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Comment by thelastgallon | Hacker News Reader

The article misses the most important point. Its not just the numbers, but whats preventable/actionable vs whats not. One of the easiest things (and the #1 cause) that we can work on is automobile accidents: Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of preventable death for people aged 5–22, and the second most common cause for ages 23–67

Old people dying of heart disease or cancer or whatever is not actionable. Sure, we can do lifestyle changes, but eventually old people have to die of something and its in one of those buckets anyways.

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Pretty much this, and to add what does not impact our rights. Take freedom of speech for example, self sensoring can lead to a safer albeit "less fulfilling" life, compares to a one where you dissent against the government (saudi arabia, turkey, etc ...)

>> Old people dying of heart disease or cancer or whatever is not actionable

"Almost half of cancer deaths are preventable" -- https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02355-x

600,000 people die of cancer per year, 40,000 people die in automobile accidents. Focusing on 40,000 automobile accidents to the exclusion of focusing on 300,000 preventable cancer deaths does not math.

Hm, but to news readers, how actionable are terrorism-related deaths really?

I would say less than heart disease related ones.

To policy makers, well, terrorism is actionable but so is diabetes. And that while diabetes accounts for a far larger number of deaths.

So I think there is real asymmetry if we look at the data from an “actionable” perspective.

People believe that we can prevent and pacify terrorism because it comes from a belief system that we disagree with. Diabetes is just caused by the instinct of eating.

Also people don't really "see" diabetes, news don't show picture of sick livers, people don't understand the science of it. Terrorism is easier to represent compared to diabetes.

Also people believe that we can stop being a terrorist. But we can't decide what happens in our liver.

Another big difference is that you can fight terrorism with the military, but not diabetes. So it's less entertaining and less "concerning".