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The World is Finally Safe and We are Finally Terrified
“The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.” -Voltaire
"The proportion of people killed annually in wars is less than a quarter of what it was in the 1980s, a seventh of what it was in the early 1970s, an eighteenth of what it was in the early 1950s, and a half a percent of what it was during World War II. Genocides, once common, have become rare. In most times and places, homicides kill far more people than wars, and homicide rates have been falling as well. Americans are half as likely to be murdered as they were two dozen years ago. In the world as a whole, people are seven-tenths as likely to be murdered as they were eighteen years ago. Life has been getting safer in every way. Over the course of the 20th century, Americans became 96 percent less likely to be killed in a car accident, 88 percent less likely to be mowed down on the sidewalk, 99 percent less likely to die in a plane crash, 59 percent less likely to fall to their deaths, 92 percent less likely to die by fire, 90 percent less likely to drown, 92 percent less likely to be asphyxiated, and 95 percent less likely to be killed on the job." -Steven Pinker
Interestingly, many diseases have been falling for longer than we had vaccines or even treatments for them. The reason? Mostly sanitation and bug extermination. Plumbers, civil engineers, and exterminators have done more to lengthen life than doctors have.
All of human history has been ravaged by communicable disease. To give a pretty typical year, about 500/100,000 people died in NYC in 1849 of TB. In the US in the past year, about 160/100,000 people have died of Covid.
But people in the past didn't panic at this -- it was simply normal. Perhaps that's our future: Things are unbelievably good and safe, and we all are clutching our knees in a corner, shaking in fear.
“All of us who prize greater economic equality would do well to remember that with the rarest of exceptions it was only ever brought forth in sorrow." -
Walter Scheidel
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By Adam Mala
3.6
2323 ratings
“The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.” -Voltaire
"The proportion of people killed annually in wars is less than a quarter of what it was in the 1980s, a seventh of what it was in the early 1970s, an eighteenth of what it was in the early 1950s, and a half a percent of what it was during World War II. Genocides, once common, have become rare. In most times and places, homicides kill far more people than wars, and homicide rates have been falling as well. Americans are half as likely to be murdered as they were two dozen years ago. In the world as a whole, people are seven-tenths as likely to be murdered as they were eighteen years ago. Life has been getting safer in every way. Over the course of the 20th century, Americans became 96 percent less likely to be killed in a car accident, 88 percent less likely to be mowed down on the sidewalk, 99 percent less likely to die in a plane crash, 59 percent less likely to fall to their deaths, 92 percent less likely to die by fire, 90 percent less likely to drown, 92 percent less likely to be asphyxiated, and 95 percent less likely to be killed on the job." -Steven Pinker
Interestingly, many diseases have been falling for longer than we had vaccines or even treatments for them. The reason? Mostly sanitation and bug extermination. Plumbers, civil engineers, and exterminators have done more to lengthen life than doctors have.
All of human history has been ravaged by communicable disease. To give a pretty typical year, about 500/100,000 people died in NYC in 1849 of TB. In the US in the past year, about 160/100,000 people have died of Covid.
But people in the past didn't panic at this -- it was simply normal. Perhaps that's our future: Things are unbelievably good and safe, and we all are clutching our knees in a corner, shaking in fear.
“All of us who prize greater economic equality would do well to remember that with the rarest of exceptions it was only ever brought forth in sorrow." -
Walter Scheidel