Several people that I know have been posting and reposting images like the following, which cite the fatality current numbers from www.worldometers.info. More often than not, people are posting these images in an effort to downplay the fatality rate of COVID-19 by comparing it to other causes of death.
First of all, I think it's foolish to compare diseases in this manner. I'm not sure why so many people are intentionally trying to deny that COVID-19 is a highly contagious disease that has a pretty decent chance of killing people.
Let me be clear, I fully admit that many people have overestimated the spread of this pandemic, and it seems that both the academic and scientific worlds are making up the numbers for their projections based on some sort of randomization algorithm. In addition, the press seems to have nothing better to do than to drag the country through thousands of hours of reporting, wherein the common denominator seems to be, "We have no idea what we're saying, but please listen to us anyway - because we desperately need the ratings."
However, there is another problem that I often see throughout the Western Hemisphere, which bothers me more than these numbers: we see everything from the perspective of what impacts us, so we tend to ignore things that affect the rest of the world. If you were to step outside the safety bubble of the Western Hemisphere, you would see that diseases like Measles, Polio, and Tuberculosis still run rampant.
In North America, we don't care about any of those diseases, because we haven't had to deal with them for several decades. As I have pointed out in other blogs, this has led to the unscientific Antivaxxer movement, and a completely illogical public distrust of our medical establishment, which is the best health care available in the history of humanity.
With all of that in mind, I would say that the following list illustrates what a lot of the people in this country are thinking when they see lists like those in the preceding image:
| COVID-19 | "OMG!!! WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!" -or- "IT'S JUST A HOAX!!! WAKE UP, SHEEPLE!!!" |
| Seasonal Flu | "Meh, those pro-vaxxer idiots get their flu shots, so I have herd immunity." |
| Malaria | "Meh, not in America. We have screen doors and fly swatters." |
| Suicide | "Meh, those people were unhappy. They just needed to cheer up." |
| Traffic Fatalities | "Meh, those are acceptable losses. I gotta have my wheels, dude." |
| HIV/AIDS | "Hey! That's a privacy issue! You can't ask me about that! So leave me alone! Or leave them alone! Or, whatever...!" |
| Alcohol | "Meh, Prohibition was sooooooo bad for the country. Besides, I'm not an alcoholic. I can quit drinking anytime." |
| Cancer | "Meh, not gonna happen to me. Got any cigarettes?" |
| Hunger | "Meh, there's like a McDonald's or Starbucks on every corner. So what's the deal?" |
| Abortion | "MY BODY!!! MY CHOICE!!!" |
More often than not, people in the Western Hemisphere or North America ignore the lists in those images for two reasons: complacency and denial.
- The cause of the complacency is: decades of successful vaccination programs and our excellent health care system, both of which are still the best medical services that the world has ever seen.
- The cause of the denial is: selfishness. People want what they want, and they don't want anyone telling them that they can't have what they want, whether that is harmful to themselves or others or the environment. (We live in a free society, and one of the downsides to freedom is: it teaches people to be irresponsible.)
In short, many people living in the Western Hemisphere believe that they have the right to selectively care only about what they feel might impact them adversely, and to ignore everything else; whether that means the suffering of others, or their poor lifestyle choices.
