Every one counts. Each indvidual life counts. You matter. I matter. This is a hard concept 
to grasp when we broaden our horizens to attempt to picture 100,000 of us who were alive in January are now no longer with us. We are a nation experiencing mass grieving.
Associated Press National Writer Ted Anthony just put out an article with stark statistics that help us put this current loss in perspective. Each one of these people were our mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, doctors, nurses, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, veterans, caretakers in nursing homes, and many others who have touched our lives.
These are real losses to humanity. These were not imaginary people in a hoax to scam some system or another. The grief we are experiencing is real.
Here are some statistics that might help us better understand this coronavirus pandemic life ending results as compared to our past USA war, gun violence and 9/11 deadly history:
US Civil War – 655,000 from combat and otherwise
WWI – more than 116,000
WWII – more than 405,000
Korean War – 36,000
Vietnam War – 58,000
These deaths do not include non-USA deaths
Gun violence killed more than 37,000 a year between 2014-2018 in the USA.
9/11 took exactly 2,996 lives, a figure that coronavirus passed in April in the USA.
Beaver Stadium, seen often on TV as the home of Penn State football and one of the countries largest sports venues, holds 106,860 people when full.
The 2018 estimated population of South Bend, Indiana was 101,860.
About 100,000 people visit the Statue of Liberty every ten days.
A Disproportionate number of deaths are Americans of color.
Walt Whitman wrote of ‘countless graves’ of the ‘infinite dead,’ not as poetic metaphor, but stark reality. We are now experiencing this first hand. Our mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, doctors, nurses, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, veterans, caretakers in nursing homes were real people with real lives and real deaths.
Some of us do not deal well with reality. Some of us rather deny reality and pretend it
isn’t happening. Unfortunately this does not make reality go away. There is a better way to cope with unpleasant reality. Denying it does not stop this coronavirus pandemic.
Not dealing with reality, like so many of us across this nation are doing, will only serve to spike the number of dead among us, as if we weren’t experiencing enough death.
The warnings out in the public: wear a mask, wear gloves, stay six feet apart. Stores
and work spaces that are close now have barriers between people. Yet the deniers among us who I have seen still go out in groups, in families, in parties, in swimming pools and beach fronts. Just because we know our family and friends does not mean that they do not have, nor come in contact with someone who has come in contact with this deadly virus.
We have to remember to stay vigilant at this time. I encourage everyone worldwide not to relax the standards for fighting this virus which has come upon us as a deadly plague. Your life depends on it.
Because You Deserve To Feel Better