100,000 lives

It’s Abstract Thursday, and I’ve tried to find a way of representing the lives that have been lost to Covid - each tiny circle is a life. It’s not a bright, attractive image - and maybe that’s just as it should be. 

If only the idea of 100,000 deaths was abstract, a theoretical concept rather than a grim reality. And the difficulty is conceiving what this actually means - the number of people whose lives have been shattered by loss, as well as those who have died. 


There is talk of a memorial - whenever all this ends and we can actually look back on this rather than living through it. 

The faces of individuals appear on our TV screens - or did way back when the daily toll was less. On Radio 4’s Today, individual names are being read out this week - but how long does it take to read 100,000, and each day the number grows. 

Within this image, there are actually 102,400 tiny circles. When I started with my pens and pencils this morning, it would have been enough. By now 103,126 have died.