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Why do articles insist on providing numbers with no appropriate context? What do the absolute number of deaths of 9/11 or absolute number of deaths in Viet Nam

Why do articles insist on providing numbers with no appropriate context? What do the absolute number of deaths of 9/11 or absolute number of deaths in Viet Nam have to do with this? Perhaps better comparisons would be: how many deaths are there in the world per day? Before and after the instigation of covid19? How many deaths due to pneumonia before and after? Has the death rate in other categories been reduced? Are there fewer accidents? Maybe we should just lock down forever because it might save at least one death due to accident? "On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero".

aaronbrethorst 6y ago
The absolute numbers provide context for people to compare this current tragic loss of life with past tragic losses of life. It’s an important caveat, though, that we don’t know the total number of dead from the Vietnam War. The numeric threshold we’ve crossed is for American soldiers killed. A number that includes the Vietnamese in that increases to the hundreds of thousands or into the millions.
ForHackernews 6y ago
I'm not sure why 9/11 or Vietnam are "not appropriate" contexts. They're both widely considered national disasters in which too many American lives were lost, yet neither one claimed as many as this covid-19 outbreak. Comparing to other sources of mortality is interesting, too, but if the question is "how many deaths is too many deaths" -- in the context of 9/11 and Vietnam the bar seems to be much lower -- it's worth reflecting on why that is. Is it "worse" for Americans to die needlessly in terrorist attacks or foreign wars than in nursing homes? If so, why?
DennisP 6y ago
Appropriate context: right now, daily US deaths from covid19 are about equal to heart disease and cancer. That's pretty high for a threat that didn't exist a few months ago. We try pretty hard to reduce heart disease and cancer deaths, but we don't social distance for them because they're not contagious. If we allow covid's exponential spread to resume, it will be our leading cause of death before long. Meanwhile, countries that did strict lockdowns for a while and used that time to roll out lots of testing are getting through this with little damage.
- pacala 6y ago
  If the countries you are referring to are South Korea, Taiwan and New Zealand, it may be that the rest of us have very little chance to follow suit. We are too interconnected and too diverse to counteract the exponential nature of the threat. At some point we have to make peace with ourselves.
  - DennisP 6y ago
    South Korea started early with a massive amount of testing. Asian countries in general have had a high rate of mask wearing and good compliance with social distancing measures. We could do this sort of thing in the U.S. If our challenges are more difficult, that's not a good reason to do less.
- glofish 6y ago
  The problem with your math there is that by and large, we are talking about the same people - only the timeline is different. It is just as possible that over a longer time period say a year the math will be radically different. We'll have fewer cancer deaths because the patient had already died of COVID. It is possible that a country has many deaths because up to that point it was able to keep large swaths of "terminally ill" people alive. Delay, isolation and testing do not actually solve anything. For large segments of the population the virus is not a risk at all, they can't even tell that are infected. Long term it is not obvious who gets out better, the population where the infection rates are high and they can reduce the crippling economical restrictions or populations where they managed to have no infections but the sanctions remain for years. History, in general, is characterized by surprising twists and turns where it was impossible to tell what comes next.
  - DennisP 6y ago
    To conclude that a lot of covid victims would have died anyway, you would have to show that the total number of deaths is up less than the number of covid deaths. In fact, we see the exact opposite: total daily deaths has increased by more than the known covid deaths. This appears to be partly from missing covid deaths (e.g. from people dying at home), and partly from heart attack and stroke patients delaying trips to the ER from fear of covid. But wait, you mentioned that "the timeline is different." Well of course, we're all going to die eventually. That doesn't mean we should just lay down and die today. Epidemiologists strongly disagree with you about delay and testing. If you lock down enough so the replication rate goes below one, you can get the virus down to manageable numbers. If you cautiously open with lots of testing, you can isolate the cases that show up, and tests all their contacts. On the other hand if you shut down without bothering to build your test and trace infrastructure, then you're right, the delay didn't help at all, because you were incompetent. The idea that we can just open up and people will happily go back to work and shopping while the bodies pile up is unrealistic, to put it mildly. We're actually extending the economic crisis, not shortening it.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
The comparison to 9/11 is motivated by "look how much we changed things and how much we spent because of that." If we changed that much for something less devastating, we should be willing to change/invest at least as much for this.

aaronbrethorst 6y ago

The absolute numbers provide context for people to compare this current tragic loss of life with past tragic losses of life. It’s an important caveat, though, that we don’t know the total number of dead from the Vietnam War. The numeric threshold we’ve crossed is for American soldiers killed. A number that includes the Vietnamese in that increases to the hundreds of thousands or into the millions.

ForHackernews 6y ago

I'm not sure why 9/11 or Vietnam are "not appropriate" contexts. They're both widely considered national disasters in which too many American lives were lost, yet neither one claimed as many as this covid-19 outbreak. Comparing to other sources of mortality is interesting, too, but if the question is "how many deaths is too many deaths" -- in the context of 9/11 and Vietnam the bar seems to be much lower -- it's worth reflecting on why that is. Is it "worse" for Americans to die needlessly in terrorist attacks or foreign wars than in nursing homes? If so, why?

DennisP 6y ago

Appropriate context: right now, daily US deaths from covid19 are about equal to heart disease and cancer. That's pretty high for a threat that didn't exist a few months ago. We try pretty hard to reduce heart disease and cancer deaths, but we don't social distance for them because they're not contagious. If we allow covid's exponential spread to resume, it will be our leading cause of death before long. Meanwhile, countries that did strict lockdowns for a while and used that time to roll out lots of testing are getting through this with little damage.

pacala 6y ago
If the countries you are referring to are South Korea, Taiwan and New Zealand, it may be that the rest of us have very little chance to follow suit. We are too interconnected and too diverse to counteract the exponential nature of the threat. At some point we have to make peace with ourselves.
- DennisP 6y ago
  South Korea started early with a massive amount of testing. Asian countries in general have had a high rate of mask wearing and good compliance with social distancing measures. We could do this sort of thing in the U.S. If our challenges are more difficult, that's not a good reason to do less.
glofish 6y ago
The problem with your math there is that by and large, we are talking about the same people - only the timeline is different. It is just as possible that over a longer time period say a year the math will be radically different. We'll have fewer cancer deaths because the patient had already died of COVID. It is possible that a country has many deaths because up to that point it was able to keep large swaths of "terminally ill" people alive. Delay, isolation and testing do not actually solve anything. For large segments of the population the virus is not a risk at all, they can't even tell that are infected. Long term it is not obvious who gets out better, the population where the infection rates are high and they can reduce the crippling economical restrictions or populations where they managed to have no infections but the sanctions remain for years. History, in general, is characterized by surprising twists and turns where it was impossible to tell what comes next.
- DennisP 6y ago
  To conclude that a lot of covid victims would have died anyway, you would have to show that the total number of deaths is up less than the number of covid deaths. In fact, we see the exact opposite: total daily deaths has increased by more than the known covid deaths. This appears to be partly from missing covid deaths (e.g. from people dying at home), and partly from heart attack and stroke patients delaying trips to the ER from fear of covid. But wait, you mentioned that "the timeline is different." Well of course, we're all going to die eventually. That doesn't mean we should just lay down and die today. Epidemiologists strongly disagree with you about delay and testing. If you lock down enough so the replication rate goes below one, you can get the virus down to manageable numbers. If you cautiously open with lots of testing, you can isolate the cases that show up, and tests all their contacts. On the other hand if you shut down without bothering to build your test and trace infrastructure, then you're right, the delay didn't help at all, because you were incompetent. The idea that we can just open up and people will happily go back to work and shopping while the bodies pile up is unrealistic, to put it mildly. We're actually extending the economic crisis, not shortening it.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago

The comparison to 9/11 is motivated by "look how much we changed things and how much we spent because of that." If we changed that much for something less devastating, we should be willing to change/invest at least as much for this.