2 ms·

And if you look at deaths by drowning it dwarfs those numbers. Though people get worked up with terrorism, plane crashes and rare diseases.

• ogogmad 6y ago
  Deaths from rare diseases are "fat tailed". Meaning that if you found out there were millions of excess deaths in a given year, then a new disease is a lot more likely to be the reason than car crashes. Are deaths from terrorism fat tailed? Terrorists can get access to biological weapons, the electricity grid, the water supply, a skyscraper with thousands of people in it, the parliament building of a country... I think it is fat tailed.
  • cm2187 6y ago
    If a disease causes millions of deaths it is not a rare disease. There has been a grand total of about 200-ish cases of the mad cow disease cumulatively. Though it terrorized people for years.
    • ogogmad 6y ago
      Maybe you're right, but I heard similar claims about Covid and Ebolavirus when they were still rare. People were saying early last year that you're more likely to die from a car accident than from Covid. So your earlier comment reminded me of that. Perhaps I misunderstood you.