the numbness of numbers
When the Boxing Day Tsunami happened, in the first hours of the news, people I spoke with were horrified that early reports of thousands were dead. I told them the number was likely ten or a hundred times greater.
After a while, it just doesn't register in our brains. More people have died from Covid in the US than died that awful morning. Three times as many. And yet this county just wants to go shopping and party.
I'm having a difficult time wrapping my head around this.
Sure, no one has died on La Palma. And my geologic curiosity wants to observe. But it does make me very sad at the loss and the callousness.