To put it in perspective

200k Americans dead from Covid

It would take a week to speak each name aloud.

If you laid each of the 200k coffins end to end, it would be only a little less than 250 miles long.

Further than the distance from Washington DC to New York.

The Covid dead are 2/3rds the amount of people who actually attended Trump's inauguration.

Or about 3x the size of the baseball stadium that boo'd Trump.

And only 70k less than ALL the Amish people in the United States.

Humans don't do big numbers well. We can work with them, we can play with them...

but we have a HARD TIME CONCEPTUALIZING THEM

You can't *really* picture 200k in any meaningful sense without comparisons. And even then...even then...we kinda fail at this.

More than kinda.

That's why playing games with numbers is so easy.

4 out of 5 dentists recommend this toothpaste!

Compared to what? Rocks? As a professor of mine once demanded.

1% seems low. But 1% odds of winning a big money lottery would be huge. Also unacceptable risk of dying in ...

MOST circumstances to MOST of us, when that's really understood.

100 people here ready to skydive. One of you...won't have a shute.

Everyone ready?

Wait? No? Why not?

Yet people take 1% risk of death on ...quite a few things that they don't even really fucking value, because they do not understand the maths.

NOT. REALLY.

It's hard to have an educated or informed opinion in such realms because human brains don't WORK THAT WAY.

If a grocery clerk checked out 100 people a day, it would take them 7 years to interact with 200,000 people.

And ... ain't nobody checking out 100 people a day.

The town I MOSTLY grew up in, which felt very 'small town'...had 50k people. It had ...um 3 ...maybe 4? public elementary schools. Which is a lot. And multiple private schools (1 catholic, 1 lutheran, some others)

I was born in a city of millions. MILLIONS.

200k is 4x the city I knew as a kid, which while it felt 'small town-y' ...

I couldn't tell you the names of everyone in my grade school class despite the fact that we advanced together each year. Like one of them was in the papers for a big scandal a few years ago...

And I mean huge scandal *snerk*

And my mom had to point out HE WAS IN MY CLASS when I was like 'holy shit he went to the same elementary school we did'

I only *vaguely* remember him.

And we had like 30 kids.

Now, you're probably better than me on that. I suck with names, great with faces (does not help online lemme tell you).

But I know some people who can't remember every teacher they had. And you'd think....

And this is just the numbers game.

Think about the loss of someone you really loved. If you haven't experienced that, you will someday. It sucks, I don't recommend.

200k is ... so much pain. So much misery and heartbreak. And for many not over soon. Children are orphaned.

And maybe thank goodness we can't conceive of that pain or we'd all be walking around like the Crow or Ghost Rider had fucked us up.

Because that number is MUCH greater than 200k

The dead are beyond any additional pain. And believe me, I find that a comfort myself.

It's the living who loved that now bear the agony of loss. And that number is millions.

And it wasn't that this wasn't avoidable. Or rather it's not JUST that this was all...

avoidable.

No.

It was a choice to allow to happen, because Trump's administrate felt it would benefit them and the GOP politically.

A choice.

How we're not ALL in the streets...beyond me