Every statistic is a story
It’s a hard few weeks for all of us. Personally, for me, it’s been the most frightening few weeks I have ever known in life as I saw the virus hit both my parents simultaneously and I went through the now familiar nightmare that many of us are living through…fighting.. for oxygen, for hospital bed, for ambulance, for their lives. Not knowing if I could even save them in time.
Finding meaning was tough. It still is. The most devastating aspect has been the complete uncertainty around the post-care. Even after weeks, there is still so much we do not know about the damage the virus has wrecked. Even as we take care of our parents back at home now, we know they are still fragile and hope is still a word I dare not think about.
As I tried to reflect on some of the questions that I was grappling with, this discussion (link below) I had with the Mentza team who are building an audio platform around deep, meaningful conversations, really helped me. The topic was just this. Every statistic, is a story. What does that mean for us in the current times?
Discussion with team Mentza on the topic
Meanwhile, being a student of history, I went back to the previous pandemics that world has seen over the last century or so.
The statistics show that the reported deaths have been lesser over the last few pandemics than what our ancestors would have faced in 1918. The time gap between the pandemics showed another interesting trend. Alternate gaps of ~40 years and ~11 years. That in itself might be purely arbitrary.
Now, see the picture below. 1918 had another global event that was unfolding. The world war. Besides the medical nature of the virus which could have caused more fatality, the travel and movement of millions of soldiers would have added to the spread.
A century later, our world is more connected than ever. And that does seem to make it easy for the virus to keep floating across all boundaries. But, our medical science is also more advanced. Vaccines were unthinkable in such a short period as they are, now. But, even that, for many, is still not really available. We have so much more work to do, on enabling the basic access for each person. Struggling to find a hospital bed, an oxygen cylinder, an ambulance, vaccine access, makes the current pandemic seem like a mockery of the times we are living in.
We can save more lives now. We need to save more lives. For me, moving away from the data, the biggest learning last few weeks has been the amazing kindness with which many people have reached out to help, to support, to comfort. If nothing else, that is what hope means to me, for now. There is a story behind each statistic.