[Draft]
MERS, one of the other circulating endemic coronaviruses, had one of its outbreaks effectively detailed with this graphic posted by Science News back in December 2015. When talking about viruses moving through a community with friends and colleagues, as one does post-2020, I've pulled this one graphic out to visualize it more than almost any other.
It might look intimidating at first. It helped to just look at it unfocused, let my eyes go where they wanted, and within a few minutes it made so much sense. Starting from the lower left corner moving zig-zag up and to the right, this chart densely represents time from first known case to later cases in less than a month, movement of peoples between locations of interest, index (the individual known or believed to have been the first infected or source of the resulting outbreak in a population) and non-index cases, and anonymized patient snapshots that demonstrate it wasn't only elderly people impacted by this outbreak.
On a single page there's charted the first index case, 68 years old businessman, potentially infected sometime towards the end of his April to early May trip to the Middle East, based on onset of symptoms. Then arranged in rows and groupings are hospitals and/or major exposure dates
Every person of interest identified to follow-up with is labeled with a geometric shape and assigned a color on a gradiant. Standout people of interest, like superspreaders, receive a stroke around the shape assigned to make them pop a bit more against a soon-to-be dense population linked back to this one businessman.
There are 9 groupings of hospitals and/or major exposure dates arranged almost like a large arena venue seating chart is arranged. Here's the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House for comparison:
And between the 9 sections are the arrows which guide this visual narrative.
Though the MERS outbreak details are very well laid out there are some shortcomings here. One- most glaring- it doesn't size down well.
But a more subtle area of improvement is the color choice and color variety.
Labeling all patient shapes a light lilac-ish purple doesn't work well against white. I might want to change it to one of the colors depicted in the seating chart. Perhaps the navy blue and turquoise?
Which colors would you substitute the original purples for? It doesn't have to be on the opera house seating chart.
In service of the attention economy it's only now that I reveal how it's possible to see the blown up version.
Go here: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/anatomy-south-korean-mers-outbreak and open the link labeled "View the PDF" for an easier to read experience!
FYI: That other visualization I lean on for quick depictions of both transmission chains and variant evolution? This mega circle pit:
The trick is knowing your audience! What might work in some cases won't work in all cases.
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