Because we discuss death, disaster, and whats going wrong in the world, as well as our own country, I did a search attempting to find some statistics about "death". Oddly enough, I could find all sorts of statistics about deaths from individual "causes", deaths from "illnesses", deaths from "disasters", deaths from "war", but it was difficult to come up with any real numbers.
Every day, our news provides us with some facts about how many died because of this or that. Today, my newspaper featured an "AP" article about murders of "black youths" on the rise in the USA...
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/...
The articles offers this:
WASHINGTON — The number of young black men and teenagers who either killed or were killed in shootings has risen at an alarming rate since 2000, a new study shows.
The study, to be released Monday by criminologists at Northeastern University in Boston, comes as FBI data is showing that murders have leveled off nationwide.
Not so for black teens, the youngest of whom saw dramatic increases in shooting deaths, the Northeastern report concluded.
Last year, for example, 426 black males between the ages of 14 and 17 were killed in gun crimes, the study shows. That marked a 40 percent increase from 2000.
But, when I looked up "murder" statistics, here is one of those things I found by country, murder rates, per capita...and "Columbia" was on top...
http://www.nationmaster.com/...
Showing latest available data.
Rank Countries Amount (top to bottom)
#1 Colombia: 0.617847 per 1,000 people
#2 South Africa: 0.496008 per 1,000 people
#3 Jamaica: 0.324196 per 1,000 people
#4 Venezuela: 0.316138 per 1,000 people
#5 Russia: 0.201534 per 1,000 people
#6 Mexico: 0.130213 per 1,000 people
#7 Estonia: 0.107277 per 1,000 people
#8 Latvia: 0.10393 per 1,000 people
#9 Lithuania: 0.102863 per 1,000 people
#10 Belarus: 0.0983495 per 1,000 people
The USA came in 24th on that list of statistics, if you looked at the link, and wow, what a lot of people die each year just from "murder".
Honestly, I find even these statistics horrific, but how many people die each year, or each day throughout the world, from whatever cause. The link I found earliest on that offered that statistic came from "WikiAnswers", and they base their information on CIA statistics...
That number is 155,000 per day...and that is a statistic from 2005...
According to the CIA World Factbook, as of July, 2005, there were approximately 6,446,131,400 people on the planet, and the death rate was approximately 8.78 deaths per 1,000 people a year. According to our nifty desktop calculator, that works out to roughly 56,597,034 people DIE every year. That's about a 155,000 a day.
http://wiki.answers.com/...
Now, I have no idea how those estimated 56,597,034 people died in the year 2005, or the 155,000 per day, but I would assume that number, based on statistics has increased slightly, as the population numbers would have also increased, but I wonder how many of those 155,000 plus or minus could have been saved today.
Oh, is there something we could have done as an "individual"? Is there something we could have done as a "country"? Honestly, I am sure there is much we could have done, but when I look even here at home, and no, I don't mean the USA, I mean more locally, here in my hometown, I wonder, how many died today, what was the cause, what could I have done, how could I have helped, if I could...
Does it help me to know that as of today...
s of Monday, Dec. 29, 2008, at least 4,219 members of the U.S. military had died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
The figure includes eight military civilians killed in action. At least 3,399 military personnel died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.
The AP count is the same as the Defense Department's tally, last updated Monday at 10 a.m. EST.
The British military has reported 178 deaths; Italy, 33; Ukraine, 18; Poland, 21; Bulgaria, 13; Spain, 11; Denmark, seven; El Salvador, five; Slovakia, four; Latvia and Georgia, three each; Estonia, Netherlands, Thailand and Romania, two each; and Australia, Hungary, Kazakhstan and South Korea, one death each.
_
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/...
Oh, the outrage of it all....how useless I feel to stop the outrage...can I donate my way out of this? Can I protest my way out of this?...Can I vote my way out of this?...
What can we all do at home?