Social media seems to be laughing its ass off about this tragedy, is it because the folks at burning man are perceived as frivolous hippies or something? Everyone I’ve ever met who was a regular burning man attendee has been a solid human being with strong morals, personally and financially responsible, a career. Upstanding members of society for sure. I guess all some people know is the sensationalized drugs and sex. A person died. This is a tragedy for an event that brings positivity into the world. Kind of annoyed.

  • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
    194·
    1 year ago

    OP: One person died! It’s a tragedy!

    Turns out that’s a better mortality rate than outside the event, not much of a tragedy, more of them would have died if they hadn’t went to the event!

    • syllabic@lemmy.world
      53·
      1 year ago

      Outside the event includes people in their 90s dying of old age in hospitals

      Generally the demographic that attends burning man skews younger which is inherently less likely to die

      • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
        111·
        1 year ago

        I included a link to the real stats which you didn’t check and just with people up to their 40s the mortality rate is high enough that you would expect more people to die during that week…

        Heck, let’s look at the stats for 2019 so COVID isn’t taken in consideration (pdf warning):

        https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db395-H.pdf

        The important table:

        Every group starting with the 25-34 y.o. has a mortality rate higher than what has been seen at Burning Man this year, 15-24 is at 49/70k/year so it’s pretty much par with the current death rate at the festival, so unless all attendees are 24 or less then they’re better off than the general population that didn’t attend.

    • Couldbealeotard@lemmy.worldEnglish
      34·
      1 year ago

      It’s a much higher mortality rate than the average event. More people died at this event then most events.

      • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
        101·
        1 year ago

        One event with 70k in attendance lasting a whole week with the same people in attendance all week and they can’t leave. There aren’t many events that can be compared to it and the fact that it takes place during an event doesn’t matter for this comparison as we’re trying to see how many of these people would have died if the event hadn’t taken place at all.

        Heck it could be considered good for the organizers, they should have had many deaths by that point considering the average mortality rate of the people present, they only had one!

        • Couldbealeotard@lemmy.worldEnglish
          21·
          1 year ago

          the fact that it takes place during an event doesn’t matter for this comparison as we’re trying to see how many of these people would have died if the event hadn’t taken place at all.

          Then you must be ignoring information to show the truth that you want the data to show. Events need to abide by strict OH&S guidelines. If an injury or death occurs due to the negligence of the event planners, they need to be held accountable. This means that a death at an event should be compared to other events because day-to-day life isn’t governed by OH&S.

        • cubedsteaks@lemmy.today
          1·
          1 year ago

          I saw a long post about this on tumblr and they were saying something like, one person dies a year on the playa at burning man so we shouldn’t feel sorry for the one person who died this year.

          So dehumanizing. I was reading that whole post in awe of how fucking empty some people are inside. Like holy shit that’s cruel.

          • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
            2·
            1 year ago

            It sucks for them but if you’re not losing sleep for the tens of thousands that die of starvation each year then I don’t know why you should feel bad for someone who intentionally went to a festival in the middle of the desert and died of something (we don’t know what) during their trip.

        • 🐱TheCat@sh.itjust.works
          23·
          1 year ago

          LOL you’re really running with this line of thinking. Might people who plan to go to a week-long strenuous event in the desert lead to a sample that has some selection bias? For instance, selecting out the entirety of the demographic that is currently hospitalized, currently debilitatingly ill?

          In which cause you should compare mortality rates with another group like that. Not the entire rest of the age demographic (which has all those sick people you selected out).

          I don’t really care either way, just found this argument kind of hilarious.

          • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
            14·
            1 year ago

            You’ve got people of all ages there and the average death per year at burning man seems to be pretty close to one, some years even had three, some years had multiple suicides, some years had people die outside the premise from things that happened at the event…

            Again, nothing unusual about one person dying out of a crowd 70k during a week. You can be in the best shape of your life and die of aneurysm!

            • 🐱TheCat@sh.itjust.works
              1·
              1 year ago

              Do you have any hospitalized people there? Because the USA has 919,649 hospital beds. Anyone needing assisted living? Because the US has 810,000 people in assisted living. Now the 70,000 number doesn’t seem so big eh?

              My point is that ‘people capable of going to an event’ is already a helluva selection, especially when you compare it to the population that includes all those sick people.

              • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
                13·
                1 year ago

                Just suicides and unintentional injuries are enough to make it pretty close to 1/week/70k.

                Again, I provided sources in another comment, you’re just ignoring the stats and the history of the event because it doesn’t fit with what you want the event to be 🤷

                Heck, we don’t even know this year’s cause of death, might as well be a suicide or an overdose and have nothing to do with the weather!

                • 🐱TheCat@sh.itjust.works
                  31·
                  1 year ago

                  Haha I don’t care so much about burning man as much as this method you have.

                  So by your math, Somewhere like disney with 50k visitors a day is still remarkably safe as long as less than 10 people a day die there?

                  • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
                    12·
                    1 year ago

                    I used to work in a casino where we would get 6k visitors a day on average and we had two to three deaths a year. Just because most clients don’t realize it happens doesn’t mean it doesn’t. Same for Disney, some people die on the premise, some people die when they’ve reached the hospital, but yes, when you have that many people coming every day that shit does happen. Considering its size, Disney has medical staff on the premise (heck, we had medical staff for the 1500 employees and our clients) and they might even have their own ambulance service so as to not have to wait to ship people to the hospital.