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More people die from it every year than Vietnam [Kind of off-topic] I'm guessing you mean by 'than Vietnam', 'than Americans died in the Vietnam war"? (Well I
by yesenadam 8y ago
More people die from it every year than Vietnam
[Kind of off-topic] I'm guessing you mean by 'than Vietnam', 'than Americans died in the Vietnam war"? (Well I think so. Apologies if not.) That's a pretty macabre unit. Can you imagine how a Vietnamese person would feel reading that? Maybe in Vietnam they say 'More people die from [something] every year than America' - meaning what they call the American War[0]. Wouldn't that sound super-weird. That's something like how what you said sounds to me. Only for them it would mean 1-3 million.
[0] or the Resistance War Against America.
edit: Downvoter, care to explain how I can improve my comment? Thanks.
- harimau777 8y agoThey are just using synecdoche. From the context of the comment and the shared culture of the audience people can understand what they are talking about. It's no different than how people in America know that if you talk about changes in government policy after "nine eleven" you mean the terrorist attacks not the sports car.
- nabla9 8y agoI'm downvoting because you are getting offended for others (I'm assuming you are not Vietnamese). Avoiding common expressions because you are trying to guess that someone might be offended is going too far in caring and politeness. ps. You could also use car deaths per year (somewhat similar number) but then anyone who has lost relatives in car accidents might get offended by using these macabre numbers.
- brotoss 8y agoYou're being pedantic for the sake of outrage.
- BeetleB 8y ago>You're being pedantic for the sake of outrage. Eh no. Imagine you're sitting in Canada and say "The opiod epidemic kills more people annually than WW II", and then when confronted, you say "Of course I mean Canadian lives in WW II!" Americans may only see 55000 deaths in Vietnam. The rest of the world (and HN is international in audience) sees a lot more.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- mcguire 8y agoPossibly a better way to put it is to simply point out that the war caused something like 1.3-4.2 million deaths. A similar bit of misfocus shows up in comments about the Holocaust, which technically refers to the 6 million Jewish dead rather than the estimated 17 million total.
- roel_v 8y ago"edit: Downvoter, care to explain how I can improve my comment? Thanks. " By deleting it.
- dang 8y agoPlease don't be a jerk on HN, regardless of how wrong someone is or you think they are.