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by kennywinker 263 days ago
I am not asserting a specific number. There have been between 65,000 and 680,000 gazans murdered by the idf directly and indirectly. I think it’s unlikely the number is as high as 680k, but there is absolute chaos on the ground, doctors and hospitals and records destroyed. We won’t know until the slaughter stops what number is real.

If you want to let the lack of a specific number hold you up while the killing continues, that’s up to you.
2 comments
dlubarov 262 days ago
If you're basing this on the Lancet letter about indirect deaths, that's an estimate that includes future deaths that could be linked to past events of the war. So "have been" isn't the right tense.

It's also non-peer-reviewed, and based on rather arbitrarily picking a multiplier of 15x from a range of past conflicts' multipliers. One author described the figure as "purely illustrative" in a now-deleted tweet.

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robochat 261 days ago
They took a multiplier of 5x (4 indirect deaths for every direct death) and stated that this was conservative given studies of previous conflicts.
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amscanne 263 days ago
I mean sure, you are just asserting a range. It is also true that there have been between 0 and 2,000,000 gazans killed by the IDF, but this fact does not do anything useful in discussing the issue. (And just like the 680,000 gazans "murdered by the IDF" it is nearly impossible to be accurate, fabrication because it defies reality.)
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kennywinker 262 days ago
Sure 0-2mil is possible, as is all the atoms in your body aligning and allowing you to step thru a wall.

But those who are well informed agree it the data supports a number above 45k, probably above 65k, and the highest estimate published is 680k. If we use a higher number we are just making shit up. If we use a lower number we are choosing to ignore a data point without a specific reason to write it off. “It defies reality” isn’t an actual reason - it’s just an assertion that it’s wrong. Neither is “wouldn’t the GMH cite higher numbers?” - how would you confirm that 1/3 of people in your city are still alive if people are scattered, communication is down, and an unknown number of people have fled?

but either way, the tens of thousands of innocents killed and the complete destruction of the infrastructure of gaza is appalling - and arguing about specific numbers is pretty pointless if we don’t agree on that.

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amscanne 262 days ago
You are missing my point. To me it seems like 680k is just making shit up. Why is this reasonable? I can't even find what this "data point" is based on, so I'm not sure what I am supposedly ignoring! Just say where it is coming from, that isn't a person throwing out a random number.

I would love to be "well-informed", but how can I get there with hearsay?

> Neither is “wouldn’t the GMH cite higher numbers?” - how would you confirm that 1/3 of people in your city are still alive if people are scattered, communication is down, and an unknown number of people have fled?

Once again, the 68k figure is not confirmed! This is already an estimate. The figure for confirmed identifies is much lower, around ~35k. So this is a totally false argument. I'm not saying the estimate is wrong, I'm just saying that if there was a reason for the estimate to be 1/3 of people in Gaza, that's what they would say.

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dlubarov 261 days ago
The 680k estimate is from [1], which essentially

- begins with the high estimate from [2], which uses some very questionable data (like WhatApp chats) to argue that most deaths were not counted by GHM

- extrapolates it to the present, as if the casualty rate were a constant

- multiplies it by 5, which was the multipler that was somewhat arbitrarily picked in that Lancet letter [3]

- forgets that this includes future deaths (attributable to past conflict events), and uses the past tense as if all these supposed indirect deaths already occurred

They also end up with an estimate of "about 380,000 under-five-year-old infant" deaths, which seems unlikely since there were never more than about ~340k children under five in the strip.

Overall, it's about as believable as that letter which claimed Hamas was under-reporting starvations by over three orders of magnitude [4].

[1] https://arena.org.au/politics-of-counting-gazas-dead/

[2] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

[3] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42209193

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