significant loss of human life

I’m not sure exactly when it became the automatic habit of dominant media to translate life itself into dollar figures as the first response to impending catastrophe, but as things stand, a significant loss of human life is invariably measured according to the resulting disrup- tion of the capitalist economic order. The news that “investors must pay attention” is our way of affirming that money is the same thing as oxygen, “not yet” the standard exercise in magical thinking that lets us pretend we are not already living beyond the fatal tipping point, in the depths of the fait accompli.