Every Data Table
Every Data Table
[A data table is shown with eight years given. After each year is seven dots. At the end of these dots are unreadable text/scribbles. The table is slanted compared to the panel, so the top year is in the top left corner, partly obscured by the panel, and the dots end at the edge of the panel, so only very small part of the scribles are seen (resembling an eight dot). And at the bottom the year is close to the middle of the panel, but most of the year is below the panel, and only the last three dots are visible. Two years have symbols indicating an unseen footnote.] 2017....... 2018....... 2019....... 2020*...... 2021 † ....... 2022....... 2023....... 2024.......
[Caption below the panel:] Every data table from now on

This comic is another entry in a series of comics related to the COVID-19 pandemic .
It shows a future data table with one entry for each year from 2017 to 2024, so this table is made at least three years after publication of the comic (presuming it does not depict some form of advanced estimation of trends). The only discernable differences across the eight years are that two years have footnotes as in 2020* and 2021 † , whereas the other six years have not.
Sometimes a symbol 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. Comically, he doesn't mainly hope for this because he wants the Covid-19 pandemic to end, but rather because he doesn't know what symbol is used after the asterisk and the cross.
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 single-symbols such as the convention to use a double dagger (‡), the section symbol/silcrow (§), the parallel/double-pipe (‖) and the paragraph symbol/pilcrow (¶). Alternately you could just start and continue the series with superscript numbers (¹, ², ³ ...), especially when you discover a need to frequently clarify multiple and/or nested footnotes on each page, or save up a whole chapter of many such references to present them as 'endnotes', upon entirely different pages from the text being referenced.
Unrelated to the usage as English footnote characters, the asterisk and dagger symbol are used in German mainly as the shorthand genealogic signs to express "born" and "died" respectively (e.g. in encyclopaedias, as the German terms are three-syllable words for both and need to be shortened), so a person that is 2020(*) and 2021(†) would have been alive for only about a year, depending on the months. This symbology is also used on some tomb stones. An optimistic view is the "birth" and "death" of the Coronavirus itself, which would also understandably result in uncertainty on the next symbol in this order, for 2022. Pessimists in this context might suggest to use ∞, which is the symbol for infinity.
Similarly, in biology, species (or genus, etc...) that are possibly extinct are indicated with an asterisk and dagger is used to note the possible 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 Covid-19, which is not close to extinction, and it is also not about to cause the extinction of humans.
Randall, 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.
[A data table is shown with eight years given. After each year is seven dots. At the end of these dots are unreadable text/scribbles. The table is slanted compared to the panel, so the top year is in the top left corner, partly obscured by the panel, and the dots end at the edge of the panel, so only very small part of the scribles are seen (resembling an eight dot). And at the bottom the year is close to the middle of the panel, but most of the year is below the panel, and only the last three dots are visible. Two years have symbols indicating an unseen footnote.] 2017....... 2018....... 2019....... 2020*...... 2021 † ....... 2022....... 2023....... 2024.......
[Caption below the panel:] Every data table from now on
