The News-to-Death Ratio Strikes Again

The News-to-Death Ratio Strikes Again

The News-to-Death Ratio Strikes Again by Carl Heneghan at Brownstone Institute 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…

Hantavirus: News hype does not reflect reality

The "news-to-death ratio" is a concept introduced by Hans Rosling during the early days of the 2009 swine flu “pandemic.” 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