From COVID-19 to the U.S. election, 2020 has been a year of numbers. Numbers matter. Picking which ones to highlight is a powerful tool for democratic and authoritarian governments—even if the choices don’t always sync up with the reality they’re supposed to depict.
While rejecting quantification altogether may appeal to some populists and intellectuals, governments need some form of it to govern massive societies. Yet quantification organizes and simplifies a complex reality into something digestible and concrete. It conveys an aura of objective truth, transparency, and scientific authority to descriptions of reality or to decisions. For the dictator or aspiring autocrat, it can make them appear fair, transparent, and accountable. Even in a democratic state, it can empower one agenda over the other. Choose to evaluate a policy’s impact on the terms of a balance book, and austerity looks appealing. Choose to evaluate it in years of life saved, and things may appear more generous. And in the middle of a pandemic that has made us all involuntary statisticians, anxiously arguing over caseloads and spread, picking the right numbers is more important than ever.
