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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

#71

Post by DanBC »

CalRobert wrote: post #70
hansthehorse wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When presented with gun violence statistics ask them to take out gang related and suicide then you can more accurately use the information.

Well, those statistics aren't wrong, they just tell a different story. Gun suicides matter, but we might address those very differently from homicides. Gang-related violence... I'm not sure why I'd exclude that? They're human beings. The term also is very unevenly applied and laws meant to target "gang-related violence" have a tendency to burden minorities more heavily. (See also: "terrorism") https://www.nytimes.com…

> Gun suicides matter, but we might address those very differently from homicides.

The main prevention measure for both murder and suicide is to reduce access to methods.

It's fine for a nation to say they make the choice not to restrict access to guns, but they need to be honest about the increased numbers of people dying this will cause.

Re: How people die vs. media coverage of death

#72

Post by coldtea »

>"Although all diseases claim almost 1,OOO times as many lives as do homicides, there were about three times as many articles about homicides than about all diseases. Furthermore, homicide articles tended to be more than twice as long as articles reporting deaths from diseases and accidents."

Doesn't that make sense? If diseases kill 1000x more people, they are not news -- they're same old, what has been going on since forever.

Now, if there a novel disease or epidemic, sure, that would get coverage.

Re: How people die vs. media coverage of death

#73

Post by fastball »

baking wrote: post #56
fastball wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Right, but I think the point of the OP is to say "Good news everybody! Despite what you've seen on TV and read in the paper, you're still overwhelmingly more likely to die of old age than at the hands of murderers/terrorists."

And to go along with that, I believe it is trying to ask the question "is it not just as important to follow the trends in so-called 'death by natural causes' as it is to follow trends for 'unnatural causes', at least as far as public awareness/good is concerned?"

Re: How people die vs. media coverage of death

#74

Post by LifeLiverTransp »

DanBC wrote: post #71
CalRobert wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, those statistics aren't wrong, they just tell a different story. Gun suicides matter, but we might address those very differently from homicides. Gang-related violence... I'm not sure why I'd exclude that? They're human beings. The term also is very unevenly applied and laws meant to target "gang-related violence" have a tendency to burden minorities more heavily. (See also: "terrorism") https://www.nytimes.com…

> Gun suicides matter, but we might address those very differently from homicides. The main prevention measure for both murder and suicide is to reduce access to methods. It's fine for a nation to say they make the choice not to restrict access to guns, but they need to be honest about the increased numbers of people dying this will cause.

Reduce access to the methods to end ones life? Is this irony?

Re: How people die vs. media coverage of death

#75

Post by gknoy »

DanBC wrote: post #71
CalRobert wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, those statistics aren't wrong, they just tell a different story. Gun suicides matter, but we might address those very differently from homicides. Gang-related violence... I'm not sure why I'd exclude that? They're human beings. The term also is very unevenly applied and laws meant to target "gang-related violence" have a tendency to burden minorities more heavily. (See also: "terrorism") https://www.nytimes.com…

> Gun suicides matter, but we might address those very differently from homicides. The main prevention measure for both murder and suicide is to reduce access to methods. It's fine for a nation to say they make the choice not to restrict access to guns, but they need to be honest about the increased numbers of people dying this will cause.

> reduce access to methods

A sibling questioned the validity of this for suicide, and I agree. Anyone sufficiently motivated to kill themselves will find a way. Knife, rope, drug overdose, threaten a police officer, vehicular "accident", skydiving, move-to-Oregon (for legally assisted suicide, that is -- OR's a nice place :)), sit in the garage while the car is running... every single one of these things is something that a suicidal person could come up with quite easily, and do, even if they don't have a firearm.

The only thing reducing access to firearms will do is change the method of suicide. Humans have been finding ways to do it for thousands of years.

Re: How people die vs. media coverage of death

#76

Post by owenshen24 »

owenversteeg wrote: post #35
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. ^_^

Hello, Owen, from another Owen! I actually find this pretty funny as overrepresentation of certain causes of death is something I've been talking about to friends and family for years, and I was actually recently thinking to compile some data on it. Hilarious that another Owen beat me to it! One thing I've been meaning to write about for a while is terrorism specifically. I was thinking of writing something refuting…

Hm. The thing about costs is interesting. (That spending so much on terrorism is why we see so few deaths.) Evaluating counterfactuals is always hard. If I were to tackle it, I'd probably look at what we're spending the terrorism budget on, what the upper bound of deaths might be, and if it'd be reasonable to think that whatever counterterrorism measures we're taking could actually save that many lives.

I think there are more nuanced views that are worth expressing, as some commenters have already pointed out, for example, looking at years of life lost (i.e. controlling for age of death).

While I think the data we got was in broad strokes representative, I'd be curious to see what it looks like in other countries, as I'm wondering if cultural bias plays a large role.

I'm not too sure if I'll write many more blog posts exploring this dataset in the future; the data is all there on GitHub, though, if anyone else wants to play with it. :)

Re: How people die vs. media coverage of death

#77

Post by owenshen24 »

mdpopescu wrote: post #54
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.

Oh, yeah, that seems like a good way to help with clarity. Thanks for sharing. I'll see if I can make some minor edits this week to help with that.

Re: How people die vs. media coverage of death

#78

Post by owenshen24 »

verelo wrote: post #37
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. ^_^

I love the graphs, but the way they’re used in this article is very annoying on an iPhone. That scroller is hard to grab and when i zoom i cannot are all the data anymore. No better in landscape mode. Not sure if you can influence that, but thought I’d give the feedback since you mentioned the visualizations.

Ah, I see.

The charting library I used (charts.js) didn't come with an easy way to have a time axis, so I rigged up some stuff with JQuery and a slider.

I guess something that could have helped with accessibility would have been a dropdown box instead to select the years.

Re: How people die vs. media coverage of death

#79

Post by owenshen24 »

mars4rp wrote: post #13
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. ^_^

The coloring of the chart is awful, alzheimer and terrorism having almost identical color.

That's an easily remediable fix!

Re: How people die vs. media coverage of death

#80

Post by srean »

gknoy wrote: post #75
DanBC wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gun suicides matter, but we might address those very differently from homicides. The main prevention measure for both murder and suicide is to reduce access to methods. It's fine for a nation to say they make the choice not to restrict access to guns, but they need to be honest about the increased numbers of people dying this will cause.

> reduce access to methods A sibling questioned the validity of this for suicide, and I agree. Anyone sufficiently motivated to kill themselves will find a way. Knife, rope, drug overdose, threaten a police officer, vehicular "accident", skydiving, move-to-Oregon (for legally assisted suicide, that is -- OR's a nice place :)), sit in the garage while the car is running... every single one of these things is something…

This line of argument "For a sufficiently [blah] ...." rarely adds value, be it "a sufficiently smart compiler ..." or "sufficiently motivated individual".

These add little to no value because in most of the cases where such a line of argument is put forward, there is a sizable set that do not satisfy the "for a sufficiently [blah]" condition. Not only are these sets sizeable, sometimes they are the particularly relevant set.

Many suicidal people have been talked out of it. So its not hard to believe that lack of access to quick measures would have influence.

Digression: I blame movies for popularizing shooting at one's temple. That's how many end up with a botched attempt. If one must, one should take out the brain stem as quickly as possible.

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