When numbers don’t really figure

A solemn government health warning segmented between songs on the local radio station announced:

5000 people each year die in this country directly because of smoking. 5000 people: the equivalent of a town’s population. Smoking kills.

This struck me as quite a specific population of a town. Almost too specific one might say. What are they trying to hide in these conveniently populated towns, somewhere, out there? Now no one is saying they are some sort of genetically modified towns built to enable the trialling of the provision for a human civic-cubed future. No one has mentioned that at all here. Nope.

Anyway, I digress. Could there be harder hitting ways of illustrating the 5000 dead for those too busy driving their Volvo in drive-time traffic to simply imagine 5000 dead people as “a lot”?

5000 people: the equivalent of an impressive regional militia. 5000 people: the equivalent of 5 times the number of oak tress in Sherwood Forest. 5000 people: the equivalent of an audience at a Girls Aloud concert. 5000 people: the equivalent of 5000 frogs standing together side-by-side, hand-in-hand, and one of the frogs has a crown on its head. And they are all singing Band on the Run. As a round.

Certainly makes you think. Terrifying.