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.”
Read MoreA frontline healthcare worker called me yesterday in high dudgeon, rip-roaring mad, ticked off, pissed, angry, mad as a wet hen. Mad mad mad mad mad. I can’t blame her. She’s a pharmacist in a major grocery store chain, and the management of the specific locale of her employment is wringing its metaphorical hands like a heroine in a melodrama about how to care for its employees. In short, they’re not. She has every right to be mad. That is, however, not why she called me.
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