The coronavirus , called in medical terms COVID-19, has not yet been declared a pandemic, but its unstoppable expansion throughout the world grows paranoia fueled by the diabolical cycle of news. The images of entire cities in quarantine, closed airports, empty supermarkets and the cancellation of international events began in Asia, continued through Europe, with Milan as the nerve center, and now threaten the United States. The apocalyptic future of science fiction films is felt in those places.
From Leonardo Da Vinci in the fifteenth century to the present, designers have sought solutions to prevent the spread of pests with ideas that reflect the phobias and deepest human fears. But they also create an aesthetic of the pandemic, either with field hospitals raised in record time, masks as mandatory dress code or high-tech devices such as drones and interactive maps of their progress. Or the curious caddy - a hybrid between the Pope-mobile and the chair Retreat Pod, by Roger Dean - with which they evacuate people with symptoms of coronavirus at airports in China.
Soon we could see everyone dressed in the Be A Batman shield ("be a Batman"), created by the Chinese architect Sun Dayong following the appearance of the coronavirus. It is a futuristic accessory inspired by bats, one of the possible sources of COVID-19, whose body temperatures rise while flying, which allows them to survive despite having the disease.
Dayong, co-founder of the Penda study, has used a carbon fiber material to create a body membrane that hangs like a backpack. It has a PVC film with embedded wires that heat the plastic to a temperature high enough to kill the pathogen.
This protective suit is still a prototype, but its creator hopes to find a sponsor and offers its services for free. After containing an epidemic, he thinks the shield could be updated with Google Glass technology, or simply used as a "unique private mobile space for people."
Quarantine is, for the moment, the most effective and oldest method to fight viruses like Wuhan's. Leonardo Da Vinci, after surviving the bubonic plagues that hit Milan between 1484 and 1485, designed a future city of three levels that eliminated crowded neighborhoods and separated commerce, housing and transport. It was never built.
It was the first urban planning project designed with ideas of hygiene and disease prevention. Already in the nineteenth century, tuberculosis promoted the construction of sanitariums, such as the famous Paimio, by the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto in southwestern Finland. On this occasion, China has achieved a feat of defensive quarantine architecture and engineering with the construction in ten days of a 34,000 square meter hospital and a thousand beds in Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak. And he hopes to open the second one for 1,500 patients in the next few days.
A dystopian reality of humans with their own faces printed on masks is the effect caused by the creation of Danielle Baskin. Product designer, entrepreneur and visual artist in equal parts of 32 years, has invented these accessories that allow you to unlock phones that work by facial recognition and continue using them while fighting the virus.
When a tweet asked him if it was a joke, Baskin replied: "Yes. No. We are not sure. Viruses are not a joke. Wash your hands when you can. And get vaccinated when you can." He has tested them in the N95 model, one of the most common masks, but they will not be available during the current viral crisis due to the impossibility of covering the high number of orders he has received.
Misinformation is the real threat
A joke seems the multiple homemade solutions that citizens look these days through the streets of the main cities of the world. The coronavirus crisis has sharpened ingenuity. Instagram accounts such as the New York Subway creatures or the Chinese Shanghai Observed collect the most absurd models made ad hoc that are seen these days on the streets.
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A shared publication of SubwayCreatures (@subwaycreatures) on Mar 2, 2020 at 7:49 PST
Irrational fear of the coronavirus has led the German-Namibian designer and artist Max Siedentopf, based in London, to create a dozen provocative portraits with people dressed in masks made of underwear, a leaf of lettuce, a plastic bottle or a compress .
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A shared publication by Shanghai Observed (@shanghaiobserved) on Feb 26, 2020 at 4:33 PST
Under the title How to survive a deadly global virus , Siedentogf aims to offer " useful solutions for using simple everyday objects to protect yourself." A criticism of the desperation to buy masks, although doctors have warned of their limited effectiveness. The message, with which the artist intended to "get us out of our comfort zone", has not been received as expected and Siedentogf has had to apologize to the dozens of people who wrote feeling offended by this work.
Even so, the most useful thing in these circumstances is not to panic. Misinformation is the real threat. With precedents of miscalculated responses in cases such as HIV or Ebola, researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore (Maryland) have developed a map where the spread of the epidemic can be followed live. Its objective is to boost scientific understanding and increase public perception of risk: of the 95,748 total cases detected up to the moment of the publication of this article, 53,422 have been recovered.
With this approach, the American Museum of Natural History in New York organized two exhibitions: Epidemic (1999) and Countdown to Zero (2015-2017) on the development of pandemics seeking to neutralize fears, foster empathy with victims and importance of science. In short: design, criticism, art and science united in a single message: do not panic.