If I had to guess about why this works it is that we as human beings learn a great deal by observing others. This does not only work when others succeed, but also when they suffer. More than an abstract numbers (which only some of us can translate into concrete imaginations) the observation about someone elses fate allows is to simulate what this would mean if it happened to us.
This is of course an unpleasant thought. What if my kid got cancer? Or any other of the horrible things that one reads about happening to kids? The reaction to this these thoughts can go one of many ways, with the two extremes being an emphatic "we need to stop this from ever happening again, even if we need to change our way of life" and —on the other side— a "this is never going to happen to me, it only happens to people who deserve it somehow".
So we (at least most of us) are capable of telling when someone's suffering comes from the outside, from something that could hit us too. After all most societies developed at least some way to collectively fight fires or deal with other catastrophes often by institutionalizing and financing the people who do it. This is deeply what being a society is a about: aknowledging that some things that happen are better to be dealt with collectively than individually, either because of their scale, or because of their stochastic nature (it only hits few, but it hits them hard).
I think however when it comes to storytelling it is key to do both: Tell the individual story, and show that stories like these are not rare (this takes away the "it will never happen to me"-defense). The indivdiual fate influences society and society influences the individual fate.
This is of course an unpleasant thought. What if my kid got cancer? Or any other of the horrible things that one reads about happening to kids? The reaction to this these thoughts can go one of many ways, with the two extremes being an emphatic "we need to stop this from ever happening again, even if we need to change our way of life" and —on the other side— a "this is never going to happen to me, it only happens to people who deserve it somehow".
So we (at least most of us) are capable of telling when someone's suffering comes from the outside, from something that could hit us too. After all most societies developed at least some way to collectively fight fires or deal with other catastrophes often by institutionalizing and financing the people who do it. This is deeply what being a society is a about: aknowledging that some things that happen are better to be dealt with collectively than individually, either because of their scale, or because of their stochastic nature (it only hits few, but it hits them hard).
I think however when it comes to storytelling it is key to do both: Tell the individual story, and show that stories like these are not rare (this takes away the "it will never happen to me"-defense). The indivdiual fate influences society and society influences the individual fate.