Remembering that most news is quite unusual

Traveling and blogging do not go together very well, but I'm back in Highlands Ranch -- it's Wednesday, so the lawn mowing a trimming provides the summer soundtrack all morning -- and turning my attention to the looming fall semester. Our granddaughters are back this Thursday at Arapahoe HS, but both CSU and Metro don't start until Aug. 23. So I'm not in panic mode or anything.

I was thinking about how writers use -- and sometimes misuse -- statistics. Journalists are infamous for having only a loose grasp of stats and math and trends, which seems weird considering how often journalists must rely on those stats and mathematics. 

Here's an excerpt from a recent Poynter Institute blog encouraging the media to stick to facts in reporting on the pandemic that helps illustrate some challenges:

“More than 99.99% of fully vaccinated people have not had a severe breakthrough case of Covid-19, according to a CNN analysis of CDC data as of August 2nd.”

Read that again — 99.99%.

Here’s more. CNN’s Deidre McPhillips writes, “As of Aug. 2, more than 164 million people in the United States were fully vaccinated against Covid-19, according to the CDC. Fewer than 0.001% of those individuals — 1,507 people — died and fewer than 0.005% — 7,101 people — were hospitalized with Covid-19. … About three-quarters (74%) of all reported breakthrough cases were among seniors age 65 or older. Of the roughly 1,500 people who died, one in five passed away from something other than Covid-19 even though they had a breakthrough case of the virus, according to the CDC.”

There is a lot of attention on vaccine deniers, but focusing on who is not vaccinated is clearly a choice the media makes. It's also caused by the basic truth of news, which is that most news is bad news. 

If one high schools student dies in a tragic auto accident on the first day of school, that will most certainly be news. If that does not happen, and let's hope for this, there will most certainly NOT be a story in any media basically proclaiming the good news that everyone who intended to arrive at school safely actually did so.

It sounds so normal as we think about this truth, but when the truly "bad news" affects only 0.01 percent of some population, or even 0.001 percent) well, that is clearly not very helpful for the 99.99 percent. 

It's a vain hope to look to a future where everyone is a strong reader and that everyone can work through the logical implications of the news, of statistics and of how science progresses. 

That leaves it up to the media to repeat what can only be described as "good news," over and over. Until mandates change the dynamics of the delta variation, the media MIGHT be the force that slowly (so frustratingly slowly) provides the nudge to a significant portion of hesitators.

But the media will likely be unable to resist that ONE dramatic story of the 25-year-old who is fully vaccinated but dies anyway. 

We don't know how to use or create media any other way.