[UPDATE: follow-up post here]
There has been a huge reaction to the Japan earthquake in terms of media coverage, personal condolences and anguish on social media etc etc. While that’s a good thing I’m very dismayed at how much less support was shown in the Haiti earthquake especially considering how much worse it was.
Japan’s death toll is around 1600 at the moment. This is expected to rise but I think is unlikely to be much more than 10,000. Haiti’s death toll estimates vary from 92,000 to 316,000 with most seeming giving an estimate of over 200,000.
The number of people made homeless in Japan is currently unknown but this doesn’t seem to be a major problem from the news coverage. The Haiti earthquake made 1,500,000 to 1,800,000 people homeless.
In the recovery process for Japan, I would expect most of those who have been made homeless to be in some kind of accommodation within weeks. In Haiti, virtually no rebuilding has gone on and almost 2,000,000 people still live in makeshift tent camps one year on.
Although most natural disasters carry some kind of turmoil in terms of looting and other crime, I doubt very much there will be serious incidents in Japan. In Haiti, the tent camps are hell on earth. Armed gangs roam the streets gang-raping women and girls as young as several months. Anyone can break into any tent at any time. Police appear to be complicit.
When an earthquake hits an industrialised country such as Japan, there is unlikely to be a serious outbreak of infectious disease. In Haiti, there was a massive cholera outbreak. Furthermore, most people living in the camps have no access to clean drinking water and with lack of sanitation are living in a cesspool of human sewage. Combine that with a merciless sun beaming down every day and the atmosphere is demonic.
All in all, the consequences of the Haiti earthquake are many orders of magnitude more serious. I’d say that even NOW with one year of history, Haiti is still in a much bigger state of emergency than Japan — at least from a humanitarian perspective. So while it’s obviously good that the current tragedy has provoked a strong international response, the lack of parity with other disasters sickens me. And that’s just comparing earthquake-to-earthquake, ignoring calamities that kill many more people. Despite being dramatic, natural disasters kill much less people than things like malnutrition and starvation, malaria and tuberculosis.
Anyhow, end of rant for today. Tomorrow I’ll take a brief look at the reasons behind the lack of parity in responses.
27 comments ↓
There are two possibilities I see:
1. People empathise more with people in similar situations, hence the destruction of a modern society with cars riding waves crashing into houses.sweeping away trucks and bridges is a more personal fear than seeing a run down slum crash to the ground.
2. People make an implicit valuation of the lives of those affected. Haiti was a basket case beforehand so live expectancy, and the value of those remaining years, are low and the loss, while greater in numbers, is less in terms of ‘utility’. That would be a subconscious valuation since it would take a heartless economist to do that calculation.
There are two other factors that may come into play here:
People react less to greater suffering. Studies have shown that people will donate more then shown a picture of a boy or girl alone than they do when shown the pair of them together.
The economic impact of the Japanese situation is orders of magnitude greater than the Haiti earthquake.
I’m not saying any of these are right or good, but they are basic human responses.
Agree with most and these are on my list as well, my only disagreement is about a few parts of your point 2. I think if you were a heartless economist and would calculate the total years of life lost (ie. death toll and life expectancy), Haiti would still come out on top. Even applying some dampening factor to the difference in quality of life would still make Haiti a much bigger tragedy. I think that’s part of the problem — as I will argue in a 3rd post — that the way forward for the world is to be a bit more cold and calculating since our “gut” feelings on value are pretty arbitrary.
So I agree people already considered Haiti a basket-case but it might be for more animalistic reasons (eg. racism, classism, the stereotype that it’s just a place where black people kill each other etc). Because the thing is, I don’t think most people knew that much at all about Haiti, probably not enough about their public health problems to do a “real” analysis of life expectancy or anything like that.
Here’s what I think may be why there seems to be more attention to Japan than Haiti:
1) 80 times more powerful earthquake
2) More dramatic footage (Towns being devoured by tsunami looks more dramatic than everything already being rubble)
3) Nuclear (in fact, feels like most coverage recently is about the nuclear reactors rather than other damage from the earthquake)
4) More awareness of Japan (there’s a lot from Japan around the world; the only thing I would have known about Haiti before its big earthquake is the “Haitian“)
5) It’s still in its immediate aftermath (maybe it’s just because I watch different news outlets and am part of a different social network of people, but it feels like there was just as much attention on Haiti in the immediate aftermath of their big earthquake as on Japan now; I suspect the difference will turn out to be that the recent Japanese earthquake won’t merit a mention in news media in a few months, while Haiti still and will continue to turn up as a minor news item for years (unless there’s a full nuclear meltdown))
First of all. The cholera outbreak was not a result of the earth quake. Check your facts. Cholera had not been in Haiti for 100 + years. Researchers from the US , France, have published the DNA research matching Cholera in Haiti to an Asian strand, likely Nepal (check New England Journal of Medicine.)
What is different is that for Haiti , the media wasted no time bombarding people with pictures of the dead and the dying. Relishing in the misery of others. In Japan the perspective is different, the media is holding back (their choice or not) I’m not sure. People don’t want to see it because Japan is an industrialized country, at the level of the US and the “3rd world” comments would not apply. Also Japan is still an economic ally and that relationship has to be taken into account when portaying a country. Whereas Haiti has no political clout to prevent the constant association with Poor, violence, trouble that is done as if no crimes ever happen anywhere else. In Haiti the media coverage was disgusting , awful , generating pity but really making people feel better about themselves through the misery of others. In Japan, (maybe because of Japanese culture) it’s more compassion, polite, (no images of the dead on beaches).
It is tricky to make these comparisons (and potentially in bad taste) but you’ve said it with accuracy and sensitivity.
So as long as the topic has come up, note that the Haiti quake was tiny compared to the Japanese quake (in terms of its strength).
Another comparison is between Thailand and Indonesia in the same tsunami. I’m pretty sure we don’t even know how many people in remote areas of indonesia were killed. There are huge areas there where no one even knew the tsunami had hit until nearly a month later.
One more thing.
Maybe you should look at the wording of your own comments to understand the difference.
The earthquake in Haiti is “demonic” . WTF??? is that about? Demonic???? what are you trying to say , really???
That in Haiti’s case this is “some punishment from God, some Vodou curse????”. but for Japan whose has been hit simultaneously by not 1 not 2 but 3 disasters: Earthquake, Tsunami, Nuclear ..this is what: an accident? a catastrophe? a natural disaster?
It’s writing like yours that insidiously perpetuates the erroneous beliefs about Haiti. That make people look at a disaster in Haiti and have no empathy, no compassion because hey, it’s “demonic”. Have you even been to Haiti? Ever??? Why do you think that despite it all people stay? Why are people still smiling??? why do they still believe?? You have seen nothing of the beauty of Haiti, know nothing about its culture, its music, its people. You know what you see on TV, the worst of the worst. Could I make my opinion of the US based on us extremists? anachists? gangs? racists? Would that be fair? Look at the amount of reporting on crime in the US, should I use only that to make an opinion? To share it with others?
response
There is far more initial data coming from Japan in the form of amateur video, photographs, and seismic data. Even with the breakdown in communication, there is far better established communication than there was in Haiti. This may be the most documented major disaster–but that is due to technological circumstances, not greater sentiment for those who are richer.
While there has been a lot of international sentiment and condolences spread mostly by social networking, where are the donations? Will the financial support or the promise of it even exceed a negligible fraction of that quickly pledged to Haiti after the Haiti earthquake? Surely, all donations would be put to good use without hemorrhaging greatly to corruption as in Haiti. Direct, physical help from the international community was and is best for Haiti; Japanese well staffed branches of such organizations as the Red Cross (~1000 people?) could really use some financial aid though.
“A Haitian” wrote that the various media may be not showing images of dead bodies in Japan due to some sort of political instability; that they showed disgusting, awful coverage of Haiti due to discrimination to make “people feel better about themselves through the misery of others.” I ask, are there really enough bodies found so far to show really gruesome images? Is there any violence or looting in Japan? The search progress has been slow; very many bodies are still missing; and the dead are found slowly and neatly layed out in temporary indoor morgues across countless shelters separated by now treacherous roads.
To finish the very end of my post above:
There -are- many pictures and videos of devastation in Japan. But whatever bodies are found pinned under debris, are quickly covered after being pulled out (and then moved to a nearby temporary shelter and sorted in a temporary morgue). I don’t think there is any censorship. Should a journalist stalk the search teams to snap pictures of dead bodies as each is found, before it’s covered? Images of accessible regions are freely collected and shared on the internet.
Yoo – agree with most of these but also see my latest post which is the 2nd part where I try to list some other reasons.
Greg – thanks, I meant that in the context of a post I’ll probably publish tomorrow where I’ll argue that associate compassion too strongly with improving the world and the two should be a lot more separate. It’s one of the biases most of us have with respect to disasters – for instance that sometimes we overvalue sensitivity (if you’ve seen Felix Salmon’s “Don’t Donate to Japan� blog post and the vitriolic comments you’ll know what I mean). And yes the difference in the strength of the earthquakes also shows even more strongly how little the universe cares for parity.
A Haitian – I’m not sure if you read the same blog post as I wrote? Perhaps it’s a language issue but I can’t imagine how it’s possible to take my use of “demonic� to refer to anything close to what you were suggesting – and in fact my post had the very opposite intent to what you seem to think it did. Also I do not associate the filming of dead bodies or graphic footage to be revelling in the suffering of others, but perhaps you have a specific example of what you mean. Also, was about to write something similar to the end of Details’ first comment so see that.
Details – the aid blogs I’ve read (and the Japanese Red Cross) have concluded that currently Japan does NOT need overseas cash donations. Also, technological availability of images and social biases aren’t mutually exclusive, in fact I believe a lot more. As for journalism the difference in magnitude must be a factor: currently there are less than 2,000 confirmed dead in Japan whereas Haiti had probably over 200,000. It might not be about the neatness of the rescue effort but that the Haiti quake was one of the largest casualty earthquakes of all time whereas Japan was much much less.
“When an earthquake hits an industrialised country such as Japan, there is unlikely to be a serious outbreak of infectious disease. In Haiti, there was a massive cholera outbreak. Furthermore, most people living in the camps have no access to clean drinking water and with lack of sanitation are living in a cesspool of human sewage. Combine that with a merciless sun beaming down every day and the atmosphere is demonic.”
I copied and pasted this to show that this is not a language issue, that I am not taking this out of context. (first as I said the Cholera part is wrong and should be corrected–you can check the CDC report as well) I would like to know what you mean by the word demonic??? why use this word?? what was the intent? what is the implication?
I think the constant stream of theses images, the words “poor”, “poorest country” “poor people” that have been “branded” on Haiti creates a disconnect. People don’t think of Haitians as being similar to them. They don’t understand that doctors, lawyers, teachers, stay at home moms, reporters, people just like them went through this quake. Haitians have been portrayed by the media as victims, powerless, hapless people. No t everyday people who worked, went to college, had dreams for themselves and their children. I have yet to see stories about Haitians saving Haitians when we all know that the majority of people saved in the hours and days after the quake were saved by Haitians. Not one report of Haitians adopting Haitians.
What is was trying to say is that in my opinion the disparity between Haiti and Japan resides in the fact that Haitians have been dehumanized by the media. I was using the dead bodies as one example of that. If this had happened in France, in England in the US do you honestly think that the bodies of the dead would be shown over and over and over again??
Do you think that if a disaster that killed thousands in France ,England or the States that all the news networks would be looping again and again images of the dead? of the dying? There was no respect no attempt of respect it was just a feeding frenzy for ratings , to see who had the most shocking story, the most awful image as if the bodies they were showing were not someone’s mother, sister, brother, child, wife, husband, partner or friend.
If a disaster happened in your town and the media displayed images of your friends dead bodies, would that be acceptable? what was the purpose of doing this for days, weeks , months?
I am saying that this image being portrayed by the media explains the disparity because Haitians are not seen as “regular people”. There is no empathy only pity. People don’t see Haiti and think “it could have been me” they see Japan and think “this could be us”
And I’m saying that this misinformation (for example what was written about Cholera) only serves to perpetuate the dehumanization of Haiti. Even though it’s been research and publish the media continues to associate Cholera with the Earthquake which distances further Haitians from others , reinforcing the “poor people, not like us” mentality.
The response for Haiti is less because people can not identify with Haitians and they can not relate with them mainly because for the media they are not people. Not people like “you and me” anyway.
I won’t comment on anything else, but I would have to strongly disagree about the cholera outbreak having nothing to do with the earthquake. Everything I am aware about concerning the issue points to the cholera outbreak in Haiti not happening if it were not for the earthquake.
First, with the earthquake destroying so much of the infrastructure, what would have been isolated and easily treated cases turn into a full outbreak. No clean water means a much harder time of treating patients, not to mention that it rapidly spreads cholera. Second, the source of the cholera, the troops from Nepal, would not have even been in Haiti if it were not for the earthquake.
I’m not sure what the issue is concerning this specific topic, unless you’re a “foreign powers deliberately spread disease” conspiracy nut, and if one is crazy like that (which I hope “A Haitian” is not), then there really isn’t much to say.
Wow.
Of course, it’s the earthquake. right?
Let’s forget what the UN is supposed to be.
Let’s forget that precisely because of the conditions there that any “real” , organization , certainly the UN should have I don’t know : assess the situation? Maybe realize hey, this country’s vulnerable to disease.
Protocole should be then that if we are sending piece keepers from a country in which a highly communicable disease is endemic, and that those peace keepers come right when there is an outbreak, you know let’s have some type of protocole in place. I mean it’s the UN (one would think ..)
but I digress,
Let’s also forget about “how” cholera was introduced. Let’s forget that it was the improper disposal of waste from the UN peace keepers into the “Artibonite river” after the locals had spoken to them and told them you cannot dispose of your waste here.
Let’s forget all of that,
let’s forget that cholera started in the Central Plateau, one of the only parts of Haiti NOT AFFECTED by the earthquake.
Let’s forget that the reason it started and was so deadly was not person-person contact but Massive introduction of the bacteria into the river which contaminated hundred if not thousands simultaneously.
Let’s forget all of that. Let’s continue to believe that hey, the conditions were so bad after the quake that of course 10 MONTHS later, a disease not in the country for hundred of years would appear in a non-earthquake area but hey it’s the earthquake. Right? no is responsible? no one is at fault? Haitians should be grateful they got help, what ever it was? how ever it’s done they should be grateful they are getting something? and you wonder about disparity….
I’m not saying conspiracy at all but this is not acceptable, and sweeping this huge, huge mess under the earthquake blanket is wrong.
I don’t get it; are you saying the cholera outbreak would have happened regardless of the earthquake? I can understand being frustrated that other issues are not discussed adequately, but I don’t understand this drive to utterly disassociate the earthquake from the cholera outbreak.
I’m saying yes, the cholera outbreak could have happened regardless of the earthquake. The UN force in Haiti is was 10,000 and had been so for years before the earthquake. The peace keepers came from every nation. The Nepalese peace keepers were not in Haiti for the first time. They had been there for years. It is was just a matter of time and luck that one division of their forces would come at from an outbreak region at time of an outbreak. With the UN rotation of countries and the rotation within the countries of their soldiers, it was just a matter of time. That’s what I am saying. It is unfortunate for us ,—this happened 10 months, 10 months after the earthquake and in as I said before an area that was not affected by the quake—that people associate the outbreak with the earthquake do not analyze the greater implications here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1m4HLNCRrs
I think says it all…
A Haitian, I have not replied to any of the other points because I wasn’t sure it was worth it (at least at this stage) since you seem to be reading a lot into my post (and Yoo’s comments) that was not intended, and in my case I believe it is extremely clear. I used the word “demonic” because, based on the situation I did not think a word like “bad” was sufficient. I don’t see how it’s relevant that some fundamentalist Christian assholes used the same word when making up a racist, revisionist lie about Haiti. If I used the word “satanic” then I see that it might have been interpreted to be describing something similar to Pat Robertson since the connotation of a “satanic atmosphere” is something that some evil people have conjured up in devil-worshipping ritual. The connotation of a “demonic atmosphere” is to me very different and is associated with inspiring terror and so on.
Words have weigh, power even. “Demonic” is not a word (in my opinion) that can be used because bad wasn’t sufficient. I hear demonic and I don’t think “terror”. Maybe it’s me , but as a Haitian to read this, it’s …..
The image that words create is powerful , the image you created with that word was so unbelievably negative, that it too shapes the way a country is viewed, the way its people are judged, the way people react, if you do not, can not or will not see that words matter that a word like “demonic” has a part in this disparity that you were questioning, then there is nothing else that I can say.
This is why I asked if perhaps it was a language issue, it may be just a difference of perspective since you would have been exposed to the association between Haiti and demonism more than me. But I guess I write from the mindset of someone living in an English-speaking country (Australia) so that’s not how I meant it at all.
Maybe some others can chime in on how they originally interpreted demonic? I’m interested now.
As for the rest of the post: on cholera I largely meant that the epidemic was exacerbated by the fact that many people live in camps and the epidemic spread through to the camps — this is the impression I got from all the sources I looked at at the time of the epidemic.
Finally in terms of portraying Haiti negatively, I’m aware of the problem of dehumanising people through excessively graphic depiction of tragedy, however my aim was to argue that the crisis in Haiti is still a much bigger humanitarian crisis than the current one in Japan. It was not meant as an overall evaluation of Haiti — although even then Haiti ranks 149/191 in terms of life expectancy which is a more statistical (as opposed to anecdotal or descriptive) roundup of some of the problems.
@Haitian
The CDC writes: (1) there must be significant breaches in the water, sanitation, and hygiene infrastructure used by groups of people, permitting large-scale exposure to food or water contaminated with Vibrio cholerae organisms; and (2) cholera must be present in the population. While it is unclear how cholera was re-introduced to Haiti, both of these conditions now exist.
This essentially means, they can not trace the source. However, more than likely natural containment of cholera was more than likely breached. In other words, one infected person (which could’ve been from an outside source, which is probably what you’re referring). However, the CDC states that haven’t had a documented case, which does not rule out the likelihood of a Haitian having an undocumented case and due to the disaster it spread. However, it is likely that I could’ve been visiting Haiti and also contaminated some water and it spread.
Does this make sense? The Cholera outbreak has no known source but either scenario is possible. Cholera is an infection like any other, under the right conditions it will spread. Under the worse conditions it will become an epidemic.
The second sentence should read: However, the natural containment of cholera was more than likely breached.
to Dr. Here
UN Independant Report on Cholera.
(to be read carefully, ) Notice the choice of wording that basically exempts them from responsibility while admitting that they brought Cholera to Haiti.
Having basic protocols is something that an organization like the UN should have had in place. it’s common sense.
Basically they are saying “my bad”.
Now imagine if in a “rescue/ aid” situation the UN had brought to the US a disease that had not been in the country in 100 years, killing 5000 people.
What do you think would have been done?
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/un-says-cholera-report-completed-going-haiti-government-172329336.html
the reason why japan’s getting more attention is simple it’s the american governments guilt for causing it through the air force/naval project HAARP
The United States Air Force and Navy has provided a visual insight into what caused the 9.0 magnitude off of Japan on March 11, 2011 at 05:46:23 UTC. The image above was downloaded from the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) website. It is a time-frequency spectrogram, which shows the frequency content of signals recorded by the HAARP Induction Magnetometer.
By looking at the accompanying HAARP spectrum chart above you can see when the 9.0 magnitude earthquake struck – red line drawn vertically – and what was happening before and after the earthquake. What you can also see is a constant ULF frequency of 2.5 Hz being recorded by the magnetometer. The ULF 2.5 Hz frequency is evidence of an induced earthquake. The chart recorded this constant before, during and after the 9.0 magnitude earthquake struck. On March 11, 2011 the 2.5 Hz ULF frequency was being emitted and recorded from 0:00 hours to about 10:00 hours – or for 10 hours. We know for a fact that the Japan earthquake lasted only a few minutes so why was the earthquake signature frequency (2.5 Hz) being recorded for 10 hours on the morning of March 11, 2011? Because a HAARP phased array antenna system was broadcasting (transmitting) the 2.5Hz ULF frequency and it triggered the Japan earthquake and ensuing tsunami.
Japan is Japan and Haiti is Africa.
It is ludicrous to compare the responses of the Japanese and Haitians in dealing with their seismic disasters. At this juncture, it is best to leave HAARP technology out of the equation, it merely befuddles the water. Haiti is a Congoid, unintelligent, lazy, criminal, dysfunctional filthy, dirt-poor primitive society–Japan is the polar opposite. Japan is a cohesive, intelligent, socially conscious, ultra-hygienic, wealthy, patriotic homogeneous nation. It comes as no surprise to me, that Haiti is in such a mess, quite simply the population does not have the intellectual ability nor attitude nor inclination for that matter, to rebuild their hitherto, ramshackle infrastructure. Throwing money at the rabble, will only encourage the sub-species to breed like rats, and worsen the pitiful situation. Less talk of Marxist redistribution of wealth— Mass selective ‘Malthusian’ Western financed sterilization of the fertile Haitian population is their only realistic hope for the future.
What does ones culture have to do with it?? Cause if we were to bring society into this “The Great” U.S.A proves my statement (Student) on the H.A.A.R.P program with a power/money hungry nation run by a group who’s only purpose is to show how great of a country they really are and if someone has what they want they’ll take it and yeah they’ll attack their own kind …. because as a matter of fact Rumsfeld couldnt have a war in iraq without 9/11, or a defence budget of world conquest proportions, this has been his idea since Dick Cheney made those plans for his pipeline through afghanistan, which brings me back to the greedy bit of the countries leaders… they had oil U.S wanted it so they distracted the peoples eyes away and when everyone started piecing things together they dubbed a tape of bin laden and they said it was proof of the towers being hit on his command, they got the pipeline in the end but now noone cares about that their all distracted on bin laden, so dont get me started on culture and as for H.A.A.R.P the U.S had threatened the Japanese Government into sharing their nuclear power, then later on warned them of it’s dangers and who’s to say that Haiti wasnt a practice on the technology because as you say the “sub-species” are nothing right so who would miss any of them, or raise any questions on the siesmic activity ?? Now i can see The U.S government destroying these people because their a “Congoid, unintelligent, lazy, criminal, dysfunctional filthy, dirt-poor primitive society” because thats the one place they know noones gonna ask questions and as of Japan the warning was sent and a direct hit on the culture would be eye opening so why not hit off the coast and that way tsunami cant be traced back to nothing (no EMP’s, nuclear weaponry, etc.) … so theres no doubt that it could be the cause of these actions and in the wrong hands which it most definately is can be the doom of this planet…
Honestly, the argument can go either way. I’ve seen a lot of attention on both Japan AND Haiti.
@Alex Kavanagh:
don’t go by stereotypes. it’s just…wrong. don’t do it. actually, that goes to everyone who has/is used/using stereotypes. My mom’s a blonde, does that mean she’s stupid? no.
~Wolfstrike~
That goes to Paul Maleski, as well.
And us U.S.-Americans wouldn’t do that! Hmph!
~Wolfstrike~