"A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic"

[rumborak]

Had to think of the quote when I read this:

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2013/11/study-estimates-2009-pandemic-deaths-203000

right after participating in a FB discussion about whether Dzhokhar Tsarnaev should get the death penalty (apparently the Feds are considering asking for it in the trial).
Either way, I thought it's just bizarre that a nation will mourn, and donate for 3 dead people, but will not even blink when 200,000 die of the flu.

EDIT: Hopefully not descending into some P/R discussion. This is more about how people are weird.

[Shadow Ninja 2.0]

Perhaps I'm just dumb, but which three people are you referring to?

[rumborak]

The ones that died at the Boston bombing. Since I was talking about Tsarnaev on FB.

[Vivace]

The media cares more about "whatever" celebrities getting arrested and less about atrocities and violence happening across the globe. That is, what makes it to the front page and what article is predominant on the page is my gauge for what the media seems to care more about. 

[TempusVox]

I don't think its that people don't care about the flu. The flu happens. Nothing we can do about it, but our response to acts of terror is that they are unacceptable. Period. My grandparents generation dealt with the attack on Pearl Harbor. I would say that most of those individuals had a subtle distrust of the people from Japan after December 7, 1941. I once dated a girl from Japan. My grandmother loved her to pieces, but if you pressed her until the day she died she would tell you she distrusted the country of Japan. You might call that racist, but it wasnt really. She didnt have a racist bone in her body, but the attack on Pearl Harbor was so profound for people of that generation, that those scars ran deep.

Same with people I know who survived bombings in the UK. Many of them still distrust Germany.

Now both of those issues were perpetrated by the militaries of the goverments that existed at that time, and not by jihadists, or fundamental idiots. But they were so profound after the events took place the feelings were the same.

And in America, we had no one alive that had lived through any act of aggression against us on our soil (with the exception of a small island a few thousand miles away). So after 9/11 everything changed in America. Everything. Our terrorist radar is still extremely sensitive, and will be until the last person alive on 9/11 is dead and gone. Its our generational cross to bear, and I dont think we'll lay it down anytime soon.

[Chino]

So barbaric. It's so rare we have one of these people alive. This kid's brain needs to be studied from here on out.

[TheVoxyn]

It's just the way that the human brain works, it's bad at comprehending large numbers. Imagine three of your friends. Now imagine them dead. Easy. Thinking of twenty thousand people is a different thing. It turns the situation into an abstract one, which creates an empathy gap.

Related to the bombing, Dostoevskys 'the Idiot' has a passage in which it is argued that the death penalty is more barbaric than murder, which is an interesting thought.

[puppyonacid]

I'm not sure you can compare the two.

If the flu had only killed three people in 2009 then that would also just be a statistic. If a "terrorist" had managed to kill 210,000 people worldwide I would imagine their would be a vast amount of international mourning.

With something like the flu - there's no malice or hatred; it just is what it is. It's still tragic but it's easier to reconcile.

With a terrorist act there's no easy way to understand why or how another human get's so filled with hatred that they manage to justify to themselves that it's ok to kill strangers.

If I had a relative that died from the flu then I'd be able to rationalise. If I had a relative killed by a terrorist act in an act of terrorism I'm not sure I'd ever be  able to come to terms with that.