Hi Bevin hope you're well.

First, thank you for reading and responding.

Your comment suggests you did not read the rest of the story--namely, the text following your highlight.

Perhaps you have; I prefer to give folks the benefit of doubt.

In any case, I'll share a crucial excerpt from the rest of the story, for those who haven't:

"673,585 human beings.

How many families? How many lives? How many stories? How many breaths? How many blinks? How many dreams? How many hopes? How many —

From now until the rest of our lives, we could come up with 673,585 different “how many” questions, one for each person. I’ll spare us all the imaginings."

The above text summarizes the entire premise of the story. It is quite literally the thesis I am arguing, not as an exasperated public health professional, but as a concerned American.

We all should care about the statistic, because while it may seem marginal and negligible upon first glance, it is massive when scaled onto a national population numbering in the hundreds of millions.

Most importantly however, whether the number is 6 or 600,000, it represents human beings, lives, stories, breaths, blinks, dreams, hopes, families.

Finally, I would like to offer a gentle correction:

Personally, I have lost several family members to COVID-19 in the past 18 months.

While I don't fault you for this mistaken assumption, because I have not been active on Medium nor other social media, and so do not expect my audience to be aware of the goings-on in my personal life, it might be helpful to refrain from doing so as a general best practice moving forward, as it's important to be mindful of the other human being(s) on the other end of our communication.

Take care, stay safe, and be well. Cheers!

Farooq