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How people die vs. media coverage of death

owenshen24.github.io

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Re: How people die vs. media coverage of death

#51

Post by im3w1l »

lqdc13 wrote: post #42
owenshen24 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are! The most famous one is this one https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1794... and the results are largely in-line w/ what one might expect. > Two kinds of bias were identified: (a) a tendency to overestimate small frequencies and underestimate larger ones, and (b) a tendency to exaggerate the frequency of some specific causes and to underestimate the frequency of others, at any given leve…

Problem with such use of statistics is that we underestimate black swan events. Humans are intuitively better at it. For example, it would be impossible to predict something like 911 event with such frequentist analysis. Also impossible to predict some sort of nuclear disaster terrorist act that never happened before and could take a million lives. Another thing to keep in mind is the "missing life" (dying young) and…

Yeah "dying of war" is much more likely than you would think by looking at what Americans died of last 10 years. The same could go for anything that happens rarely but kills a lot of people when it does.

911 was probably too few deaths to make an impact in the statistics though. You'd need something killing tens of millions of people

Re: How people die vs. media coverage of death

#53

Post by losteric »

TangoTrotFox wrote: post #44
rs999gti wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A prime example is the American public's irrational fear of terrorism, which translates to pouring unfathomable amounts of tax dollars into the unending "war on terror". Meanwhile heart disease/cancer silently kills 1.1 million Americans every year. The same thing could be said for the gun control narrative being pushed by the media and politicians. If gun deaths are classified as homicides and using CDC numbers, t…

I would elaborate on that as well. The main focus of the media is on "assault style weapons" which translates to semi-automatic rifles. Of that How many people are aware of these data? I think that ignorance is going to be primarily the media's fault. [1] - https://news.vice.com/article/glock-pistol-omar-mateen-orlan...

yeah... focusing on "assault weapons" is just divisive clickbait and legislative bikeshedding. Regulations should keep guns out of crazy and criminal hands, period.

Re: How people die vs. media coverage of death

#54

Post by mdpopescu »

owenshen24 wrote: post #9

Hey everyone, I'm super stoked to see this project getting some more traction! I was responsible for the visualizations / the scraping, so I'm happy to answer any questions people might have about the whole process. ^_^

Great job! One observation though: I would have liked the last graph to have three parts: under-reported causes on the left, "pretty ok" in the middle, and over-reported on the right. They are mixed up right now, which makes them harder to differentiate.

Re: How people die vs. media coverage of death

#55

Post by fyi1183 »

BoiledCabbage wrote: post #11
otakucode wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wouldn't make much sense for the news to report on things which were not newsworthy. That people die from very typical things people always die from just isn't news.

So by the argument, the more terrorism kills, the less it should be reported? I think it's clear it's not due to its infrequency that it's reported on so much.

Are you sure about that? I haven't actually lived through the Troubles in England, but my understanding is that while terrorist acts were obviously reported by the news, there was much less hysteria than for today's much rarer terrorist events.

Re: How people die vs. media coverage of death

#56

Post by baking »

fastball wrote: post #36
baking wrote: post #31

100% of people die from being born. If this data is not segregated by age, it is pretty much meaningless. People don't die of "natural causes" or "old age" any more because the doctors are required to list something previously diagnosed on the death certificate (or else the doctor is looking at a lawsuit.) And the family member who happens to be there at the time of death is in no mood to put up an argument. No one w…

I'm not sure I understand the point you're trying to make. Are you saying that dying of heart disease and cancer are over-diagnosed? Why does that matter in the context of this analysis? It's a comparison between CDC data and news coverage -- any "over-diagnosis" (or under-diagnosis) should be reflected in all datasets equally, so it doesn't really effect the overall review.

Everyone dies. The only significance of death is if it occurs sooner than otherwise expected. For the vast majority of people that die in old age what to list on the death certificate can be a conundrum, but it is safe to say no one will ever be sued for malpractice if heart disease is listed as the cause of death. 80% of all deaths due to heart disease occur in the 65 and older population.

https://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/pdf/leading_causes_of_dea...

EDIT: Take the data from the above table multiply the deaths by the number of "years of life lost" (65 minus the mid-range age for each column) and ignoring the 65 and older age group and I think you might see a better correlation with news coverage.

Re: How people die vs. media coverage of death

#57

Post by baking »

caseymarquis wrote: post #46

Huh. Something like 1 in 20 people will likely have their lives end in a car accident.

I think the data is for "unintentional injury" (or death from injury excluding homicide or suicide.)

This category is actually the number one cause of death for ages 1-44. The numbers are fairly constant from ages 15 to 64 but the rate jumps up by a factor of 2.5 after age 65. Assuming that retirees are not just taking up sky diving, this is probably due to increased frailty and hospitalizations caused by falls.

https://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/pdf/leading_causes_of_dea...

EDIT: It seems that in addition to car accidents, poisoning, overdoses, and falls, make up the vast majority of this category.

Re: How people die vs. media coverage of death

#58

Post by perilunar »

badminton1 wrote: post #17

According to the charts, most people die of cardiovascular disease and cancer. First, most people think their habits and diet are not leading them to a cardiovascular disease. Then, those conditions that primarily afflict a specific demographic. So it might not be as relevant to someone who is let's say, less than 40 years old.

Which is a good thing, because it means most people are dying of old age.

You can't officially die of "old age" so if you avoid or survive everything else, eventually you are going die from cancer or heart disease. Problem is though, if you improve cancer treatment then more people will die of heart disease, and vice versa.

We really need a category for "died peacefully of advanced age", where we can try hard to increase the death rate.

Re: How people die vs. media coverage of death

#59

Post by baking »

garblegarble wrote: post #30
tejohnso wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like there's a joke about movies portraying chest wounds on one's left side being much more serious than on the right side. But I don't get it.

>Seems like there's a joke about movies portraying chest wounds on one's left side being much more serious than on the right side I'm guessing it's because your heart is on the left (unless you have situs inversus), so he's arguing movies treat a chest wound on the left as hitting the heart

It's a movie cliche. Shot on the left side, you are a gonner. Shot on the right, you'll be just fine. So you don't have to worry about whether your favorite character is going to make it to the end of the movie or not.

Re: How people die vs. media coverage of death

#60

Post by arca_vorago »

I'd love to see room for competition in media that took a different path if it wasn't already all monopolies and bribes cough lobbying and the innefectuality of the FCC in it's mandate.

A strong fourth estate is essential to the proper functioning of the constitutional democractic republic.

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