Ah well we thought, as we punched the fax machine buttons with one hand, and coffee in the other in January 2020. This virus thing won’t last the summer, our scientists will see to that. Little did we know those buttons could harbor the virus. How innocently reckless we were then. When we spotted a post asking will COVID retire fax machines at last, we thought due time. But the author had another reason.
Fax Machines Caused a Communication Bottleneck
Fax machines caused a communication bottleneck when COVID-19 broke over unsuspecting Americans. New York Times Upshot journalists Sarah Kliff and Margot Sanger-Katz described paper feeds going ballistic on July 13, 2020.
A Texas laboratory sent hundreds of faxes spewing over the floor at Harris County Public Health department in Houston. But the biggest problem was officials could not automatically feed the data into their system. That had to type it in manually.
The data was also arriving on officials’ phones, private emails, courier deliveries, and even snail mail. There were dozens of duplicates and some belonging to other jurisdictions. Recycling them to the correct person added to the task.
So Will COVID Retire Fax Machines at Last?
BBC Future’s Ashifa Kassam asked the same question again on September 6, 2021. Twenty-seven months later and 175 years after fax machines arrived, health officials are still fighting the fax pandemic. Although there has been some progress in certain jurisdictions.
Fax machines – telecopiers if you like – arrived in a delighted America on May 19, 1924, although Europe had been experimenting since the 1880s. That was when scientists at AT&T Corporation transmitted 15 photographs ‘by electricity’.
Since then those machines have become as comfortable as apple pie and a pussy cat purring. Will COVID retire fax machines at last, we wonder. We do need to adapt to living in a COVID endemic. But we are inclined to think not for now, at least.
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