What’s a common “fact” that’s spread around that’s actually not true and pisses you off that too many people believe it?

  • PhenomenalPancake@lemmy.worldOP
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    6
    ·
    10 hours ago

    The deaths from both the wars going on in the modern day and infectious diseases like COVID are nowhere near on the scale that they were before, especially in terms of the percent of the world population killed by them. We haven’t had deaths on the scale of WWI or the Spanish Flu since those events.

    • Watermark710@piefed.social
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      10 hours ago

      We haven’t had deaths on the scale of WWI or the Spanish Flu since those events.

      WWII had 3-5 times the number of deaths (depending on whose numbers you trust) as WWI though? Like, it’s not even close. Even using the highest estimate for WWI (22 million) and the lowest estimate for WWII (70 million) WWII was more than triple the deaths.

      The global population at the time of WWI was ~1.8 billion, and at the time of WWII is was 2.3 billion.

      So in terms of of percent of the world population, WWI loses.

      I will concede that the Spanish flu was a lot worse than COVID.