Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think

Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling Page B

Book: Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling Read Free Book Online
Authors: Hans Rosling
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average number of deaths from natural disasters per million people over the last 25 years, on each income level.

    Thanks to better education, new affordable solutions, and global collaborations, the decrease in death rates is impressive even among those who are stuck on Level 1—as shown in the image on the next page. (We look at averages of 25-year periods because natural disasters don’t occur at an even rate each year. Even so, just one event, the heat wave in Europe in 2003, was largely responsible for the fourfold increase in the death rate on Level 4.)

    Back in 1942, Bangladesh was on Level 1 and almost all its citizens were illiterate farmers. Over a two-year period it suffered terrible floods, droughts, and cyclones. No international organization came to the rescue and 2 million people died. Today, Bangladesh is on Level 2. Today, almost all Bangladeshi children finish school, where they learn that three red-and-black flags means everyone must run to the evacuation centers. Today, the government has installed across the country’s huge river delta a digital surveillance system connected to a freely available flood-monitoring website. Just 15 years ago, no country in the world had such an advanced system. When another cyclone hit in 2015, the plan worked and the World Food Programme flew in 113 tons of high-energy biscuits to the 30,000 evacuated families.
    In the same year, vivid images spread awareness across the world of the horrific earthquake in Nepal, and rescue teams and helicopters were quickly deployed. Tragically, thousands were already dead, but the humanitarian resources that rushed to this inaccessible country on Level 1 did manage to prevent the death toll from rising even further.
    The UN’s ReliefWeb has become a global coordinator for disaster help—something earlier generations of disaster victims could only dream of. And it is paid for by taxpayers on Level 4. We should be very proud of it. We humans have finally figured out how to protect ourselves against nature. The huge reduction in deaths from natural disasters is yet another trend to add to the pile of mankind’s ignored, unknown success stories.
    Unfortunately, the people on Level 4 paying for ReliefWeb are the same people we asked about the trend in natural disasters. Ninety-one percent of them are unaware of the success they are paying for because their journalists continue to report every disaster as if it were the worst. The long, elegantly dropping trend line, a bit of fact-based hope, they think is not newsworthy.

    Next time the news shows you horrific images of victims trapped under collapsed buildings, will you be able to remember the positive long-term trend? When the journalist turns to the camera and says, “The world just became a bit more dangerous,” will you be able to disagree? To look at the local rescue crew in their colorful helmets and think, “Most of their parents couldn’t read. But these guys are following internationally used first-aid guidelines. The world is getting better.”
    When the journalist says with a sad face, “in times like these,” will you smile and think that she is referring to the first time in history when disaster victims get immediate global attention and foreigners send their best helicopters? Will you feel fact-based hope that humanity will be able to prevent even more horrific deaths in the future?
    I don’t think so. Not if you function like me. Because when that camera pans to bodies of dead children being pulled out of the debris, my intellectual capacity is blocked by fear and sorrow. At that moment, no line chart in the world can influence my feelings, no facts can comfort me. Claiming in that moment that things are getting better would be to trivialize the immense suffering of those victims and their families. It would be absolutely unethical. In these situations we must forget the big picture and do everything we can to help.
    The big facts and the big picture must wait

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