In another of the occasional Hypewatch features on MedPage Today, Kristina Fiore writes, “Hypewatch: 100 Million Diabetic Americans in the Dark?”
A third of Americans have diabetes but don’t know it? That’s almost as hard to believe as the IOM’s conclusion that a third of Americans live with severe chronic pain.
The diabetes figure is hard to believe because it’s not true — though you wouldn’t know that from several headlines this week, which proclaimed that three in 10 Americans — which would amount to about 100 million people — have no idea their blood sugars are out of control.
What the headline writers actually meant to say is that a third of Americans who have diabetes don’t know it — and that amounts to a much smaller proportion of the population: about 8 million Americans, or just 3% of the population.
We’ll give the benefit of the doubt to those who botched the stats. But although unintentional, the harm to the public dialogue and to journalistic credibility is, nonetheless, very real. More than just innumeracy, I’ll call it disease-mongering.
And it’s not a lone example.
We’ve written about media messages that have struggled with incidence data for:
….just to name a few.
Disease-mongering, head-to-toe, is insidious. Even if it’s unintentional. If you can’t handle the numbers, you shouldn’t be reporting this stuff.
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Opinions on other issues in news, journals, PR, advertising, marketing
We’ve written about the hype of liquid biopsies for years (see link in comment below). And now this…. https://www.statnews.com/2022/01/12/medicare-shouldnt-cover-liquid-biopsies-early-cancer-detection/
Case counts still matter. “(There) are stories that may not be told adequately if only hospitalizations and deaths are emphasized.” @garyschwitzer interviewed by @dbauder of @AP. https://apnews.com/article/omicron-changing-news-outlets-covid-data-da9272f7c4c8a109c3bfb56bed9e9c76
My friend Gary @garyschwitzer wrote to his city council representative in a Minnesota town about a Viva Las Vegas event scheduled for January.
The response he got seems to perfectly capture where we are now.
https://www.healthnewsreview.org/2021/12/2021-ends-with-covid-craziness-in-sports-and-politics/
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