Cars aren't a contagious disease that grows exponentially.
You might think there's a big difference between 20,000 deaths and 200,000 deaths, but with exponential phenomenon you have to take logarithms, it's the difference between 4.3 and 5.3; the models were only off by 20%.
And if you look at it from a really high altitude it is practically the same number.
Or on a scale that only counts complete, round, millions - where 20 thousand and 200 thousand are exactly ZERO.
Just because point and percentage SEEM smaller when you decide to only count orders of magnitude, that does NOT mean that the resulting error isn't HUGE.
Had the same model been used to predict whether a certain building code will produce earthquake-proof buildings, rating them a Richter 7-7.9 instead of 6-6.9 - it would be a pretty fucking CATASTROPHIC error when that 7.0000001 earthquake comes along.
AND on top of that it was NOT a difference between 20k and 200k but a difference between 20,712 and 1,400,000.
Only about 70 times greater number. No biggie. What's an order or two of magnitude when spreading panic, right?
Also, it is CASES - not deaths. Than number is even lower, about half of that - 11158
And that's why cars.
Number of deaths by cars is a real, constant and present - ergo it is BORING. Not sensational enough.
But some strange African disease... Oh my!
Better lock up your doors, tape over the windows and don't leave your home unless you want to die horribly!
Like in a burning metal can, bleeding from hundreds of small wounds but conscious enough to smell gasoline all over you while those flames keep lapping towards you...
And your back is broken so you can't even kill yourself while you wait to first start cooking then burning to death...
even if you live in the West, if you weren't scared rigid by the Ebola outbreak, you didn't understand what just happened
No.
It means you're not prone to panic resulting from conjunction fallacy, applied to a strange, foreign, wild, African, deadly disease, running rampant as locals reject treatment, release diseased people out of quarantine and spread the disease everywhere...
BTW... Did you know that there are 250,000 - 500,000 deaths from that harmless disease called the flu?
That's just silly... who dies from flu... I had flu... nobody dies from flu.
Avian flu on the other hand... Now that's dangerous.
Number of avian flu deaths?
One 73 year old Chinese woman with an arm's length list of diseases to her name.
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/12...
BTW, average life expectancy in China - 75.
77 for women.
Ebola likes hot, humid climate and presence of monkeys and bats so the virus can keep on "simmering" all year long.
And it really loves open casket funerals where everyone touches and kisses the dead person.
It also loves rural areas with little or no medical resources or staff available.
It DOESN'T LIKE quarantine in colder, drier climates, stricter funeral rules and readily available cheap disinfectants... well... cheap in a developed Western country with adequate sanitation and medical facilities and staff.
As a bonus, people get sick quick and start dying really soon. And with no simmering bats and monkeys around... it dies out.
Hint: Despite every king and his uncle prancing around Africa during the colonial age, spreading diseases and generally doing stupid things like biting native women - no epidemic of Ebola ever made it to Europe.
Unlike flu.
But fuck flu. I had flu. Nobody dies from flu. Unless it is some conjunction fallacy flu - then it is deadly.
