The ratio highlights the disproportionate media coverage of certain diseases, such as swine flu, while others barely get a mention, such as tuberculosis (“TB”).
For example, in the first 13 days of the 2009 swine flu “pandemic,” Rosling calculated that there were 8,176 news stories for every swine flu death compared to 0.1 news stories for every TB death.
Fast forward to today and, as far as the news-to-death ratio is concerned, nothing has changed.
There is a peculiar arithmetic that governs modern health reporting, one that has very little to do with actual risk. Hans Rosling captured it neatly during the 2009 swine flu episode, when he calculated a “news-to-death ratio” of 8,176-to-1. In other words, for every death attributed to swine flu, there were over eight thousand news stories. Tuberculosis, by contrast, received less than 0.1 news stories per death over the same period....<<<Read More>>>....
