TheBanyanTree: The biter bitter

[Peter Macinnis]

Everything is relative -- here is a little analysis I ran up this
morning, while writing a news story.  Share it, if the mood takes you.

The 808 SARS deaths worldwide, the world total up until June 26, are
equivalent to the gun deaths notched up in just 11 days in the USA,
and were minimal when compared with deaths from malaria. They were on
a par with the number of deaths from cholera in Malawi alone, in about
the same period that SARS was running riot. Each two days of the SARS
outbreak saw more HIV-related deaths in Zimbabwe alone than there were
from SARS during the whole period, all over the world.

Each year, 10.8 million children under the age of five years die of
disease. In just 39 minutes,  808 small people will die from malaria,
HIV, measles, pneumonia, diarrhea and other conditions associated with
infectious disease and undernutrition. Looking at it another way, a
good football crowd, 29,500 of them, will perish disgustingly each
day, and a large high-school full, 1230, will die each hour.  These
kids will never see a football match, or a high school, but they won't
appear in the headlines either.

It's probably best that way -- it might disturb our enjoyment in
reading the news.