As languages go, I don’t mind the language of numbers. I do, however, think we’ve fetishized numbers as some sort of be-all and end-all that is dangerously illusory. Despite the universal historical practice of myriad forms of numerology, numbers a.k.a. data, aren’t the bottom line. The numbers for coronavirus have been startlingly bleak, haven’t they? So imagine my delight when a member of my household read that “113,000 people have recovered from COVID-19.”
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The latest buzzword by my lights is social-distancing. Honestly, it makes me laugh. The powers that be are recommending social-distancing as one of three strategies to slow the spread of the coronavirus at the same time as article after article in The New York Times laments that we are culturally in the midst of an epidemic of loneliness. Beloved, we’re already socially-distant. How many real friends do you have? My definition of a real friend is someone who, if I called them using my one phone call from a jail in Peru, would they move heaven and earth to get me out?
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