He mentioned both the number of deaths and events. You might also want to brush up on your history of airliners with regard to seating capacity and service entry dates.
noalign, yes he did mention that. To make a valid argument you would of course have to conduct a proper statistical analysis. I am not meaning to say the numbers of deaths is immaterial but I am saying that in this case the number of accidents is probably more valid.
It was my maths than caused me to infer that there were no 300/400 seater airliners 40 years ago (I was thinking 1965) but even then I think the point is valid in the sense that generally speaking airliners carry more passengers per aircraft (as aircraft performance and design has improved) now compared to a few decades ago bearing in mind most aircraft are virtually full on every flight now which was not the case years ago before the advent of budget airlines.