so regardless of the whole attribution question, this isn't even a slightly unreasonable thing to say? It's not like he said "A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic - and I think that's a good thing and I'm going to use it to kill seventeen billion kulaks", it's just a statement. It's been true about COVID, it was true about famine and drought in his own time, and it's true both intra-alignment and otherwise - smoking deaths are a statistic, Anne Frank's death was a tragedy, COVID-19 deaths were a statistic, Nex Benedict's death was a tragedy, etc. It's just observational and it's largely true, at least in regards to how people and societies react.