
The front page of The New York Times for May 24, 2020 - boraoztunc
https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1264427825639063553
======
WilTimSon
Absolutely gutting to see. And this isn't even the full up-to-date list even
for one country. Considering how the government is responding to the virus
here, I'm a bit worried the UK newspapers will have to do multiple-page
spreads soon enough if they want to do the same.

To preempt the cynics, yes, ultimately, this gesture won't change anything. No
politician will look at it and say "Wow, we really should change our ways!"
and suddenly find the cure. But it's good to see the media stand behind the
people and give the time of day to those who are lost forever. It's a hopeful
message, if anything.

~~~
boraoztunc
Everything turned into numbers and data; X cases, X deaths. We all talk about
it so easily, check every day the changes but as far as I can see we lost the
connection between these numbers and what they really represent. These numbers
are human beings, and the slightest changes, one change even matter a lot.
This is a good reminder from NYT in my opinion that numbers are us, actual
people dying. Not some random computer-generated stuff. But of course you are
right, no human life can change the perception of a politician and the games
they play.

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gumby
In 2003 I asked the NYT to list casualties of the Afghan and Iraq invasions on
the front page but they told me they were satisfied to bury them in the middle
of the newspaper. It was only ever a few names at a time, and Even that not
every day.

Eventually they just stopped printing them at all.

~~~
oblio
I'm not trying to belittle those deaths and they should have put them on the
first page, but didn't 5000 Americans die in Iraq? At this rate Coronavirus
will kill 100 times that :o

~~~
docdeek
Deaths in a war like Iraq were entirely preventable - no choice to go to war,
no US deaths in Iraq.

~~~
dao-
Pandemics are preventable. Pandemics escalating domestically is preventable.

~~~
docdeek
Indeed, though the newspaper in question was all-in for the Iraq War initially
while it has never been cheering on the pandemic.

[https://www.theguardian.com/media/2004/may/26/pressandpublis...](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2004/may/26/pressandpublishing.usnews)

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dao-
Reminder that the US is undercounting, so 100,000 had died a while ago without
anyone noticing that milestone:

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2020/04/27/cov...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2020/04/27/covid-19-death-
toll-undercounted/)

~~~
soneil
What really boggles my mind is to consider the next "milestone". The US lost
116,516 in WW1. We're probably less than 2 weeks from reaching that on paper,
and probably past that in blood.

We passed 9/11 (on paper) on Mar 28. We passed Vietnam (on paper) on April 20.
We're now passing WW1. This is the true scale that's completely evading our
imaginations.

~~~
bitlax
Following World War I the Spanish (lol) Flu killed almost 700,000 in the US.

~~~
soneil
It’s somewhere around 400k for ww2. I’m really hoping these numbers don’t
become relevant. I was simply trying to make unimaginable numbers, imaginable.

~~~
bitlax
I don't know that they're unimaginable. Right now the death count is about
1.25 times the death count for the 2017-2018 flu season. At any rate it fits
within a context of many other illnesses and pandemics, and it makes much more
sense to compare this virus to those rather than deaths from war (though there
are discussions you could have about the direct relationship between the two
in specific cases).

I'm not saying that you're doing so here, but evoking the language of war is a
common rhetorical tactic. When you compare the deaths from this disease to
wartime casualties it causes people to analyze them in similar ways, when the
two have mostly non-overlapping causes, remedies, and knock-on effects. I
actually believe that's what the New York Times is attempting to do with
today's front page, and I think it's something to be avoided.

Edit: disregard if this turns out to be a bioweapon

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shirak_untel
It makes me wonder. What if the U.S government had information about a terror
attack that will happen in few months and thousands coud die from it, how will
they act?

Probably in a lot more serious way than how they act towards this virus.

The world will become a safer place if we spend more on science and less on
buying weapons

~~~
captn3m0
They'd empower the TSA to do more security theater. Much easier to pass, and
gets a lot more visibility than science funding.

~~~
gumby
They’ve actually done this, adding taking travelers’ temperature to the
theatrics!

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haunter
Good one that the NYT also pushed the don't wear mask propaganda back in
january/february. But hey people forget quickly

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RickJWagner
Also the NYT: The Imperial College study forecast up to 2.2 million US deaths.
(But that seems pretty unlikely at this point.)

[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/world/europe/coronavirus-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/world/europe/coronavirus-
imperial-college-johnson.html)

