@article{1e24e72ba0a54dfa982884927980c707,
title = "A pandemic of metrics",
abstract = "The COVID-19 pandemic prompted critical attention to the performative power of metrics. We suggest that the existential capacities of metrics as a means of pandemic living warrant further consideration. We describe how the COVID-19 pandemic that came into existence as a public health and political event could only have occurred because of the anticipatory metrical practices that were used to transform SARS-COV-2 into a matter of global health concern. By exploring the affective potencies of COVID-19 metrics we show their abilities to engage the public in ways that cannot be contained; in detailing the narrative arcs created through metrics we show their opportunities, misdirections, and erasures. A pandemic way of life persists: a pandemic of metrics.",
keywords = "affective publics, Covid-19, global health, metrics, pandemics",
author = "Vincanne Adams and Clare Chandler and Kelly, {Ann H.} and Julie Livingston",
note = "Funding Information: This article is indebted to the constructive and thorough engagement of our anonymous reviewers, as well as to Carlo Caduff, Stacey Pigg, and Alice Street who took the time to read and provide comments on previous versions. We are also immensely grateful to Alex Nading's generous editorial support, which helped to clarify our argument and sharpen our prose. While informed by our respective ethnographic collaborations across a variety of contexts, our reflections remain an artefact of the experience of living with and through COVID‐19, which prompted the friendships from which they sprung. Ann H Kelly's contribution was supported by the European Research Council under the European Union{\textquoteright}s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme [grant agreement number: 715450]. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2024 The Authors. Medical Anthropology Quarterly published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Anthropological Association.",
year = "2024",
month = jun,
doi = "10.1111/maq.12842",
language = "English",
volume = "38",
pages = "149--163",
journal = "Medical Anthropology Quarterly",
issn = "0745-5194",
publisher = "Wiley-Blackwell",
number = "2",
}
