A Tale of 2 Headlines

[Skeptic Ginger]

Most who die from new H1N1 flu had conditions: CDC

Near half of [hospitalized] swine flu patients otherwise healthy

These are both reports in Yahoo on the same day about the same medical report from CDC.

In the first article it says:

Most of the people who have died from the new pandemic H1N1 flu had underlying conditions such as asthma, but 45 percent seemed healthy, according to the largest study yet of U.S. cases.

Technically "most" had an underlying medical condition. But who wouldn't think 45% not having any health problem before getting really sick or dying wasn't worth noting in the headline?

Much as we are usually seeing exaggerated flu fears if the reporters can get away with it, I think the second story is a tad more accurately framed:

ATLANTA – The largest U.S. analysis of hospitalized adult swine flu patients has found almost half were healthy people who did not have asthma or any other chronic illnesses before they got sick.

Health officials released the surprising results at a news conference on Tuesday, noting that 46 percent of 1,400 hospitalized adults did not have a chronic underlying condition.

They have said before that the majority of swine flu patients who develop severe illness have some sort of pre-existing condition, but the new data suggest the majority may be slimmer than was previously thought.

In order to put this in perspective, I would have written a different headline altogether: Only a tiny fraction of people getting the new flu strain suffer serious disease but of those who do almost half did not have underlying condition.

 

[Puppycow]

Framing can make all the difference.

For instance, this one seemed to me to have the opposite of the intended effect. The main point is that adverse health events happen all the time, so it's a mistake to blame the vaccine when an adverse health event happens after getting vaccinated. But the way it's written, it makes it sound that the adverse events might also be due to the vaccine.

Don’t Blame Flu Shots for All Ills, Officials Say
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

As soon as swine flu vaccinations start next month, some people getting them will drop dead of heart attacks or strokes, some children will have seizures and some pregnant women will miscarry.

But those events will not necessarily have anything to do with the vaccine. That poses a public relations challenge for federal officials, who remember how sensational reports of deaths and illnesses derailed the large-scale flu vaccine drive of 1976.

This time they are making plans to respond rapidly to such events and to try to reassure a nervous public — and headline-hunting journalists — that the vaccine is not responsible.

Every year, there are 1.1 million heart attacks in the United States, 795,000 strokes and 876,000 miscarriages, and 200,000 Americans have their first seizure. Inevitably, officials say, some of these will happen within hours or days of a flu shot.

 

[Puppycow]

Does Rush Limbaugh have an "underlying condition"? He's obese and he smokes. But he refuses to get vaccinated.

Last week, Rush Limbaugh made headlines by announcing that he would not be getting a shot. "Screw you, Ms. Sebelius," he said on his radio show, referring to Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius. "I'm not going to take it precisely because you're now telling me I must."

 

[Dr. Imago]

I would like, at the end of this "epidemic", to see the overall numbers in comparison to what the regular ole Influenza A does to the population each year.

The only good I see from this latest media hyperfocus on this issue is that it is raising the public's awareness about infectious disease risks, much like the SARS scare from a few years ago that the vast majority of us seemed to survive and then subsequently file into the recesses of our brains.

Of course, I'm expecting the spawn of several "Outbreak" type movies next spring as Hollywood seeks to both mangle, further confuse, and cash in on the current scaremongering exercise.

I'm not getting the vaccine, for what it's worth. I've probably already had the disease. I have been definitively exposed, unintentionally, on at least two occasions.

~Dr. Imago

 

[casebro]

So how much of the general population has those 'underlying conditions'? About half, I suspect...

 

[Captain.Sassy]

Does Rush Limbaugh have an "underlying condition"? He's obese and he smokes. But he refuses to get vaccinated.

I'm not getting the vaccine cuz you said to do it

ohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseoh pleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseoh
ohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseoh pleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseoh
ohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseoh pleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseoh
God if you're really real pleaseohplease just this once just this once it would be soooooo sweet and I'll be really good and stop looking at girly pics online for a week ohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohplease....

 

[jasonpatterson]

ohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseoh pleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseoh
ohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseoh pleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseoh
ohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseoh pleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseoh
God if you're really real pleaseohplease just this once just this once it would be soooooo sweet and I'll be really good and stop looking at girly pics online for a week ohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohplease....

Seconded.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Framing can make all the difference.

For instance, this one seemed to me to have the opposite of the intended effect. The main point is that adverse health events happen all the time, so it's a mistake to blame the vaccine when an adverse health event happens after getting vaccinated. But the way it's written, it makes it sound that the adverse events might also be due to the vaccine.

That opening line is a doozy.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Does Rush Limbaugh have an "underlying condition"? He's obese and he smokes. But he refuses to get vaccinated.

He's a walking candidate for swine flu death with the exception he is of the age where cases are more rare.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I would like, at the end of this "epidemic", to see the overall numbers in comparison to what the regular ole Influenza A does to the population each year.

The only good I see from this latest media hyperfocus on this issue is that it is raising the public's awareness about infectious disease risks, much like the SARS scare from a few years ago that the vast majority of us seemed to survive and then subsequently file into the recesses of our brains.

Of course, I'm expecting the spawn of several "Outbreak" type movies next spring as Hollywood seeks to both mangle, further confuse, and cash in on the current scaremongering exercise.

I'm not getting the vaccine, for what it's worth. I've probably already had the disease. I have been definitively exposed, unintentionally, on at least two occasions.

~Dr. Imago

Are you advising your patients also to not get it? And are you concerned about your possibly mild case infecting one of your patients whose case would not be so mild?

 

[Careyp74]

Most who die from new H1N1 flu had conditions: CDC

Near half of [hospitalized] swine flu patients otherwise healthy

These are both reports in Yahoo on the same day about the same medical report from CDC.

In the first article it says:Technically "most" had an underlying medical condition. But who wouldn't think 45% not having any health problem before getting really sick or dying wasn't worth noting in the headline?

Much as we are usually seeing exaggerated flu fears if the reporters can get away with it, I think the second story is a tad more accurately framed:


In order to put this in perspective, I would have written a different headline altogether: Only a tiny fraction of people getting the new flu strain suffer serious disease but of those who do almost half did not have underlying condition.

Did Yahoo have anything to do with the writings of these two articles? One has a Reuters emblem, the other has an AP emblem on it.

I also noticed that the first, although saying most of the deaths, does not back up with evidence dealing with the deaths, just the hospitalized.

 

[CatOfGrey]

In order to put this in perspective, I would have written a different headline altogether: Only a tiny fraction of people getting the new flu strain suffer serious disease but of those who do almost half did not have underlying condition.

Hypothetical numbers: 110,000 swine flu cases. 100,000 healthy, 10,000 with other conditions.

1,000 need hospitalization. 500 healthy, 500 with other conditions.
So 500/100000 = 0.5% of healthy flu victims need hospitalization.
And 500/10,000 = 5% of healthy flu victims need hospitalization.

Or having other conditions raises your risk of hospitalization tenfold.

Can anyone verify how close these numbers are to telling the real picture?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Did Yahoo have anything to do with the writings of these two articles? One has a Reuters emblem, the other has an AP emblem on it.

I also noticed that the first, although saying most of the deaths, does not back up with evidence dealing with the deaths, just the hospitalized.

No, Yahoo just cuts and pastes. I wasn't really concerned their editors were flaky. The issue here is how much personal bias is going into these articles by their authors.

As for the hospitalized vs fatal, there's a lot of data out there on both. With the exception being obese is more likely to get you in the hospital but not to kill you, the other risk factors are distributed proportionately between just hospitalized and dead. How soon you get Tamiflu does have a big influence on mortality.

 

[Dr. Imago]

Are you advising your patients also to not get it? And are you concerned about your possibly mild case infecting one of your patients whose case would not be so mild?

It honestly is not an issue in my patient population, and we don't offer it in when I'm rotating the ICU or when I'm giving anesthesia. I'm simply a consultant. And, many (if not most) of my patients are intubated and breathing through a machine, and therefore low risk of contracting it. No one under my care has contracted Swine Flu (at least in a clinical evident manner).

~Dr. Imago