18,000 is 18,000. Restating it as a single digit percentage of the headcount is itself a distortion.
An intelligent and empathic enough person can use statistics to inform themselves while also remembering there are individual tragedies.
Statistics is necessary to be able to understand things that are happening around us. Otherwise the information we are getting would be largely meaningless.
Next time you encounter human suffering in your life - put things in perspective. Parent died? Well, did you know it’s just 1/8B people on the planet?