Same goes for the improvements. What really matters is the percentages. Just raw numbers are meaningless. If you kill 99% population and if 50% of the remaining are in a bad condition, that's only ~35 million. If there are only 5% people suffering out of 7 billion, that's 350 million.
Does that mean 1 out of 2 people suffering is better than 1 out of 20 people suffering??