NUMBERS

I watch the news. Perhaps I should watch less, but it seems important to me to know what is happening in the world outside the little bubble in which we are required live, and to which we have now grown accustomed. The truth of the matter is that the news is much the same, morning, noon and night, from day to day, from week to week. And now, sadly, from month to month. It's all about the coronavirus.

The trustworthy sources, in my view, are the medical practitioners and the epidemiologists, whose words are tempered by scientific knowledge and factual data. When the President of the United States speaks, it's politics and narcissistic self preservation first; trust flies out the window. There are other political figures--I think of Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York--who manage to blend a note of optimism and compassion with the difficult truths about our current predicament, and to transcend the contingencies of political advantage. I have acquired a new respect for many of the nation's governors, as well as for those thousands of other public servants who work tirelessly for the benefit of those they serve.

If the news does seem repetitive with its insistent, almost exclusive focus on the coronavirus, it's the numbers that change. We have all watched as the number of infections has been growing, in our country and throughout the world; and as the numbers of deaths climb. It's not hard to remember the occasion of the first reported death in America, a mere two months ago--though there are reports today of unrecognized deaths far earlier than that. The number or reported deaths in America this morning approaches 45,000, and infections total over 800,000. If the suspicions of many experts turn out to be true, the actual numbers are far higher. 

And the numbers are appalling. It's hard not to be fascinated by the way they multiply, by the daily increases. It's a cliché to say they are "just numbers"--which is what people like to say about old age: it's just a number. But every number has meaning. Each number aggregated in the news is an individual human life, and each life lost a source of grief to countless others. Our compassion needs to grow in proportion to those numbers, but the natural, self-protective impulse is to allow ourselves to be numbed by them. Numbed by numbers.

Here's a curious etymological alignment. The derivation of "numb," in the online etymological dictionary dates it from c. 1400, nome"deprived of motion or feeling, powerless to feel or act," literally "taken, seized," from past participle of nimen"to take, seize," from Old English niman,"to take, catch, grasp" (from Proto-Indian-European root *nem* "assign, allot; take"). "Number" is, strangely enough, related, dating back to c. 1300, "sum, aggregate of a collection," from Anglo-French noumbre, old French nombre and directly from Latin numerus"a number, quantity," from Proto-Indian-Eurpoean root "nem"--"assign, allot, take."

I was struck by the word "take" in both derivations. "Assign, allot, take..." Numbness is deprivation. Numbers account for what is taken from us. Confronted this, the mind is prone to err, in both senses of the word: to wander, and to suffer in delusion.