a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment
wasoxygen  ·  1258 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Vaclav Smil: Pandemic Memories and Mortalities

From the comments:

    First world societies today see sudden death as something that should not happen. You see it even in things like workplace accidents - fatal accidents are way down (order of magnitude) compared to where they were 50 years ago. The Afghan/Iraq wars resulted in a 10th of the American combat deaths that Vietnam did. Most dangerous diseases have been reduced to the point that people are worried more about complications from vaccines than disease itself (you see this in the US even around a COVID vaccine, although that is also tangled up in politics). Most people living today have not had to face something like this as an adult, and they lack any reference as to what the risks actually mean. All of this is what drives (at least in America) our obsession with safety, which is at is most extreme around kids (the changes in playground equipment and layout alone are a fascinating example).