Just Numbers......

It's almost August and the drumbeat of COVID statistics continues.....numbers going up and up every day. I listened to an interview on NPR the other day and the expert was saying that Americans are sort of suffering numbers fatigue. Most people still don't know anyone who has died from the virus and so it isn't personal to them. There is the debate/argument about to mask or not. The science keeps changing (as science does) and people are just exhausted by it all. She went on to say that when we face a short term emergency we can keep attention on the problem and work to avoid or stop it....but when it goes on for this length of time the human brain just sort of shuts it out. Then she gave it an interesting "twist"....another way to think about the numbers.

As of today 151,000+ American citizens are dead due to COVID-19. So instead of thinking of those individuals spread out all across the United States, what if you woke up this morning and found that one of the following cities with populations around 150,000 was wiped off our map.

Rockford, Illinois - gone

Springfield, Massachusetts - gone

Belleview, Washington - gone

Syracuse, New York - gone

Pasadena, California - gone

Patterson, New Jersey - gone

Savannah, Georgia - gone

Naperville, Illinois - gone
Dayton, Ohio - gone
Or let's lump two Wisconsin cities together, Sheboygan and Green Bay - gone

This image probably won't change how anyone looks at this American crisis, or change anyone's behavior....but it is quite sobering. An American city....gone. 

How many more?