The casualty counts from the earthquake in China and cyclone in Myanmar are staggering. What's interesting, however, is that whenever a natural disaster strikes, the number of casualties first reported is always deceptively low but creeps upward as more information is made available. Interestingly, the opposite tends to be the case after a man-made disaster (i.e. a terrorist attack or nuclear meltdown) occurs. Recall the reports of tens of thousands dead on 9/11.
So what explains this discrepancy?
After any tragedy, of course, there is a fog that makes it difficult for survivors to ascertain facts. When the tsunami struck Southeast Asia in 2004, the original casualty count was the haphazard guesswork of eye-witnesses and aid groups on the scene, and thus much lower than the final tally. Also, governments struck by natural calamities, especially those in the developing world, are often too inefficient or negligent to tally reliable data and must rely on the numbers provided by disaster-relief organizations. Plus, natural disasters span a wider breadth, where it takes longer to fully realize the scope of the damage, whereas terrorist attacks occur in small crowded areas, which accentuates the hysteria, making people think the tragedy is greater than perhaps it really is.
But the real reason may owe itself more to politics. When natural disasters strike, there is an incentive for governments to downplay the disaster to avoid outside opprobrium. This occurred in Turkey after the 1999 earthquake, in Iran following its 2003 quake, and in Pakistan after its 2005 quake in Kashmir. High casualties are a tell-tale sign of shoddy construction and poor preparedness -- there's a reason why earthquakes in Japan usually result in casualty stats in the hundreds, not the thousands.
On the flipside, with man-made disasters, when some loony is at fault and not the government, there's an incentive for states to hype the casualty count. Why? For a number of reasons: maybe to warrant either a) retaliation against the perpetrator, b) sympathy from the outside world, c) money from the outside world, d) money from insurance claims, or d) to rally the troops (see option a).
After the 2003 Madrid bombings, reports surfaced that more than 200 died (the number was eventually lowered to 191). After the Chernobyl meltdown, it was predicted that thousands would perish from radiation poisoning, yet according to a 2005 IAEA report, fewer than 50 people actually died from the accident. That is not to downplay the significance of these acts (or to equate the two, given that the former was deliberate and latter was a result of gross negligence and incompetence), only to point out a behavioral tick in how we respond to natural versus man-made calamities.
Are we forever bound to overplay acts of man and underplay acts of God?