That the deaths of thousands are insignificant also fits when one looks at combat casualties. The Republic was willing to abandon two battalions (1,994 troops) on the surface of Dinlo and perform a Base Delta Zero order on the planet. The resulting rescue mission suffered 7.5% casualties. (Republic Commando: Triple Zero). Drognar was a small-scale engagement with not vehicle support or heavy weaponry being used due to the local flora. Yet it saw a 13% death rate in surgery and a 2% casualty rate over all. (Battle Surgeons) As each RMSU (Republic Mobile Surgical Unit) was mentioned to have multiple clone commanders and a commander leads a regiment, and nineteen RMSUs are mentioned on the planet, this corresponds to a death toll of 227 troops at one medical center every day. 13% is low, but it was from hand weapons and light vehicle weapons alone. The greatest killer on the battlefield is artillery and bombs, so a large unrestricted battle will see a far greater causality rate. This is confirmed in Republic Commando: Triple Zero which states that even the elite clone commandos saw a 50% causality rate in the first year of the war.
The death toll grows even larger when you look at fatalities due to space combat. The loss of a single Acclamator class assault ship will cost the lives of 16,000 clone troopers, and such losses were common – “many” of the “hundreds” of vessels that attacked Muunilinst were shot down and crashed to the surface. (The New Essential Chronology) Captured clones could expect no quarter, as they were executed by the Confederacy to deny the Republic their assets. (Clone Wars: Light and Dark) Offensive operations often went poorly costing thousands of lives – of the entire corps dispatched to Jabiim (Republic Holonet News 14:7:02, “War on Jabiim ‘Inevitable’” SW Insider 68, page 68), only enough to fill seven LAAT/I s and a single Consular class space cruiser survived (Clone Wars: Last Stand on Jabiim). That’s a mere 226 out of 36,864 or a casualty rate of 99.39%. These casualties were incurred over the span of forty-three days, for an average casualty rate of 2.31% a day. This is about the same as the daily causality rate of World War 2 on Earth. (How to Make War fourth edition) It is interesting to look at this from the point of exponential decay. This is demonstrated by the equation ln(Nf/No)*k=t. ln is the natural log, Nf is the final number, No is the original number, K is the decreasing factor, and t is time. Plug the decrease rate (-0.02) for K into the original equation using 1 as Nf and 2 as No. With a constant 2% causality rate the army has a half-life of 34 days. In other words the total troops available will decrease by a factor of 2 about once per Star Wars month. This demonstrates the clear importance of continuing to produce more clones troopers. Increased production is also the only way to fit with the canon statements that three quarters of the original army is still alive at the time of the first Empire Day. (Revenge of the Sith Visual Dictionary) This would suggest that the below estimate of one month is either to long, or that the initial causality rate was lower then 2%. As the average kill ratio for the first six months of the war was 200:1 in favor of the clones (Guide to the Grand Army of the Republic) the latter is more likely, though it is possible both are factors. Regardless, clones must be grown and they must be grown quickly.