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Big numbers are too much for the human mind to comprehend. An example: the best-selling book of all time is the bible (5B copies); the best-selling non-fiction book is A Tale of Two Cities (~200M). Both huge numbers. If you drove a Ferrari past every copy of AToTC...(1/n)
You& #39;d need to drive for 24 hours to pass them all. To drive past every copy of the bible, you& #39;d need to drive for an entire month. The human mind can& #39;t intuitively grasp the size of either 200M or 5B--or the difference between them. (2/n)
This matters as the death toll, and number of cases, of COVID-19 continue to climb. 144,000 people have lost their lives in the U.S. as of July 22. What does that number mean? We& #39;re numb to its magnitude. (3/n)
So, some context: that& #39;s 48 times greater than the death toll of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, or one 9/11 every day from January 1 to February 17. (4/n)
The average person knows around 600 people (lots of variance, obviously). The COVID-19 death toll is 240x greater than that number. COVID-19 has effectively wiped out the face-to-face social networks of 240 people. (5/n)
The death toll is large enough to have wiped out every citizen of Savannah, GA; Topeka, KS; Columbia, SC; Pasadena CA; and hundreds of other midsize U.S. cities. (6/n)
Or to have wiped out every single enrolled student at the Ohio State University PLUS every student enrolled at Texas A&M--two of the largest universities in the U.S. (7/n)
And 144k people could fill the largest stadium in the U.S.--Michigan Stadium--and then fill it a second time to 35% capacity. They could fill the largest arena in the U.S., the Greensboro Coliseum, more than six times. (8/n)
There are many other, powerful ways to show just how massive the number 144,000 is. (Noisy) forecasts suggest the number will approach or exceed a quarter million in the U.S. (9/n)
We can& #39;t let the magnitude of those numbers dull us, or allow the policymakers botching our response to the virus off the hook as those numbers escalate. (10/10)
(ugh, that should be FICTION)
