Putting Staph Scare In Perspective

October 23, 2007

 

Have you gotten caught up in the staph infection hysteria? If so, you're not alone. Since the news broke that staph infection deaths outpace AIDS deaths, people have been going nuts. But, here's the well-kept secret. Staph infections have outpaced AIDS deaths for many years. The problem is, most people have been inundated with so many stories of a so-called AIDS epidemic that anything that surpasses it is seen as the next plague.

 

AIDS in America has never been an epidemic, despite the ribbons and media attention and lopsided federal funding. AIDS kills about 13,000 people per year. In 2005, hospital staph infections alone killed 12,000 people in the United States, not counting those who never came near a hospital.

 

It's all in the way you tell the story.

 

AIDS is not a leading cause of death in the United States. Diseases you've probably never heard of kill more people than AIDS; diseases like nephritis and septicemia. With that 13,000 AIDS-death figure in mind, you'll be interested to learn that nearly 60,000 Americans die each year from the flu or pneumonia. Just over 73,000 people die each year from diabetes. Cancer kills over a half million people each year. It's the second-leading cause of death in America behind heart disease yet we spend more federal money on AIDS research than all cancer research combined .

 

That's not to say that we shouldn't be aware of the dangers of staph infections and take the proper precautions. There's a new strain of “superbug” staph that's resistant to treatment. Experts tell us our overuse of antibiotics is a contributing factor. Our lack of knowledge as to just who is coming into our country is another. Common sense hygiene is the best defense against this new strain of staph.

 

The primary cause of the recent staph hysteria is not the sheer number of deaths. It's the news media. Their reporting that staph outpaces AIDS is neither new nor alarming, yet the ‘Today' show did a stand-up report in front of a school in Bethesda, Maryland leading parents there to believe their children attending that school were in eminent danger. The principal was forced to send out an e-mail assuring parents they were not.

 

There are some lessons to be learned from all of this. The news media hold enormous sway over the masses. Otherwise mundane health statistics can create panic when they're sensationalized by overzealous media types looking to fill a 24-hour news cycle and keep you glued to the tube. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying we should ignore health news dispensed by the media. All I'm saying is we need to put things in perspective. A disease that kills only 0.000006 percent of the population is no cause for panic. In other words, you are more than 5 times more likely to die from medical malpractice than you are from a staph infection.

 

Kind of makes you wonder what else the media have worked you into a frenzy over, doesn't it? Like, perhaps, global warming? If you trust every temperature-reporting station on the planet – most of which are reported by amateurs and are highly suspect – you'll believe that Mother Earth has warmed by a whopping 1 degree over the last hundred years. To put that in perspective, it's like saying the high tomorrow will be 67 degrees instead of 66. Does it really make a difference? It does if you believe everything that's spoon-fed to you by the media.

 

Fear sells. Once you understand that, you'll understand that it's up to you to do your own due diligence.