Emptybottle.org: Deathwatch

I brought this up in a Metafilter thread recently, and was, if not shouted down, at least soundly spanked. While there have been 321 deaths thus far as a result of SARS, the World Health Organization has recently mentioned that there are over 3000 children dying every day from malaria at the moment, in Africa alone.

That's a lot of dead babies, friends.

I will hasten to note that I do think SARS is a worry, and is not solely a media-homunculus, shoved into the spotlight to terrify and entertain us until the next Big Scary Thing comes along. It is a Big Scary Thing in its own right, and will hopefully be contained before it becomes Captain Trips.

Nonetheless, I thought a few illustrations might help to put things into perspective. If we set SARS Patient Zero have occurred on February 12 of this year, these are the way the numbers look as of April 28 2003, according to the WHO. Each tiny black dot is a human life.

Deaths from SARS, February 12 2003 to present : 321

Let's have a look at some more happy fun numbers!

SARS infections, February 12 2003 to present : 5050

5050 SARS cases

African children dead from malaria, February 12 2003 to present : 228,000

228000 dead children

You be the judge of where the real story lies. One hopes that SARS does not reach such massive proportions, and if it does not, equally hopes (with resignation that it won't happen, of course) that some attention will turn to the adults and children (who in Africa are dying at a rate of one every 30 seconds) suffering from malaria.

[I am indebted to vendian.org for the building blocks of the dot images, and this for inspiration.]

About This Post

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Well, this is a post to the personal website Emptybottle.org. It was posted by your genial host stavrosthewonderchicken on April 30, 2003, and is titled Deathwatch. It was published to the categories: Trippy Visuals, Man, and Uncrappy. In any of those places you might well find other similar things that will bring you Super Double Happiness.

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Comments: You got fingers, right?

13 Comments | 5 Trackbacks

1
Stu Savory said

Good point & good graphs. Now do a graph for the number of innocent civilians killed by the US in their war of aggression in Iraq.

April 30, 2003 1:49 AM
2
stavrosthewonderchicken said

Thought about something along those lines, but it was a bit offtopic.

April 30, 2003 2:05 AM
3
fishrush said

Just visited the WHO web site looking for mortality statistics. I found one page stating that 53.9 million people die each year, making the dots somewhat insignificant, but canât navigate the freaking site to find any more freaking information. My question is - how many people die every year trying to find information on the damn WHO web site? And, why do I think of the old band or great material for a modern rip-off of the old Abbot and Costello skit when I read some of some of the WHO headlines?

April 30, 2003 5:07 AM
4
adampsyche said

I heard this on NPR the other day. I too find it rather silly that everyone's getting their panties in a bunch over a six percent mortality rate. I guess African kids aren't very newsworthy.

April 30, 2003 11:03 AM
5
jcterminal said

every single time i visit a blog/journal and i see someone loudly proclaiming how dangerous SARS is, i quietly point out that each day more people die slipping and falling in their bathtubs. no one ever responds. :(

April 30, 2003 9:24 PM
6
sennoma said

Stavros, I double-dog-dare you to post that, complete with graphs, to MeFi, either as a FPP or a comment in another SARS thread!

May 1, 2003 2:44 PM
7
Elaine said

well, a 6% mortality rate can be pretty serious in a sufficiently contagious disease. the 1918/19 influenze pandemic killed 20 to 40 million (in a much smaller overall world population), with a mortality rate of 2.5%. (see http://bitworking.org/news/78) I was intrigued to read, however, that the main method of preventing malaria is sleeping under insecticide-treated nets. if only all diseases were that straightforward to deal with.

May 1, 2003 8:15 PM
8
fair said

Now do a graph for the number of innocent civilians killed by the US in their war of aggression in Iraq. And add a graph for the iraq civilians killed and tortured under saddam. Since we care, and, you know, to be fair.

May 2, 2003 1:03 PM
9
stavrosthewonderchicken said

...yeah, and a graph of how many illegal detentions have been done by the US government, too! And on, and on. My point, such as she was, has been well missed by some. Sigh. Ah well.

May 2, 2003 3:36 PM
10
stavrosthewonderchicken said

And Senn, I wouldn't dare self-link in a front page post. Feel free to do it yourself, though, mate! ;-)

May 3, 2003 2:38 AM
11
The Dynamic Driveler said

Well done Stavros. I just heard the other day that tyere is a big push on now to start using DDT in Africa as it is the only thing they have that will effectively combat malaris deaths. Apparantly where they have been using it the death/infection rate has plummeted (iirc - 80% reduction but don't quote me on it) What pisses me off is the numbe of environmental groups who are up in arms against the use of DDT in Africa - listened to a long rant about it on CHC Radio the other day. Fair enough if you have a reasonable, affordable, accessible and equally effective alternative to put forth, but they don't. I guess they would rather see those 3000 children dying every day or else they just don't give a shit.

May 5, 2003 9:52 AM
12
Earl mardle said

Great set of images and, as usual, a load of other comparisons waiting to be done. One point of issue with Dynamic above. The big problem with DDT is not that it gets used, but how it gets used. Impregnated mozzie nets is one thing (anyone done any longitudinal studies on birth defects in the children of people who sleep in a DDT environment as children?) but random bulk spraying in the environment to kill the pupae and anything else downwind is NOT a good idea. Rachel Carson was not kidding. While we are getting squirrely about toxic environments, check this story from the Mercury news (Linked from the Agonist)

May 5, 2003 8:39 PM
13
ninepots said

Another great example of Fear Mongering SARS ATTACKS! Hong Kong where Fear is Still Funny

May 11, 2003 11:02 PM

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