions of \u2018cattening the curve<\/a>,\u2019\u201d she says. \u201cI’d much rather see 100 different ways of explaining risk that could go viral, rather than a whole bunch of data visualizations making really poor assumptions.\u201d<\/p>\n

All of the fact sheets and translations are available here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014Michelle Samuels<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eleanor Murray is creating infographics about the new coronavirus for Boston Medical Center patients, Twitter, and beyond.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10989,"featured_media":162205,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"bu_prepress_billboard":"","_bu_prepress_primary_term":"","_bu_prepress_primary_term_manual":""},"tags":[2569,3430,3434,2458,2038,2525],"bu-publication":[3516],"sphnews-article-category":[3519,3526,3530,3531,3541],"sphnews-topic":[],"bu_edition":[],"media_type":[],"profile_tax":[2797],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/162190"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/bu-article"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10989"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162190"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/162190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":172888,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/162190\/revisions\/172888"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162190"},{"taxonomy":"bu-publication","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-publication?post=162190"},{"taxonomy":"sphnews-article-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sphnews-article-category?post=162190"},{"taxonomy":"sphnews-topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sphnews-topic?post=162190"},{"taxonomy":"bu_edition","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu_edition?post=162190"},{"taxonomy":"media_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media_type?post=162190"},{"taxonomy":"profile_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile_tax?post=162190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}