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Luddevig t1_ix40gdy wrote

Reply to comment by andylikescandy in [OC] Qatar's Migrant Deaths During FIFA World Cup Stadium Construction by Metalytiq

Qatar's non-migrant population is like 400 000, and they have over 2 million migrant workers. So we still land at 1% death rate in 10 years.

I would like to know the probability of death in ten years for a healthy man living in India to know if 1% in ten years is high or not.

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asdftom t1_ix4tv7w wrote

The probability of death for an Indian man aged 25 over the next 10 years is 1.8% according to the data here.

That is for all men, not just healthy which you would expect migrants to be. But most men aged 25-35 are quite healthy I imagine.

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Luddevig t1_ix5r5sj wrote

Thanks for looking it up! But yeah, since the death rate is higher for an Indian man than a migrant worker I guess a big enough percentage has some kind of illness that they die of.

All in all it means that I don't know that thousands of migrant workers has died because of bad treatment. I still think that this is the case, and I still know that they live under dreadful circumstances and that hundreds have died because of unsafe working environments (https://cardsofqatar.com/en/the-cards/).

Also, since Qatar restrics journalists heavily and doesn't give out proper death data we really shouldn't give them the benefit of doubt.

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asdftom t1_ix5x4ik wrote

My conclusion is I think very similar to yours.

There are many problems with how migrant workers are treated but we don't know enough to conclude even roughly how many excess deaths were caused. But Qatar's lack of information provision forces us to assume the worst.

There is enough to criticize Qatar about without firmly stating a specific number for migrant deaths. And imo focusing on this misleading statistic of migrant deaths will undermine all the valid criticisms of Qatar.

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Pinetrees1990 t1_ix5jfla wrote

The BBC's investigation said on average there were 50 deaths a year for " stadium building" related deaths. The rest were normal deaths.

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Luddevig t1_ix5s5en wrote

Thanks. That would be 50 workers * 8 stadiums * 5 years for each = 2000?

I would imagine many also died from their living conditions that were promised to be a lot better than they were. And the infrastructure was a much larger project than the stadiums which would mean like 4000 additional deaths? Maybe that was included in the stadium building?

Anyway, at least 2000 is good to know.

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Pinetrees1990 t1_ix5sdhs wrote

No that was across all stadiums I believe

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Luddevig t1_ix5thkx wrote

Oh okay. Like 500 then (the stadiums were built over 10 years)! And 1000 from infrastructure and ... 1000 from bad living environments? My guess would be 2500 then, and at least 500.

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