--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb <no_reply@...> wrote: > > OK, because I'm on a bit of a soapbox about this subject > lately, I have to continue to preach. > > This evening, sitting at my cafe relaxing, I foolishly > clicked on the HuffPost and found this article: > > http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/22/west-nile-virus-cases-increase_n_1822056.html
In fact, it's an Associated Press article, not one written for HuffPo. Always a good idea, if you have any reason to be suspicious of a news article, to check to see whether it's from one of the agencies like AP. Not that they always get everything right, but you look pretty foolish blaming an AP article on HuffPo's writers. Another good idea in this situation is to do a Web search on the headline. If you get a lot of hits from different media outlets, you know <duh> that it isn't unique to the one you found it on. (Google has 108,000 hits on it.) Still another good idea is to do a topical search and see if any of the more reliable outlets have a similar story of their own. In this case, for example, the New York Times has one reported by its own journalist: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/23/health/west-nile-outbreak-shaping-up-as-worst-ever-in-us-authorities-say.html?hp http://tinyurl.com/8cfe49b One more tip: If the article is reporting on what some big institution has said and you're dubious that the reporting is accurate, go to the institution's own Web site and see if you can find its perspective on the topic, then compare with the article. In this case, you'd want to look at the CDC's Web site, where indeed you'll find that the CDC is very concerned about the recent outbreaks: http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvbid/westnile/index.htm This link was even given in the AP article on HuffPo. Lots of other material on the site on West Nile, which the CDC considers a significant public health threat. > Let's look into this, shall we? > > I am NOT trying to knock the CDC. They do important and > valuable work. I am knocking the reporters who took what > they said and tried to turn it into something else. The reporters did not try to turn what the CDC said into something else. If you want to disagree with the AP article, you're going to have to disagree with the CDC. > There has been -- according to this article -- an "alarming" > increase in outbreaks of the West Nile virus. That is, 1118 > illnesses have been reported this year, as opposed to a > "normal" year, in which only 300 would have been reported. > > "Drill down" on this statistic for a moment. No, because you've missed the most important fact about the statistic. It's not the total for the year. It's the total for the year only through the third week in August. The West Nile virus season has just gotten started. It will continue through September at least; and the rate of new cases is expected to *increase* until then. > It means -- given that the current population of the US is > 311,591,917 people -- that instead of an infinitesimally > small percentage of them being at risk of contracting this > disease, a slightly higher but still infinitesimally small > number of them are at risk. This is what real science calls > the difference between relative risk and absolute risk. > > Now let's get to the Good Part. The reporter in question > didn't adequately define what is meant by "illness." In > the article itself, he says that "Only about one in five > infected people get sick. One in 150 infected people will > develop severe symptoms including neck stiffness, > disorientation, coma and paralysis." This reduces the > infinitesimal risk to even more infinitesimal levels. > > WTF? Gosh, wonder why the CDC is so concerned, then? Maybe you should think about doing just a *little* more digging. > It's almost as if someone wants to sell an article to > HuffPost by *creating panic* about an issue that does > not really deserve to be panicked about, or at least > not yet. Of course, nobody sold the article to HuffPo, nor was it written to create panic. Hmm, and there's even a video accompanying the AP article on HuffPo in which a physician from NYU Medical Center explains the current threat (referring to it as "alarming") and suggests preventive measures. Bottom line, Barry, you didn't do your homework. You leaped to incorrect conclusions without doing even the most minimal checking. You won't read this, so you're unlikely to do any better next time. But hopefully FFL readers will now be aware that you are not the knowledgable authority you pretend to be on science reporting. > Just sayin'...
