Fear versus the odds

When there’s a lack of sports on TV I tend to watch a lot of travel & food shows, being an enthusiast of both subjects. I’ve even said that were I to come into wealth I would take up traveling the world and embracing various cultures including their food — basically Anthony Bourdain’s gig minus the cameras. Speaking of whom, I’ve been a fan of every iteration of his food & travel show over the years (yes, even “A Cook’s Tour”), I remember that, though one different thing about Parts Unknown vs the others is since it’s on a news channel he can bring up harder subjects in the process.

I saw a recent episode where he was in Cologne, Germany. In an example of the broader focus of the show, he discussed the New Years Eve attacks that happened there & the backlash against acceptance of refugees since then. As the type of event that those opposed to letting in those fleeing warzones point at as if it explains their entire position, I decided to look up some numbers:

• The summer prior, the German government had let in over a million  refugees, mostly from Iraq & Syria.
• The broadest count of people involved in committing these acts I’ve seen is a thousand, across multiple cities.
• If you were to be deliberately as uncharatable as possible, you could assume that every single one of those thousand people were from that class of refugees from the summer — which would place the rate of blame towards refugees for the attacks at 0.001 . That’s 1/10th of a percent.
• Since the attacks, arrests have been made of suspects, which gives a real world comparison for worst case scenario number. Well, so much for that scenario, because most of the suspects were actually not from Iraq or Syria, and many had been in Germany for years.

So, in the face of how disproportionate the fear is of the refugee population, what is the incentive for that fear? Some European newspapers have some hints for you on that, happening to rhyme with “Beanophobia” & “Nacism”…

Oh yeah, one more thing about the refugee situation: how about not sowing chaos in their home countries in the first place?