To avoid an exceptional death peak like in 2018, let’s pick a year not too far in time, not long before the outbreak. During that year only in Spain, There were 427,721 deathsAccording to the National Institute of Statistics (INE), 3,198 more (0.8% more) than the previous year.

Considering that a year has 365 days, to deal with all these deaths (by investing in the media or just the mental space in our heads) we would have to manage more than a thousand deaths a day: 1,171. That’s 48 deaths per hour. Almost one death per minute: specifically 0.8 deaths per minute. Of course, we have to stay awake for a year.

Naturally, not all deaths have the same significance, the same emotional impact, or the same informative relevance. Most of these deaths are from internal causes linked to advanced age. The thing about “dying before”. And to some extent, there should be no causes of death that concern us more than others.

However, according to the WHO International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, there are more than 8,000 things that can kill us. Most of these things have nothing to do with old age. And a large percentage is problematic.

Overall, however, our anxiety (personal or social alarm) and media coverage (personal or social alarm feedback) do not seem to focus more on causes that cause death, but less on. Or it is synthesized in another way: the perception of risk is the sum of danger plus scandal, which is far from objective analysis. Cause the problem is our way save the danger it is outdated and the way the media is reporting is exaggerating the scandal.

Paranoid sentry: amygdala

While there are other regions involved, for simplicity we can say that the amygdala is a region of our brain that serves, among other things, to activate fight-or-flight when danger looms. So the feeling of fear is produced by the amygdala. If a person does not have an amygdala, they actually stop being afraid.

Logically, the amygdala was very useful for our ancestors to get rid of snakes and other dangers. However, the amygdala does not take action in the face of risks it does not understand or unseen risks such as air pollution. And the problem is that the current risks bear little resemblance to the risks to which the amygdala has adapted. Therefore, although environmental pollution It causes 31,600 premature deaths in Spain and only one or two snakes a year, we fear snakes more than air pollution.

(adrianna geo/Unsplash)

Also, our hazard detection system is like a sentinel designed not to explode until the potential hazard is completely gone. But probabilistic risks never go away. In other words, if we are repeatedly informed by some media or media or political tribunals that the risk of being killed while walking down the street is extremely high, our fear is still there because often hours or even days are spent talking about it. murders in the streets.

Or terrorist attacks. Or natural disasters.

However, most murders take place in the area of ​​family, friends, and close friends. Also, in countries like Spain, the odds of committing suicide are ten to thirteen times more likely than dying at the hands of another person. So we’re talking about an average of 11 suicides a day. In other words, the person we should really fear is, ourselvesyes, therefore, for many developed countries and many traditional cultures, suicide has become a real public health problem that can no longer be hidden. Especially among young people.

Fear of feeding: media

“The wolf is coming, the wolf is coming!” to attract attention and to compareit is also the easiest to encourage bad decisions in society.

Let’s take the example of two major media outlets: New York Times Y Guardian. In 2016, nearly a third of all causes of death among Americans were due to heart disease. However, this cause of death only 2-3% coverage of the media. By contrast, violent deaths account for more than two-thirds of media coverage but less than 3% of all deaths in the United States.

Therefore, as British statistician David John Spiegelhalter has calculated, Norm Chronicles: Stories and numbers about dangerA single story on BBC News would take on average more than 8,000 tobacco victims, more than 7,000 victims of obesity, more than 4,000 victims of alcoholism… but only a few AIDS, measles or mad cow diseases.

The first global cause of death in 2019 was cardiovascular diseases. (Our World in Data)

Finally, as journalist Derek Thompson, the author Hit Makers: How to Succeed in an Age of Distraction: “The power of the press lies not only in informing and adjudicating on important issues, but in determining what needs to be addressed first and foremost.” Also, there is no conspiracy to misinform. It is not even a political interest that is relevant. What exists is mostly capitalism: In the attention economy, the more in tune with people’s hidden fears, the more audience it gets.

Caught in an emotional and statistical trap

This mix of the mathematical inability to absorb certain numbers or percentages, the endless ways to present them, and the need for the media to feed the scandal of some dramatic story in order to get a wider audience, a deeply biased perception modern risks.

As I explain in the book What will you not die of?We perceive it as more insecure as we live in a safer world, which focuses on analyzing the risks in everyday life and how the media unconsciously shapes them to align with our amygdala. Especially when it comes to some statistically irrelevant risks:

Most of these calculations are not done rationally. Also, irrational fear tends to upset the cost/benefit balance. Simply put, we are swept up in panic, mass hysteria, the dramatic news reported by the media struggling in the attention market.

Another thing that is very difficult for us to accept as a society is to use death figures aseptically to determine the benefits and harms of trying to save some victims over others. zero risk?. Or it takes an enormous social cost to achieve it.

Using data to organize (limited) resources to save lives doesn’t sound good, but it’s what we do every day, intuitively. When we arrive late for work and exceed the maximum speed limit on the highway, we tacitly agree that the risk of being killed in an accident is acceptable if we arrive on time in return. Or as Harvard University paleoanthropologist Daniel E. Lieberman writes in his book. History of the human body“Letting a certain percentage die from car pollutants or traffic accidents is a price we are willing to pay for the benefit of owning a car.”

So let’s go back to 2018 and remember that there were 427,721 deaths. But neither terrorist attacks, nor murders, nor natural disasters gathered together, they don’t even reach 1% of causes of death.

(Eli Solitas/Unsplash)

28.3% of deaths in 2018 were due to circulatory system diseases (leading cause of death in women) and 26.4% were due to tumors (leading cause in men). Among children under one year of age, 8 out of 10 deaths are due to perinatal conditions and congenital malformations (57.9% and 22.0%, respectively). Suicide continued to be the leading cause of external deaths with 3,539 deaths. It was followed by accidental falls (3,143 deaths, up 2.8%) and drowning, submersion and drowning (down 3,090 and 0.8%). 1,896 people lost their lives in traffic accidents, which is 2.4% less than in 2017.

These are figures far from the noise of the media. distortions of our amygdala. So all we have left is to keep doing the pedagogy and demand more rigor in knowledge. Especially in the time spent on each piece of information.

Of course, there is some reasoning, because data rarely kills the story, but that’s the way we need to pave the way. Perhaps one day it would not be so unreasonable for us to say that Western Europe was the safest place in all of human history, given the available data on murder. Or that the only way not to die is not to live.

Image: GTRES

AS YOU WILL NOT DIE

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