Menu
header photo

Project Vision 21

Transforming lives, renewing minds, cocreating the future

Blog Search

Blog Archive

Comments

There are currently no blog comments.

What’s the minimum number of trees to form a forest?

 

Last week, Argentinean health authorities declared an “epidemic,” after they confirmed at least 55 deaths due to what they call “Flu A” (that is, swine flu.)

What’s the minimum number of sick people required to declare an epidemic? Let’s suppose there were only 54 deaths instead of 55, would that still be counted as an epidemic or would health authorities wait for one more patient to die before they officially declare the epidemic?

Whatever the case, an epidemic was declared and, because of that, many public buildings were closed, movie theaters and restaurants remained empty, and the government changed the work schedule for public employees, so they could be at home with their children. And in some television shows, people could only seat three feet away from the nearest person.

All those measures (whose effectiveness is debatable) were taken due to 55 deaths in a country of 40 million people. Each death is a tragedy and we should all do whatever we can to prevent those deaths. However, what’s the point of paralyzing a country due to 55 deaths when in Argentina each year there are more than 8,000 deaths due to car accidents?

In fact, each day there are 22 deaths in Argentinean roads. That is, in two and a half days there will be as many preventable deaths in the highways as all the death caused so far by the “Flu A” epidemic. However, as far as I know, nobody declared an “epidemic” of highway deaths and there are just a few measures to prevent them. Perhaps the “Flu A” is just a novelty, while car crashes are all too common.

There are similar examples in other places and about other issues. For example, what’s the minimum number of casualties to declare that a conflict is indeed a war? During the eight years of conflict in Iraq and in Afghanistan there were more than 5,000 American casualties (not including soldiers from other countries or local civilians also killed).

However, during those same eight years, according to FBI statistics, in Los Angeles there were at least 8,000 violent deaths. Where, then, is the true war?

If people ask (and rightly so) for the end of the war in Iraq and in Afghanistan, due to the loss of lives and waste of resources, shouldn’t we see many more people asking with the same vehemence for the end of the killings in Los Angeles and in other American cities?

Perhaps, as in the case of the deadly car crashes in Argentina, we have become accustomed to such a degree to those crime statistics that those numbers have lost all of their horror and human dimension.

What’s the minimum number of death for an epidemic? What’s the minimum number of deaths for a war? How many trees form a forest? And how many people are needed to start a revolution (in the strictest etymological sense of the word, not in its modern and violence meaning? One leader and his twelve faithful followers?

Go Back