Distracted by the virus

Almost every day the BBC’s One-minute World News provides the latest death tally from coronavirus. The short news wrap-up typically covers about three news items only, meaning that for the BBC, the virus has been among the top three most important issues for the world, daily for the last two months.

All the other mainstream media outlets are likewise reporting on every single angle to this story they can, including regular updates of the global tally and a country-by-country breakdown.

The impact of such intense coverage of the virus is widespread fear, even though pedestrians are still 13 times more likely to be killed by a car than by this virus.

Further, media-based concern about irreversible climate change and the ubiquitous sexual abuse of women seems to have died down. Those issues have become less of an emergency, and the sense that governments and businesses need to rectify straight away, has diminished.

While 3,000 people have unfortunately died from coronavirus over the past two months (50 people per day), here are some stats on some comparatively atrocious epidemics that we should also be informed about every single hour, in lurid detail, until something changes. One, 87,000 women a year, or 238 a day, are murdered. Two, 36,000 people a day are forced to flee their homes, with a total of 70.8 million people currently forcibly displaced. Three around 24,600 people die every day from starvation, and 820 million people don’t have enough food to eat. Four, 10,000 people die daily because they lack access to healthcare.

Five almost 6,000 people die daily from work-related accidents or illnesses, for 2.3 million people per year. There are 340 million occupational accidents every year. Seven, 2,191 people die to suicide every day, for 800,000 per year. Eight, 1,643 people die every day due to second-hand smoking. Nine, 740 pedestrians are killed on roads every day.

Ten, around 998 million women have experienced sexual violence (that is around 35% of women). Eleven, at any given time, around 40.3 million people are working in some kind of forced labor or marriage. Twelve, an area of forest the size of the UK is being destroyed every year. Then there are 150 million people without somewhere to live and 1.6 billion people living in inadequate housing. And more than 50% of indigenous adults suffer from Type 2 diabetes. Also, an estimated 560,000 people were killed in Syria by December 2018. And almost half of humanity is living on less than $5.50 per day.

Then there are the epidemics that aren’t even documented or counted. We know that three in 10 young trans people in the US tried take their lives in the space of a year, and that 40% of bisexual people have considered or attempted suicide there, but we don’t have global figures.

Excerpted from: 'All the Devastating Epidemics That Coronavirus is Distracting Us From'.

Counterpunch.org