Numbers are really the only way to quantify this to see how things are going. That doesn't mean it's not bad for people who get it, just how else do you quantify it?
How you interpret the numbers is big though. I remember early on, someone pointing out that numbers were doubling "every three days" and if that continued, we'd have millions dead within a month. Well, of course it's easy to double numbers when they're small. If you have one death on day one, and double every day for five days, 32 people would die on day five. Sure, if you keep it going, you'll get into millions very quickly. Would anyone else be happy if only 32 people died each day right now (not "happy", but it's all relative)?
Someone saying "we had 10K cases today, we're doomed" doesn't tell the entire story. There are a range of results from positive cases. Are they 10k asymptomatic cases? 10k people who will suffer horribly for three months? 10k hospitalization cases? Future 10k deaths? Obviously it's going to be a little of all of those. But by only focusing on "cases" doesn't really tell the story.
Knowing the lag time is important too. Someone might say "sure, we had 10k cases today, but only 50 deaths". But the deaths will lag by 2-4 weeks (at least). So at the same time you can't just look at the number of deaths and say "it's not that bad".