Data visualization Visual Risk Literacy in “Flatten the Curve” COVID-19 Visualizations Timothy R. Amidon 1 , Alex C. Nielsen 2 , Ehren H. Pflugfelder 3 , Daniel P. Richards 4 and Sonia H. Stephens 5 Abstract This article explores how “flatten the curve” (FTC) visualizations have served as a rhetorical anchor for communicating the risk of viral spread during the COVID-19 pandemic. Beginning from the premise that risk visualizations have eclipsed their original role as supplemental to public risk messaging and now function as an organizer of discourse, the authors highlight three rhetorical tensions (epideictic–deliberative, global–local, conceptual meta- phors–data representations) with the goal of considering how the field of technical and professional communication might more strongly support visual risk literacy in future crises. 1 Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA 2 Virginia Modeling Analysis and Simulation Center, Old Dominion University, Suffolk, VA, USA 3 Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA 4 Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA, USA 5 University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA Corresponding Author: Timothy R. Amidon, Colorado State University, 1773 Campus Delivery, 338 Willard O. Eddy Hall, Fort Collins, CO 80523, USA. Email: tim.amidon@colostate.edu Journal of Business and Technical Communication 2021, Vol. 35(1) 101-109 ª The Author(s) 2020 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/1050651920963439 journals.sagepub.com/home/jbt