However, if you account for the difference in global population, the Titanic disaster looks worse. There's many times more humans on the planet now than there were in 1911.
1910 -> 1.7 billons
1987 -> 5.0 billons (2.9x)
2002 -> 6.2 billons (3.6X)
2006 -> 6.5 billons (3.8X)
So the 1987 case is still worse after adjusting for the global population.
Coupled with the absurdity of a situation where the ship sinks slowly and people drown due to lack of lifeboats (among other things).
Which leads to my other favorite modern myth that we never built a bigger ship than Titanic since that disaster. It's interesting to point out that very few modern Cruise Ships are smaller than the Titanic.
Hell, I didn't hear about Doña Paz until today, despite being the largest peacetime maritime disaster in history and happening just 2 years after Challenger.
In short, people wanted to believe that we could just go into space and leave all the problems we had and mistakes we made on earth behind. It was a sort-of "salvation". The Challenger was a poignant reminder that this was not the case.
In a village, a murder is the talk of town. In a city, we don't even know.
So, yes; GPs point, while cold and calculating in the way only actuaries can sometimes be, was a fair point nonetheless.
(I agree, it's kinda silly metric.)
There's actually a lot of murders that never get solved.
(from a purely; sociopathic standpoint anyway)
Of course, in reality (at least the American judicial system), punishment is usually based more on other factors, such as motive. So premeditatedly killing an old man because you wanted to steal his stuff is punished more than killing a child purely by accident.