Factfulness

Description

It was October 1995 and much to my dismay that after my group that night, I

was going to begin my long-lasting battle against worldwide misinterpretations.

“What is the kid death rate in Saudi Arabia? Try not to lift your hands.

Simply yell it out.” I had passed out duplicates of tables 1 and 5 from UNICEF’s

yearbook. The gifts looked dull, however, I was energized.

An ensemble of understudies yelled as one: ”

THIRTY-FIVE

.”

“Truly. Thirty-five. Right. This implies 35 kids bite the dust before their fifth

birthday out of each thousand live births. Give me the number now for

Malaysia?”

”

FOURTEEN

,” came the melody.

As the numbers were tossed back at me, I wrote them with a green pen

onto a plastic film on the overhead projector.

“Fourteen,” I rehashed. “Less than Saudi Arabia!”

My dyslexia pulled a little prank on me and I stated “Malaysia.” The

understudies chuckled.

“Brazil?”

”

FIFTY-FIVE

.”

“Tanzania?”

”

ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-ONE

.”

I put the pen down and stated, “Do you realize why I’m fixated on the

numbers for the youngster death rate? It’s most certainly not

as it were

that I care about youngsters.

This measure takes the temperature of an entire society. Like an immense

thermometer.