Last March was a scary time. COVID-19 cases and deaths were rapidly rising. [Image description: Connie is a young adult with short blue hair. They are wearing a blue face mask and black long sleeved shirt in a crowd.] I was worried about my grandparents in China, who hadn’t left their house in weeks. Then I got a new assignment at work: updating the NPR COVID-19 trackers. Each week I had to check the latest number of COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. and worldwide. The numbers kept rising and rising. After a while, the numbers of dead no longer affected me emotionally. When I learned the U.S. surpassed 500,000 deaths in February and the worldwide total was over 2 million, I just felt numb. And it seems that I’m not the only one who has a hard time summoning up emotions when confronted with a tragedy of great scope. It’s a phenomenon called psychic numbing. To learn more, I talked to Paul Slovic, a University of Oregon research psychologist who studies this phenomenon. I learned that our brains typically process situations through gut feelings, not logic. So we don’t necessarily feel twice as bad when two people die, versus one person. And as the numbers of dead get bigger, the numbness usually grows as well. Statistics like 500,000 deaths are so large and incomprehensible that they may not elicit any emotions. This numbness can prevent us from realizing how serious situations are [Image description: a hand tossing a face mask into the trash with a thought bubble reading 'I don't think I need this anymore ...'] and then we’re not motivated to take action that could make a difference. [Image description: Connie stands surrounded by pop-ups that read: 'Volunteer to help here!' 'ATTN: Rally at city square, 5p.m.' 'URGENT: donations needed'] So how do we get around psychic numbing? According to Slovic, we need to first be aware of this phenomenon and how it works. Then, when we hear new information, we need to pause and think carefully about what it means instead of automatically feeling numb. [Image description: Connie reads a news alert on their phone in shock. The alert reads: BREAKING NEWS: Global COVID-19 deaths top 3 million] And we need to pay attention to stories about individuals — that’s a way to emotionally connect with issues. The war in Syria is a good example. From 2011 to 2015, about a quarter of a million people died. But there was almost no international interest. [Image description: a chart shows the rising daily death toll in Syria from March 2011 to 2015. ] Then a little boy whose family was fleeing Syria drowned. A photo of his tiny body on a beach went viral.  Donations to charities spiked. But about a month after the photo was published, donations dwindled. So images and individual narratives can shock us out of numbness, but they give us just a small window in which to act. Since my conversation with Slovic, I’ve become more conscious and deliberate about how I interact with the news. One step I’d already taken was to limit my intake. Instead of scrolling through Twitter endlessly and being overwhelmed with sad news, [Image description: Connie's hand sticks out from under waves of black water, flailing for help.] I subscribed to newsletters. Having less content to read through gave me more mental energy to digest the latest news. As Slovic suggested, I try to find coverage that emphasizes the impact on individuals. I want to know how they lived and what their hopes were. [Image description: Connie sits on an inner tube, calmly reading a newspaper on top of the same black water.] Then I look for realistic ways I can help within my own window of opportunity —  like making a donation. And I try to do so as soon as possible. I know that if I leave the act for later, I will lose my motivation. Try as I might, I haven’t managed to follow these steps all the time. It’s been a grueling year with multiple crises compounding on top of each other. Giving myself time to unplug from everything has been crucial. And sometimes it all seems so hopeless. There are so many people who have been laid off during the pandemic. What difference does sending $20 to an unemployed acquaintance make? But it does matter. It’s like wearing a face mask: If, at the end of all the pandemic, I prevented transmitting COVID-19 to one person, wasn’t that enough? I think that’s what I’m trying to do with this comic — reach out to you, beyond the numbers, to let you know that one small gesture is enough. And to let you know that if you’re feeling numb, you’re not alone. It’s a normal, human reaction to so much loss. But I hope that now you have a better understanding of how to deal with that feeling.