The worldwide death toll from the coronavirus has passed one million.
The toll, compiled by Johns Hopkins University, passed over into seven figures in the early hours of Tuesday.
Dr Howard Markel, of the University of Michigan, said: "It's not just a number. It's human beings. It's people we love."
The professor of medical history, who has advised government officials on containing pandemics and lost his 84-year-old mother to Covid-19 in February, added: "It's our brothers, our sisters. It's people we know.
"And if you don't have that human factor right in your face, it's very easy to make it abstract."
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The milestone is more than four times the number of people killed in the 2004 earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean.
However, the true figure is thought to be larger owing to inadequate or inconsistent testing and reporting and suspected concealment by some countries.
The death toll continues to grow, with nearly 5000 more deaths reported each day.
Parts of Europe are getting hit by a second wave, and experts fear the same fate may await the US, which accounts for about 205,000 deaths, or a fifth of those worldwide.
Mark Honigsbaum, author of The Pandemic Century: One Hundred Years of Panic, Hysteria and Hubris, said: "I can understand why ... numbers are losing their power to shock, but I still think it's really important that we understand how big these numbers really are."
The pandemic's toll of one million dead in such a limited time rivals some of the gravest threats to public health, past and present.
It exceeds annual deaths from Aids, which last year killed about 690,000 people worldwide.
The toll is approaching the 1.5 million global deaths each year from tuberculosis, which regularly kills more people than any other infectious disease.
Lawrence Gostin, a professor of global health law at Georgetown University, said: "Covid's grip on humanity is incomparably greater than the grip of other causes of death.
"We're only at the beginning of this. We're going to see many more weeks ahead of this pandemic than we've had behind us."
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