11.28.06 6:00 AM CST
• Media
• Matt DeMazza
I'm always amused at the media frenzy that accompanies any type of new illness (I'm looking at you, Avian
Flu and SARS). To read reports on these afflictions, you'd think it was the Black Death, part deux. But avian flu, for example, has killed exactly zero Americans.
Am I saying that this news shouldn't be reported? Of course not. But perhaps more pieces like this should accompany it. (For the full article from Time, click here.)
The article is best summed up in this passage:
AIDS ... takes you slowly, compared with a heart attack, which can kill you in seconds, despite the fact that heart disease claims nearly 50 times as many Americans than AIDS each year.
We also dread catastrophic risks, those that cause the deaths of a lot of people in a single stroke, as opposed to those that kill in a chronic, distributed way.
This neatly explains why we’ve become a cheeseburger-eating, cigarette-puffing, non-exercising — but condom-wearing! — society.
Flu and SARS). To read reports on these afflictions, you'd think it was the Black Death, part deux. But avian flu, for example, has killed exactly zero Americans.Am I saying that this news shouldn't be reported? Of course not. But perhaps more pieces like this should accompany it. (For the full article from Time, click here.)
The article is best summed up in this passage:
AIDS ... takes you slowly, compared with a heart attack, which can kill you in seconds, despite the fact that heart disease claims nearly 50 times as many Americans than AIDS each year.
We also dread catastrophic risks, those that cause the deaths of a lot of people in a single stroke, as opposed to those that kill in a chronic, distributed way.
This neatly explains why we’ve become a cheeseburger-eating, cigarette-puffing, non-exercising — but condom-wearing! — society.
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