| The Ottawa Citizen
Friday, December 26, 2008, By Dan Gardner. ©The Ottawa Citizen. |
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It's a wonderful life. I suspect that few readers are unaware there was bad news in 2008. The first half of the year was dominated by soaring prices for oil, food, and other commodities. The future would be a Mad Max sequel, we were told. Fortunately, this fate was averted when commodity prices fell. Less fortunately, commodity prices fell because an economic crisis kneecapped the global economy. Now we're told the future will look like the little town in It's a Wonderful Life after George's bank fails and he gets his wish to never have been born. Happy freaking New Year. But don't despair, dear readers. Like Clarence, George Bailey's guardian angel, I'm here to keep you from jumping off the bridge. Let me begin by acknowledging that the bad news is real. I can't deny that. I'm an angel, not a lunatic. But plenty of good news also happened this year. You just didn't hear about it because every source of information we rely on is biased toward tales of fear, misery and death. Want to see what I mean? One of the big stories this past June involved tomatoes. Yes, tomatoes. Everyone's forgotten about it now but there was a salmonella outbreak in the United States that sickened hundreds of people. Tainted tomatoes were suspected, although investigators later fingered Mexican jalapenos. It was major national and international news. A Pew survey found an astonishing 66 per cent of Americans said they had heard "a lot" about the outbreak, while another 28 per cent knew "a little." Compare that to another story that broke in the midst of the Great Tomato Scare. On June 11, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control issued a press release announcing the latest mortality statistics. "The 2006 age-adjusted death rate fell to 776.4 deaths per 100,000 population from 799 deaths per 100,000 in 2005," the release said. Exciting, isn't it? From 799 per 100,000 to 776.4 per 100,000. Truly amazing. Not impressed? You should be. Lots of things can go wrong in life but dying is pretty much the worst and this stat revealed what the CDC described as a "sharp" decline in the fatality rate. Statisticians are not known for hyperbole. A statistician's use of the word "sharp" is roughly equivalent to "ohmigawd, can you believe it?!!" in lay English.
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"Death rates for eight of the 10 leading causes of death in the United States all dropped significantly in 2006," the CDC elaborated. Influenza and pneumonia deaths -- down 13 per cent. Stroke and heart disease deaths -- down six per cent. Diabetes and AIDS deaths -- down five per cent. Cancer deaths -- down two per cent. Even infant mortality was down three per cent. All in a single year. This was big news. And almost nobody heard about it. I did a scan and found a few one-paragraph stories buried on page A16, but nothing else. And yes, if you were wondering, the story is similar in Canada. Our stats simply aren't as well-developed and reported as the American numbers. (When, oh when, will a national leader campaign on a promise of more money for the development of statistics?) In November -- when everyone was fixated on the economic crisis and wondering where to find recipes for boiled shoe leather -- another good news story came and went unnoticed. "Both incidence and death rates for all cancers combined are decreasing for both men and women, driven largely by declines in some of the most common types of cancer," the U.S. National Cancer Institute reported. The story isn't quite so positive in Canada, but it's still pretty good. "The incidence and death rates for the majority of cancer sites have stabilized or declined during the past decade," the Canadian Cancer Society says in its annual compendium of stats, released in April. "This means that a person's individual risk of cancer has remained stable." But in July, Statistics Canada delivered some good news we Canadians can definitely lord over Americans. "Despite the ever-increasing number of vehicles on the roads, half as many Canadians were killed in a motor-vehicle accident in 2004 as there had been 25 years earlier," StatsCan found. The annual number of fatalities on Canadian roads fell from 5,933 in 1979 to 2,875 in 2004. In the United States, there have been improvements in road safety but nothing like what has happened in Canada. I'm not sure what accounts for the difference. Maybe it's the snow banks. In any event, it's wonderful news. Tens of thousands of lives have been saved because of it, and tens of thousands more will be saved in future.
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And the media coverage of this wonderful news was close to zero. I've written about why the media are so slanted to bad news. Mostly, it's about psychology. Dramatic stories move us; statistics don't. To paraphrase Joseph Stalin, a tragic death is a very dramatic story; a declining death rate is just a number. But another problem is that people -- journalists and the public alike -- see the news as an event that happened yesterday. Incremental change that creeps along over months and years and decades isn't news -- and most of the good that happens in the world is precisely that sort of change. In 1900, the average American made $4,748 a year (in 1998 dollars); by 1998, that had risen to $32,444. Over the same period, the hours worked by the average full-time employee fell from 60 per week to 40, while the portion of the average family's budget that went to food fell from 44 per cent to 15 per cent. Child mortality rates declined by almost 95 per cent. Life expectancy increased by three decades. So what was the top story in 1998? According to the Pew Research Center's annual survey of what people pay attention to, the number one story was the Jonesboro massacre. Number two was a shooting in an Oregon high school. Number three was a shooting in the U.S. Capitol building. Number four was military strikes in Iraq. Number five was military strikes in Sudan and Afghanistan. And so, in order, the top five stories of 1998 were death, death, death, death and death. The year before, the number one news story was the death of Princess Diana. That same year, Pew released a list of the 21 news stories that had garnered the most attention over the previous decade. All 21 were bad news. Look, here is an indisputable fact: We are by far the healthiest and longest-lived humans who ever lived. And here's another: We are by far the wealthiest humans who ever lived. It is unlikely in the extreme that the economic crisis can fundamentally change either of these facts. And as long as these facts remain facts, we will continue to be the luckiest people who ever lived. Feel better? Good. Now get off that bridge, go home, and have an eggnog. You can contact Dan Gardner at the Ottawa Citizen. |
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Copyright © 2005 Dan Gardner |