American virus deaths at 100,000: What does a number mean?

TED ANTHONY AP National Writer The fraught, freighted number of this particular American moment is a round one brimming with zeroes: 100,000. A hundred thousands. A thousand hundreds. Five thousand score. More than 8,000 dozen. All dead. On Wednesday, the United States' official reported coronavirus death toll reached six digits. One hundred thousand lives wiped out by a disease unknown to science a half a year ago. And as the unwanted figure arrives — nearly a third of the global death toll in the first five months of a very trying year — what can looking at that one and those five zeroes tell us? What does any number deployed in momentous times to convey scope and seriousness and thought really mean? "We all want to measure these experiences because they're so shocking, so over