I am going Numbers Numb
May 9, 2020. It is a lovely morning in the Bay area, California. Let me look back in time for a moment.
I was walking back home from the CalTrain station when I got a New York Times alert on my phone about the first COVID-19 case in San Mateo County here in California. My memory is hazy but if I recall correctly, this was early March — I could be wrong. But I do clearly remember texting my wife about “working from home” being the safe course of action for at least the remainder of that week — and possibly the next week — to see how things play out. It is now May 9th and 1.3 million cases of COVID19 have been reported in the United States. And that number is at 4 million known cases around the world.
It was on one of the earlier weekends into the Bay Area lock down when I poked my wife as I was reading a New York Times news article, horrified. I was telling her that NYT reported that 300 people died in Italy the day before. We both stared at each other, horrified. It was also the first time I felt my wife shaken up a bit — before hearing that news, she was somewhat optimistic that things would be back to normal soon. I wanted her to be right. It is now May 9th and nearly 80,000 (eighty thousand) people have died in the United States due to COVID19. And more than 275,000 people around the world are dead.
I called my parents in early February as the news of COVID19 was starting to dominate news cycles in the United States. I did this as I was on my way to work. They were planning to buy flight tickets for a summer-time visit to the United States to visit us, well, for the summer. I called them so that I could tell them to wait till the end of March before they even considered making the trip — let alone make international flight reservations. I clearly remember telling my father that I was worried about a breakdown in essential services and public infrastructure. He dismissed that idea, and said that this virus will burn up by the time summer arrives. It is May in 2020. India has been in a crippling lock-down for multiple weeks now, most certainly more draconian in its makeup than here in the US. And cases and deaths are rising in both countries. Interestingly, we were both wrong in that exchange — public infrastructure and essential services have not broken down yet; and the virus has not burned up with the advent of summer. We still have multiple months of summer left, and the peak of the heat will hit us yet. But hope can no longer be a strategy.
And I am convinced that the worst is yet to come.
I wanted to take a look back to where I was and how I was reacting to early news stories of COVID19’s spread. I wanted to do that because I think we are going numb with numbers — I certainly am.
In the early days of COVID19’s news reporting, the focus was clearly on the reported case count. As it should have been. Numbers first started growing by the 10’s daily, and then by the 100’s, and then by the 1000’s. I don’t remember when I forgot about the shock I felt at a single-day death toll of 300 people in Italy. I do remember moving-on quickly, because New Rochelle, and then eventually New York was starting to become the center of a global disaster — it was and is like a bad Hollywood movie.
I wanted some perspective because something strange is happening these days. I have stopped looking at and tracking the reported case counts for COVID19 worldwide and here in the U.S. I am now tracking the daily death counts, and how that number is growing on a cumulative basis. I see a similar thing play out on News broadcasts across all news networks.
I won’t speak for news broadcasters here in the U.S.
I will speak for myself. I am going numb with the death and disaster showcased in the daily COVID19 numbers that I lookup before sleeping every night. One reason why I am no longer following the case counts is because the numbers have gotten too big. They come screaming back to my attention when they cross major thresholds. The worldwide case count stopped me in my tracks this morning when I realized that they had crossed 4 million. 4 million people. And it is not just the patients themselves. That number represents — although poorly — the families of 4 million people. And we are not counting that number. There are 4 million people around the world who have fallen ill to this disease. I shudder, because I know what it is like to need an O2 tank to aid my breathing.
But the number that is really pounding my brain at an emotional level is the death toll here in the United States. It has skyrocketed towards Eighty Thousand. That number is a fraction of the 1.3 million people who fell ill due to COVID19 in the U.S. But I am afraid that the death count is a trailing statistic. It is what we are left with after the dust settles — and the rise in COVID19 case counts tells me that the air is still very dusty.
The acceleration of the death count is stunning to me here: 10,000 people died just in the last 5 days. That number spiked from 68k on May 3rd, to 78k on May 8th.
That number was at 17k on April 8th. Sixty Thousand people died in the United States of America in the last 30 days. My knowledge of history is weak — I was never much into studying or appreciating social studies. And I am sure that there were equally bloody summer-beginnings in years past around the world. But never have I lived through something like this. Such a level of death and calamity due to a singular event has been a first for me.
I can only hope that people who are already ill will make a full recovery. I can only hope that medical professionals still have more to give, and more miracles to work, to ensure that despite the mounting case count, no one will die. But I know that my optimism is deluding me.
The daily and cumulative death count is a trailing metric. It is a measure of how deadly this disease can be once you contract it. An overtly simplistic analysis suggests that the fatality rate is at approximately 6% (80k÷1.3m, times 100). That suggests that for every 100 new COVID19 patients, about 6 will die.
According to the New York Time’s reporting, the White House’s internal models suggest that with lock-downs being lifted across different states, the daily death counts will routinely register at 3000 deaths-a-day by June.
The worst is yet to come. And my mind is going to go evermore numb, with the numbers that are yet to come. So to gain some perspective on where I was when this started to go downhill, I thought I would pen this story down. It is a reminder for me to pay closer attention to the numbers that seem bigger than what the human mind can comprehend. It is also a reminder for me to relate those numbers to what they mean and imply in terms of human life.
This is not a time to go numb. This is the time to be very much alive to the worldwide situation that is impacting my life — our life — in a very real, and disastrous way.
It is time to face facts.
