Death by numbers - Los Angeles Times

Death by numbers - Los Angeles Times: A column by Meghan Daum

"On any given day, an average of 148,000 people will die. That means over a million people have died in the last week. Nearly 5 million have died since around this time last month, which, incidentally, was exactly when we were briefly bombarded with the news that 199 people were killed in a Brazilian airliner crash. Other deaths and possible deaths we've heard about since then include the 11 victims found so far in the Interstate 35 bridge collapse in Minneapolis; the six miners missing and three rescuers killed in a Utah coal mine; hundreds dead in the earthquake in Peru. To a somewhat lesser extent, we've also heard about 100-plus troops and the 2,000-plus civilians reportedly killed in the Iraq war in the last month. There was also news of the passing of several celebrities, including evangelist Tammy Faye Messner, talk-show host Merv Griffin and baseball's Phil Rizzuto.......

Based on estimates from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, there were about 3,500 automobile-related deaths during that monthlong period. U.S. cancer deaths hover around 42,000 a month. As for heart disease, the American Heart Assn. tells us that someone dies of cardiovascular disease every 36 seconds. And that's just in this country.

As staggering as these numbers are, they don't seem to scare or interest us nearly as much as things like plane crashes, mountain lion attacks, deadly roller coaster mishaps or avian flu. And because the news media is savvy about (and complicit in) our fears and fascinations, we are fed an endless supply of death news that has little to do with how most people actually die. Nonetheless, death by falling asteroid seems infinitely more real than death by cholesterol.

Call it selective fear, selective mourning. It may be an act of denial, but it's also an act of self-protection. Figures from the National Center for Health Statistics suggest that the lifetime odds of dying in a plane crash are about 1 in 20,000. Those same figures put the chances of dying in a car accident about 1 in 100. So why, when our plane is taxiing down the runway, do many of us still indulge in various acts of magical thinking (if we can name the last 12 presidents the wing won't fall off) even after blithely getting in our cars and making what is, statistically speaking, the far more perilous drive to the airport? "

Comment: This really is a problem. We know that people have a selective recall of information. There is an availability bias, and people remember first things that recently interested them. So they are likely to overestimate the problem with mine safety and underestimate that with road safety, to overestimate the danger of terrorist attack and underestimate the risks of eating too much! JAD