Günter Grass, a famous poet, once said, “In statistics, what disappears behind rows of numbers is death.” This goes into the idea that when human suffering is converted to data, the gravity of those deaths is lost.

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1 dead                                                                                                                          

 5 dead                                                                                                              

 10, 50, 100 dead. 

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These are just numbers to us, statistics we see on news headlines. One death is not really one death. When one person dies, their loved ones' worlds shatter with them. A mother loses her child who she loved most in the world. A friend loses a laugh that will forever live in their head. A sibling loses the most important piece of their childhood. 

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So, 1 dead is never really 1. It’s countless memories and relationships that get buried with the person.

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Although death statistics had been around for many years, the intensity and frequency of the publishing surged during the 1940s, especially with World War II. Due to the large scale of deaths, it meant constantly reporting numbers. Death was no longer distant; it was something being consumed by the public daily. 

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Over time, reading the statistics became part of their daily routine. That’s all they had become, statistics. The longer we saw these numbers, the easier it became to separate the lives behind them. Death became a counter, not something we felt.

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In today’s society, we struggle to grasp the concept of death. This is because history is repeating itself. With social media, tragedies are minimized into short-form content for somebody to scroll past. We are in an age of information, and it’s all hitting us too fast to process. It may be almost 100 years later, but the outcome is the same. We see death all around us more than ever, but we feel for it less.

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Death, whether we like it or not, is everywhere. It always has been. And now, we are desensitized. This is not because we don’t care; it’s because we can’t process it all at once.

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In 2020, this became much more evident. Covid-19 broke out and killed millions. For most of us, this was the first time we truly experienced death on a massive scale. It was the first time we watched tirelessly for updates. The first time we watched the death toll go up live. Hundreds. Thousands. Millions.

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At some point, mortality became a part of our normal daily routine. And as it has before, history repeated itself.

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Behind each number was a human life, somebody who had become another statistic to be reported on. Someone with dreams, ambitions, and a future ahead of them. We knew this, but we didn’t feel it.

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Even now, our world is crowded with conflict and war. Communities are being displaced and suffering. Families are being torn apart and thousands of lives are lost daily. For many of us in Canada, this may feel distant. It is easy to fall in line with the idea that if it doesn’t affect us, it does not need our attention. This ideology can very quickly turn into indifference if we are not careful.

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We may be privileged, and we may be safe, but that doesn’t mean we should be ignorant. When we begin to see death as nothing more than numbers on a screen, we lose what makes us human. We lose our empathy.

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As a single person, you will not be able to fix everything. You may feel overwhelmed by the constant ringing of numbers. Though doing nothing is not your only option.

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The best thing you can do is refuse to look away and keep staying informed. Keep remembering that these are real people and not numbers. Care about what is going on worldwide. Speak up even if your voice feels small because behind each number is a story that needs to be remembered. The moment we forget them is the moment their lives disappear.