More Americans have died from COVID in the last 9 months than the Americans who died in WWI, and we've surpassed the American South's Civil War deaths, and are approaching how many died fighting for the North, too.
116k americans died in ww1 with a 100m population.
271k died of covid with a 330m population.
One death is one too many, but we recovered from the civil war which was 600k+ deaths with a 31m population at the time.
Covid isn't the end of the world. We can recover. The world has been through far, far worse. Stop being a fucking doomsday prophet.
> One death is one too many, but we recovered from the civil war which was 600k+ deaths with a 31m population at the time.
> Covid isn't the end of the world. We can recover. The world has been through far, far worse. Stop being a fucking doomsday prophet.
Let's have a nuclear war, then. Sure it will cause massive death and destruction, but we don't have to worry about that because the Black Death shows we'll eventually recover [1].
Massive tragedies from that past don't free us from having to worry about similarly-sized tragedies in the present, but those acknowledged tragedies can help us acknowledge the scope of the current tragedy.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death: "The Black Death ... is estimated to have killed 30% to 60% of Europe's population.... it took until 1500 for the European population to regain the levels of 1300."
You realize the rhetoric of life being over as we know it is increasing suicide rates. People are literally killing themselves because they dont want to live in the narrative that life as we know it is down hill from here. What in the hell is wrong with you people? Yea, I dont like Trump that much either, that doesn't mean we just burn the fucking world or imagine that it's incapable of recovery.
When I say we can recover is strictly to keep your head up high and continue to do some good because it can payoff down the line. Giving up and crying about doomsday will lead to nothing but more pain and suffering. But I guess you want that since you're a nuclear war advocate.
Do you understand sarcasm?
> You realize the rhetoric of life being over as we know it is increasing suicide rates. People are literally killing themselves because they dont want to live in the narrative that life as we know it is down hill from here.
There's actually little to no "rhetoric of life being [permanently] over as we know it [due to COVID]" except as a straw man. There is rhetoric arguing for temporary sacrifices for the greater good, and also rhetoric downplaying or denying the situation to argue against making those sacrifices.
A proper appreciation of the seriousness of the situation is not "being a fucking doomsday prophet," as you said; rather it's the mindset that steels one to make the sacrifices that need to be made with the hope that they'll work.
Also you need to make your timeline bigger. Extend the timeline to Past the dark ages.
The initial poster (me) is talking about timescales much bigger than 9/11. There was a time where if your neighbor dropped dead from the black death it was normal. Right now most people don't know anyone who was even in the building when 9/11 happened.
Keep in mind the amount of car accidents in the US constitutes a mass slaughter on a scale far larger than anything you can comprehend yet you are ignoring it. There are plenty of things far worse than COVID deaths and 9/11 going on in the world right now... YET we are still more at peace and safer than we ever have been before.
Does that make you evil and heartless for completely ignoring how car manufactures and drivers are slaughtering people? No. It doesn't. But it does highlight the fact that you are using and throwing around numbers to raise emotions the same way the media does.
Just to keep things in perspective.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_Sta...
Both are about 100 deaths per day JUST in the US.
I'm not ignoring it, I've even posted about it recently[1]. A typical flu season incurs more deaths than automobiles cause. The former incurs about 40k, while automobiles cause about 32k.
Why do you have to turn everything up to 11 and call red alert, there's no need.
I also find it strange that I'm being accused of "calling red alert" and am told to "Stop being a fucking doomsday prophet"[1] for stating simple statistics by the very same people who are using statistics to drive their arguments. I even went a step further and stated hard figures.
If we're going to rely on a utilitarian metric for peace and human suffering, and use that metric to dismiss criticism of the status quo, what's the issue with using hard figures?
No you're deliberately calling out numbers that blows things out of proportion. 9/11 was deliberately used because it was a tragedy. Why didn't you compare COVID to car accidents which is the bigger more comparable number? Because you want to raise emotions. Don't pretend.
You're not a doomsday prophet but you are definitely manipulating the situation towards your own skewed perspective, you were dialing it up to 11, you're just back pedaling now.
If you indeed had something unbiased to say you would not have brought 9/11 out of nowhere to say that covid is like a bunch of 9/11s happening back to back because so is the flu so is car accidents. You have an agenda and you are promoting it with biased numbers.
> Well, I find it strange that people are easily triggered by reality, so much so that they want to drown it out, ignore it and think that those who are not content with the status quo should be "hit with a belt in the ass and told to stand in the corner", like the comment I replied to said.
Triggered by reality? Nobody is triggered here. We're saying calm down. You're the one that's bringing up 9/11 trying to trigger everyone.
Nobody is saying be content with the status quo, what we're saying is that don't push the panic button, we are not in a 9/11 panic situation... humanity is more at peace then ever before and the numbers show it when you look at the overall timeline of human existence.
I am saying that much of it should be drowned out though. All the news you've been inundated with 2 months ago is already outdated. You're loaded with an over dramatization of problems that humanity basically deals with on a normal basis and becomes useless and outdated within a week let alone a month.
Right now many/most vehicle fatalities were people fully aware of the danger of those vehicles and willing to use them. And most "gun violence" fatalities were suicides (people willing to die). In contrast nearly nobody "accepts" to be exposed to a potentially deadly virus.