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400,000

400,000 Dead from Covid 19 in the United States.

Back when Covid 19 first started, a friend sent me a confidential email that a friend of theirs had received.
My friend’s friend was a healthcare provider working at a hospital in the US.
The email was from a healthcare group to those working in hospitals.
It presented a myriad of situations/possibilities, and what these hospitals should be prepared for in terms of things like hospital beds, masks, ventilators, etc…

The numbers seemed ridiculous to me, at the time.

It didn’t make sense.
I remember this one, particular, email so clearly because one data points looked at three potential outcomes for how many people will die from this virus in the United States.
The three outcomes were based on how well America (and the health care system) responds to the pandemic.
The lowest number (best case scenario) was 400,000 United States citizens dead.

I guffawed.

“At least 400,000 people will die from Covid 19?”
It just seemed so unlikely.
It seems completely outrageous.
But, that number stuck in my brain.
And, with each passing week, it felt like this email of yore might be right.
How could it be right?

400,000.

And, like that email suggested, that was the best case scenario.

We’ve become numb to numbers in general.
We’ve become numb to the number of people who have died.
We’ve become numb to masks.
We’ve become numb to social distancing.
We’ve become numb to science.
We’ve become numb to reason.
We’ve turned a medical pandemic into a political one.
We’ve turned against one another in ways that I could have never imagined.

Who are we?

I’d like to believe that…

This isn’t about politics.
This isn’t about public health.
This isn’t about laws pushed at the local or national level.
This isn’t about how your local (or national) representatives handled a completely new, complex and ever-changing global pandemic.
This isn’t about blame.
This isn’t about picking sides.

This is about that number: 400,000.

In Canada (where I live), we’ve had over 18,000 deaths.
Globally, over 2 million people.

I couldn’t even fathom that 400,000 number back in March of 2020.

I find it so hard to see today.

Stay safe… and stay healthy.

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.