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MartinB comments on List of underrated risks? - Less Wrong Discussion
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Murder rates are usually overestimated, while diseases and accidents are underrated. Due to availability bias thing that happen regularly are concerns, things that are superrare, but might kill many people if are ignored.
Also intentionality matters- actions which have intent behind them are more salient. This helps make murder seem more likely. I wonder if cultures that believe that diseases are caused by demons or spirits are more likely to overestimate the risk of disease? This might be hard to test because those cultures are going to be ones generally without modern medicine and have higher disease rates. Maybe look at religious groups that strongly believe that sin causes disease?
The classic example is that WW1 gets a lot more attention than the Spanish flu, even though WW1 killed about 35 million people, and the flu killed between 50 and 130 million. On the other hand, the war made a huge political difference, so it might not just be a matter of intentionality.
I'd be surprised if the WW1 didn't make the Spanish flu's job easier, anyway.
In a history of humans (which, being a story, is mainly about choices), WW1 would stand out more prominently than the Spanish flu simply on account of the relative importance of individual prominent choices to the affair.
Both also targeted different groups. The flu got old, very young, poor people while the war involved more men of working age. Its weird though that the flu was left out of my history teaching.
Nitpick: The old had some resistance to the disease.
In developed countries they just get treatment secretly.
Probably that's true for some of them, but it is likely not the case for many others. Part of the evidence otherwise is that there have been a variety of laws and court cases in the US about whether parents can refuse necessary medical care for their children. See for example here.