Don't get lost in the numbers
Credit: Getty Images/Bloom Productions
Sometimes we get lost in the numbers.
The tally of the dead. The confirmed case count. The percentage testing positive. The doses of vaccine delivered. The number of shots given. The amount of money spent. The amount of money lost. The percent capacity allowed in a place of business. The rate of unemployment. The number of children learning from home. The number of empty ICU beds.
Most of the numbers are grim. Many are getting grimmer. A constellation of numbers defining a crisis.
Then you hear the voices. And you remember that the numbers are just an outline, an etch-a-sketch of a pandemic whose flesh-and-blood costs are really the story.
The voices came to Newsday's editorial board this past week in a deluge. Nearly 600, another number, by phone and email, Long Island's senior citizens responding to a request to share their experiences in trying to get a vaccine for the coronavirus.
Their stories also had numbers. Like 50, the number of minutes one person spent on hold waiting to get an appointment before the line abruptly disconnected. And 162, the combined age of a Huntington couple with medical issues who've spent hours per day for many days trying to schedule a shot, the wife now saying with mordant irony, "Before we get it, we’ll all we dead." And 84, the age of one woman who lost her husband to COVID-19 in March and now is frightened because try as she might she just can't land a time slot for herself.
More telling was the tone of the voices, their anguished timbre. Some were clear and forceful, some small and weak, mounting in a long parade of exasperation. One caller dissolved into tears. And it gnaws at you, because you know in your bones that even for all those who called, there are many more who did not.
They're all older, yes, but so many of them made sure to stress their independence, their ability to fend for themselves, the things they've accomplished in their lives, and the helplessness they now feel simply trying to get a vaccine. Many have done the research. They know where the sites are, they know the hours, some know the policies in other states as far away as Minnesota, they have help from their families, they just can't schedule an appointment. And anger duels with chagrin in dealing blows to their self-esteem.
There is fear, too, sometimes cloaked in wry humor, sometimes stated flatly. It's in the words they choose, the phrases they employ. They talk about dying before they can get a shot. About wanting the vaccine before it's too late. About yearning to see and hug their children and grandchildren. As one woman put it, "At my age every day is precious, and I'm missing it all."
There also is budding anger, at the feeling they are being left behind as the pool of the vaccine-eligible expands. Why, they ask, were 65-year-olds okayed when so many over 75 still hadn't gotten their shot? They all seem to know someone who did get one, 62 or 55 or 50 or even younger, and you can hear the swell of anger. And you understand the anger, and you wonder what will happen if the vaccine supply remains tight and the waits grow longer and the virus variants arrive that spread more easily and, heaven help us, are even more lethal. And you know these cries will only grow more desperate and might force some difficult decisions about who gets vaccinated first.
The numbers form the contours. The people tell the tale. All of us should listen.
Michael Dobie is a member of Newsday's editorial board.
Michael Dobie is a retired member of the Newsday editorial board.
