5 ms·

Saying we have a “9/11 event every three days” is an excessively emotional and alarmist way to frame what’s happening. 600K people die in the US of cancer ever

Saying we have a “9/11 event every three days” is an excessively emotional and alarmist way to frame what’s happening. 600K people die in the US of cancer every year. If we took your framing, that means cancer is causing a 9/11 every other day. (Edit: did incorrect math here originally) Please try to use emotionally neutral language when communicating to others about the pandemic. It has already been distorted and politicized in the public sphere enough, in both directions.

lvs 6y ago
In both cases, these are excess deaths that would not have otherwise occurred. That is not true of cancer. Your choice to downplay the comparison is as consciously political as GP's choice to point out the comparison.
- CyberRabbi 6y ago
  I downplayed nothing. You have further proved my point.
darkerside 6y ago
Cancer _is_ causing 200 9/11s every day, and people are freaked out by it. That's why we spend billions on cancer research every year. And if we could prevent cancer by simple changes to our lifestyle by wearing masks and social distancing, you can bet that most people (not all) would support it and look at people who don't with disgust. I disagree with your trivialization of these deaths. I unironically presume that you have little empathy for individual deaths due to gun violence, accidents, and other tragedies, since those are even smaller in scope than the enormous number of people who die of cancer on a regular basis. Edit: I also fell into the trap of not questioning your assumptions. 600k a year is 1,643 per day. So a 9/11 every two days. Closer to COVID in numbers than you presented. Still horrible. I stand by the rest of my post.
- CyberRabbi 6y ago
  > I disagree with your trivialization of these deaths. I unironically presume that you have little empathy for individual deaths due to gun violence, accidents, and other tragedies, since those are even smaller in scope than the enormous number of people who die of cancer on a regular basis. I literally “trivialized” nothing. Promoting the use of emotionally neutral language is not “trivialization.” Furthermore, the assumption that I “have little empathy for individual deaths” because I promote emotionally neutral language is both parody and shameful. Thank you for further proving my point.
  - darkerside 6y ago
    You exaggerated cancer deaths by 400x to minimize what's happening with COVID (and BTW, were at 1k deaths a day, which is creeping up to be similar to the cancer number). You could start with walking back that claim, which was blatantly inaccurate and misleading.
    - CyberRabbi 6y ago
      I did walk the claim back but even if I didn’t citing what I thought was an accurate number is not trivializing. The overall point remains true, invoking 9/11 imagery when talking about covid death numbers is emotionally manipulative rhetoric and it does more harm than good.
      - darkerside 6y ago
        Thanks for correcting. In my opinion, "emotionally manipulative" is in the eye of the beholder. So in a way, you're both right. As for the underlying question of, is it helpful? I think it does help to visualize the scope of a disaster which people are asking to have trouble comprehending. Like Stalin said, one death is a tragedy. One million deaths is a statistic.
- logicchains 6y ago
  >And if we could prevent cancer by simple changes to our lifestyle by wearing masks and social distancing, you can bet that most people (not all) would support it and look at people who don't with disgust. There's no guarantee that these things will prevent deaths; if there's no vaccine relatively soon all they'll achieve is delaying deaths. And social distancing is not a "simple lifestyle" change: it's a destructive, traumatic event that's destroyed more peoples' jobs, businesses and livelihoods than anything else in the past half century, and caused a massive increase in mental health issues and suicide: https://academic.oup.com/qjmed/advance-article/doi/10.1093/qjmed/hcaa202/5857612 https://academic.oup.com/qjmed/advance-article/doi/10.1093/q.... I'm going to assume you're an introvert in some ivory tower tech job that allows working from home, otherwise I can't imagine how you could have so little empathy for the havock lockdowns are wreaking on ordinary working people's lives.
  - darkerside 6y ago
    Yeah. Hacker News. Isn't everybody? I'm probably not much like you imagine me, but I do understand this is affecting everyone differently. That said, social distance is NOT a quarantine. It is maintaining 6 feet where possible and wearing masks. Simple lifestyle change. The fact that you are conflating it with a total lockdown, which IS very problematic (but sometimes still necessary) is part of the problem. Let's be grownups. Ideally, we quarantine for two weeks, followed by gradual reopening with actual social distancing. As long as people have hope and a plan, they can deal with a surprising amount of discomfort. If you don't get that, I assume you're a twenty something who's never had the patience to sacrifice your comfort for something much more important.
- ianai 6y ago
  The comparison of covid and 9/11 is pretty clear. I did not bring it up for political points. It’s a very significant and recent historical event. 9/11 represented an attack on the US people on homeland territory by a foreign actor. Pandemics have been suggested widely as comparable to fighting a war on home territory. It’s just not as easy to spot the damage because pandemics don’t send in troops with guns and bombs. They spread insidiously from person to person through microscopic viruses. We have to fight the virus on it’s playing field-the routes it takes between hosts. The deaths from covid have been spread out across the population enough to not make as visible an impact as 9/11. Which is precisely why comparing the effects of covid to widely known historical events helps build an impression of the size and effect of the event.
  - CyberRabbi 6y ago
    Again the case for the comparison of covid to 9/11 on deaths is factually weaker than the case for the comparison of cancer to 9/11. It’s emotional manipulation and it’s causing more harm than good.
    - ianai 6y ago
      Quote: “ The deaths from covid have been spread out across the population enough to not make as visible an impact as 9/11. Which is precisely why comparing the effects of covid to widely known historical events helps build an impression of the size and effect of the event.”

lvs 6y ago

In both cases, these are excess deaths that would not have otherwise occurred. That is not true of cancer. Your choice to downplay the comparison is as consciously political as GP's choice to point out the comparison.

CyberRabbi 6y ago
I downplayed nothing. You have further proved my point.

darkerside 6y ago

Cancer _is_ causing 200 9/11s every day, and people are freaked out by it. That's why we spend billions on cancer research every year. And if we could prevent cancer by simple changes to our lifestyle by wearing masks and social distancing, you can bet that most people (not all) would support it and look at people who don't with disgust. I disagree with your trivialization of these deaths. I unironically presume that you have little empathy for individual deaths due to gun violence, accidents, and other tragedies, since those are even smaller in scope than the enormous number of people who die of cancer on a regular basis. Edit: I also fell into the trap of not questioning your assumptions. 600k a year is 1,643 per day. So a 9/11 every two days. Closer to COVID in numbers than you presented. Still horrible. I stand by the rest of my post.

CyberRabbi 6y ago
> I disagree with your trivialization of these deaths. I unironically presume that you have little empathy for individual deaths due to gun violence, accidents, and other tragedies, since those are even smaller in scope than the enormous number of people who die of cancer on a regular basis. I literally “trivialized” nothing. Promoting the use of emotionally neutral language is not “trivialization.” Furthermore, the assumption that I “have little empathy for individual deaths” because I promote emotionally neutral language is both parody and shameful. Thank you for further proving my point.
- darkerside 6y ago
  You exaggerated cancer deaths by 400x to minimize what's happening with COVID (and BTW, were at 1k deaths a day, which is creeping up to be similar to the cancer number). You could start with walking back that claim, which was blatantly inaccurate and misleading.
  - CyberRabbi 6y ago
    I did walk the claim back but even if I didn’t citing what I thought was an accurate number is not trivializing. The overall point remains true, invoking 9/11 imagery when talking about covid death numbers is emotionally manipulative rhetoric and it does more harm than good.
    - darkerside 6y ago
      Thanks for correcting. In my opinion, "emotionally manipulative" is in the eye of the beholder. So in a way, you're both right. As for the underlying question of, is it helpful? I think it does help to visualize the scope of a disaster which people are asking to have trouble comprehending. Like Stalin said, one death is a tragedy. One million deaths is a statistic.
logicchains 6y ago
>And if we could prevent cancer by simple changes to our lifestyle by wearing masks and social distancing, you can bet that most people (not all) would support it and look at people who don't with disgust. There's no guarantee that these things will prevent deaths; if there's no vaccine relatively soon all they'll achieve is delaying deaths. And social distancing is not a "simple lifestyle" change: it's a destructive, traumatic event that's destroyed more peoples' jobs, businesses and livelihoods than anything else in the past half century, and caused a massive increase in mental health issues and suicide: https://academic.oup.com/qjmed/advance-article/doi/10.1093/qjmed/hcaa202/5857612 https://academic.oup.com/qjmed/advance-article/doi/10.1093/q.... I'm going to assume you're an introvert in some ivory tower tech job that allows working from home, otherwise I can't imagine how you could have so little empathy for the havock lockdowns are wreaking on ordinary working people's lives.
- darkerside 6y ago
  Yeah. Hacker News. Isn't everybody? I'm probably not much like you imagine me, but I do understand this is affecting everyone differently. That said, social distance is NOT a quarantine. It is maintaining 6 feet where possible and wearing masks. Simple lifestyle change. The fact that you are conflating it with a total lockdown, which IS very problematic (but sometimes still necessary) is part of the problem. Let's be grownups. Ideally, we quarantine for two weeks, followed by gradual reopening with actual social distancing. As long as people have hope and a plan, they can deal with a surprising amount of discomfort. If you don't get that, I assume you're a twenty something who's never had the patience to sacrifice your comfort for something much more important.
ianai 6y ago
The comparison of covid and 9/11 is pretty clear. I did not bring it up for political points. It’s a very significant and recent historical event. 9/11 represented an attack on the US people on homeland territory by a foreign actor. Pandemics have been suggested widely as comparable to fighting a war on home territory. It’s just not as easy to spot the damage because pandemics don’t send in troops with guns and bombs. They spread insidiously from person to person through microscopic viruses. We have to fight the virus on it’s playing field-the routes it takes between hosts. The deaths from covid have been spread out across the population enough to not make as visible an impact as 9/11. Which is precisely why comparing the effects of covid to widely known historical events helps build an impression of the size and effect of the event.
- CyberRabbi 6y ago
  Again the case for the comparison of covid to 9/11 on deaths is factually weaker than the case for the comparison of cancer to 9/11. It’s emotional manipulation and it’s causing more harm than good.
  - ianai 6y ago
    Quote: “ The deaths from covid have been spread out across the population enough to not make as visible an impact as 9/11. Which is precisely why comparing the effects of covid to widely known historical events helps build an impression of the size and effect of the event.”