In the case of Paris it&#x27;s not just about the losses. It&#x27;s at least partially about trust, meaning, can we trust millions of people who are profoundly like us to integrate smoothly or are we instigating risks of further attacks as a result.<p>I don&#x27;t particularly like it when terrorist attacks are contextualized in terms of deaths that are not political in nature at all. Everything you mentioned are close to being &quot;random processes&quot; in the statistical sense. Terrorist attacks may be somewhat chaotic in distribution (a brief arxiv.org search shows researchers trying to prove otherwise); but terrorists are adversarial, people who actively want to see you dead. On the other hand, tuberculosis, malnutrition and alcohol could only be construed as adversarial in a weak sense at best. A much more non-intentional perspective is better suited for the latter than the former.