Where are those who should lead us in mourning?

You could lose yourself in the numbers, trying to explain how Niagara suffered in January thanks to COVID-19.

If you are keeping track of COVID milestones, Niagara passed another Friday when it officially topped 300 deaths. Eight more were added to Thursday’s count, bringing the total to 307.

This month alone, at least 165 residents have died — that’s far more than the 142 lives lost between midmarch and the end of 2020.

On New Year’s Eve, the region reported 687 active cases of the coronavirus. On Friday, we had 1,222 cases, nearly double. And that’s progress, since just a week earlier we were at 1,501.

By way of comparison, the City of Hamilton, which has about 130,000 more people than Niagara Region, has lost about 60 fewer people — 244 as of Friday.

Sometimes it’s hard to see the scope of a disaster while you’re living through it, until at some point you emerge when it’s safe, bleary eyed, to look around and take in the damage and all that you’ve lost.

Is it possible we’re not at that point yet? Because we look around Niagara and sometimes wonder, where are the symbols of our mourning? Where are our leaders, putting into words the immense loss Niagara has endured, speaking for all of us?

If 307 Niagarans had died in a plane crash, every flag would be at half-staff. There would be black ribbons tied around trees and urgent talk of building memorials.

Where is it?

This isn’t to imply any of us do not feel the grief. There has been too much suffering, too many people have died. There has been more than enough pain to go around. And anxiety, fear, frustration, isolation, loneliness, anger, hunger, confusion.

Nearly as many Niagarans have died after contracting COVID-19 as St. Catharines and Welland are believed to have lost, combined, through the six years of the Second World War (311).

A large part of an entire generation of young Canadian men was devastated in that war, through death, illness or injury.

In many ways we are going through the same thing now. It’s a different generation this time, largely our elders and grandparents who are being lost.

Yet the loss is no less painful, especially knowing how COVID works and the isolation it has forced on people living in nursing homes and long-term-care centres.

It was good to learn this week that flags outside Welland city hall are being lowered, to recognize the loss Niagara has felt.

It was also, as Mayor Frank Campion noted, a useful way to remind people of what we are fighting against and how, someday, we can win.

“We can collectively save lives and ultimately end the pandemic by following the rules,” he said. “The number of lives lost and the speed at which they are being lost, particularly in our seniors’ population, is unacceptable too so we must act now.”

The scale of our loss is such that people shouldn’t have to do their grieving alone, or with immediate family in safe, socially distanced groups. But they have to.

There needs to be a better way to publicly count the cost than simply scanning the obituary pages.

The numbers are overwhelming; you can get lost in them. But these were 300 grandparents, wives, husbands, sons, daughters, uncles, aunts, friends, neighbours. And they’re dead.

Our community leaders have clearly, and rightly, recognized the losses businesses have suffered.

Our human loss is just as great.