Counting the Dead in Nursing Homes during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract This article analyzes the genesis and consolidation of the “statistical argument” (Desrosières 2008) of mortality during the pandemic. Public health data are approached from the perspective of “biopower” which can be read as a statization of life, combining the power of both science and the state. The authors explore the social conditions of the production and dissemination of mortality data in French nursing homes in a period of strong uncertainty. The web of interactions between agencies of public health generates vagueness and uncertainty, but also weak and fragile data, in a period nevertheless marked by the centralization of power. The fragility of mortality data is mirrored by the fragility of the nursing home as institution—an expression of numerous fallibilities, in particular economic (lack of resources), symbolic (out-of-sight situations) and institutional (tension between health and social care).