If you're discussing flu should you never bring up cancer for fear that you're equating it with flu?

It just depends on the person. Some people will get upset about anything. Thousands of people die every year from the flu, it can be very serious. Thousands of people every year get cancers that aren’t s a big deal, and easily cut away.

Probably best not to directly compare one disease to another, but sometimes during the right conversation it might make sense. Like if someone was talking about their treatment in the hospital when they had cancer and the person they were talking to had a similar experience when being treated for the flu, then why not bring it up?

If someone has terminal cancer, then probably it’s not good to talk about having the flu so bad you couldn’t get out of bed for 4 days, but then two weeks later you’re as good as new. Everyone who has the flu is bed ridden for 4 days. That’s nothing to complain about when someone is talking about chemotherapy and hoping to live another year.

I wouldn’t say that you should never bring it up, but perhaps you should be careful how you bring it up. Even if you want to disregard the possible sensitivity of other people and the conflict that can bring, being careful with your words makes it more likely that you will be understood. So if you’re going to make the comparison, it’s worth being explicit about how you think the two things being compared are relevantly similar. If that’s not clear to the person with whom you are communicating, then the comparison hasn’t done its job.

Sounds like one solution would be to learn how to smoothly transition from one conversational topic to another.

Okay, but If person A says “Hitler…..”, when discussing American election 2016, there’ll be a person B who would say “Trump is not Hitler”, as if person A thought or said anything to imply that Trump has already killed 6 million people…. gas chambers etc.

@flo Are you talking about situations where someone is interrupted before they can make their point? If so, the speaker can always just say “let me finish before you draw a conclusion about the comparison I’m trying to make.”

As I tried to express earlier, but was modded for the attempt (<waves> Hi, mods!), it helps a lot if you ask the actual question you want the answer to. When people try to answer one question, which is an allegory to the question you want to ask, they get distracted by the many, many differences between the two situations, because they can’t see the one aspect that is similar between the two situations – because you haven’t told us that the other situation exists and is important to you.

From your question and your last response, I am guessing that your actual question is, “Should people avoid comparing Trump to Hitler because the comparison belittles the suffering of those whose deaths Hitler caused?”

Is that your actual question? Because, if so, we can discuss that. But it is very hard to have a discussion about flu and cancer when the answers will never satisfy you because they are not about Donald Trump or Hitler.

I’m really trying to help. We don’t understand the question as it is written, and this is frustrating for those who try to answer and are told we are not close to “getting it”.

I think the person you are talking to says everything that pops into their head. You say something and it makes them think of other things that are loosely connected, and they stop listening and start talking.

@SavoirFaire no not at all, they just have a scripted thing. @JLeslie Bin-go!