Editing 2502: Every Data Table

| titletext =  "I'm hoping 2022 is relatively normal because I don't know what symbol comes after the asterisk and the dagger."

This comic is another entry in a [[:Category:COVID-19|series of comics]] related to the {{w|COVID-19 pandemic|2020-21 pandemic}} of the {{w|SARS-CoV-2}} virus, which causes {{w|COVID-19}}.

It shows a future data table with one entry for each year from 2017 to 2024, so at least this table is made three years after publication of the comic. Only difference for the eight years, is that two years have footnotes as in 2020* and 2021†, whereas the other 6 have not.

Sometimes punctuation such as an asterisk (*) or a dagger (†, also called an obelus or obelisk) is used to denote an unusual entry in a table to be explained in a footnote with a matching symbol.  

The COVID pandemic has had a large impact on the entire world and one way this can be seen is through strange stats resulting from the effects of the pandemic, at least in 2020 and 2021, the years marked with footnote in the data table. Various statistics such as employment statistics, spending power, holiday miles, pet ownership, births (or at least conceptions), and — naturally — deaths may have been either grossly suppressed/increased for the majority of 2020, and for 2021 may have hardly recovered, partially recovered, renormalized, bounced back with a vengeance or be over-compensated for in the effort to catch up.  

Thus Randall concludes that ''every data table'' will look like this one from now on, hence the title of the comic.

 

In the title text [[Randall]] states that he hopes 2022 is relatively normal. But not because he hopes corona virus is gone. Now it is becaue he is unsure which punctuation should be used for a footnote if 2022, and further years to come, also needs footnotes using this type of symbols.

 

It is hard to know what 2022 might be like. Nothing (at the time of this comic being published in August 2021) is exactly back to normal and proper recovery or the resulting compensatory readjustment may not have concluded in time for 2022 to reflect the trends expected based upon pre-2020 figures, and the additional further years that future statistics will record.

Common symbols that are used if the first two are taken include multiple symbols (such as †† or ***), or a series of further symbols such as a double dagger (‡), the section symbol/silcrow (§), the parallel/double-pipe (‖) and the paragraph symbol/pilcrow (¶). Alternately you can start and continue with superscript numbers (¹, ², ³ ...), especially when you expect to commonly need {{w|Terry Pratchett|multiple}} and/or {{w|Randall Munroe|nested}} footnotes on each page, or gather them as endnotes, a whole chapter at a time.

It is also possible that the symbols themselves may be acknowledging the cause of the impacts; the asterisk (*) resembles a spiked coronavirus, and the dagger (†) resembles a hypodermic needle used for a vaccine.

The asterisk and dagger could also be read as star and cross as seen on some tomb stones. They are used to denote birth and death. As in the birth of Corona and hopefully the Death of corona due to vaccination. This could explain the comment about not being sure what the next symbol would be.

In biology, species (or genus, etc...) that are possibly extinct are indicated with an asterisk and dagger is used to note the extinction (double asterisks indicate taxa believed to be extinct in the wild but known to be extant in cultivation). This of course do not fit well with the corona virus, which is not close to extinction, and it is also not about to cause the extinction of humans.

The author, however, seems to have forgotten the potential monkey's paw nature of his wish. 'Relative' requires a comparison between things. It could well be that the whole fall-out of the pandemic becomes the new normal, and future years have no necessity to use symbols to explain how those years come to be like everyone knows they are, while dates before 2020 will be entirely understood as the old-normal. Only 2020 and 2021 may need contextual clarifying, due to the necessary transition/limbo between the earlier unaffected and later fully-adapted scenarios.

 

:[Caption under the panel:]