Case numbers, vaccination rates, deaths.

Some of these numbers have been mind-bogglingly huge, such as the deaths early on in the US, or the scale of the pandemic's second wave in India last year.

But in recent weeks, it's been our turn to watch numbers tick up beyond the borders of comprehension.

From a dozen or so before Christmas to well over a thousand, in Canberra alone? More than 45,000 in NSW? Surpassing 100,000 cases nationally for the first time on Saturday?

It makes our early efforts at stemming the tide seem pitiful. It causes numbers to lose all meaning.

Except that these numbers represent people - people with families, friends and loved ones, who may well be living in grave fear for their health and sanity.

It's becoming all too easy to shrug, and make vague, semi-intellectual preparations to inevitably contract COVID, and probably recover easily.

We're all vaccinated, right? And many of us have already received a booster. What more can we do?

When did we all grow so complacent about this very real - and still largely mysterious - risk of illness?

There is, of course, plenty more we need to do as we weather this latest, unpredictable and volatile surge.

The death last week of 23-year-old James Kondilios, an apparently healthy, vaccinated Canberra man with no known health conditions prior to contracting COVID, should serve as a reminder to pay attention to the numbers.

They represent people, many of whom are suffering.

We're not in lockdown, but we should be every bit as wary as we were in the pandemic's earliest days, when it wasn't even clear how it was possible to catch COVID.

Of course, plenty has changed since then; masks are ubiquitous, crowds have thinned, and it's rapid antigen tests, rather than hand sanitiser, that are in short supply.

We have tasted freedom, been plunged back into lockdown and back out again, and watched in horror as a tsunami - truly the best possible metaphor for this latest variant - of cases has engulfed the population just as we began to return to a sense of normality.

But learning to live with the virus circulating throughout the community - a scenario that seemed unthinkable even months ago - should not mean dropping our guard completely.

Several experts have already posited that official case numbers are not reflecting the real number of current infections; untold numbers of people are living their lives with no symptoms, and thus no reason to get tested.

It's tempting to surrender to a kind of fateful expectation; we will all likely catch the virus at some stage.

We have no way of knowing how each individual will weather the virus; the death of James Kondilios is a stark reminder of how little we still know.

We all have much to be thankful for, especially in Canberra; it's summer, school is out and most of us are accustomed by now to flexible working arrangements and stalled plans.

Things could be a lot worse, for many of us.

But for just as many, the unthinkable is upon us.

We should have empathy for all of those - the elderly, the unwell, those with unvaccinated children - who have plenty of reasons to fear what may lie ahead.