100% of people die from being born. If this data is not segregated by age, it is pretty much meaningless. People don't die of "natural causes" or "old age" any more because the doctors are required to list something previously diagnosed on the death certificate (or else the doctor is looking at a lawsuit.) And the family member who happens to be there at the time of death is in no mood to put up an argument. No one wants to do an autopsy and invasive tests for a frail failing elderly patient are even worse.
This would be useful information to have, but I don't agree that this makes the data meaningless. No matter when you are killed, and what by, your life has been cut short. Just because certain diseases (e.g. heart disease) mostly kill older people doesn't mean they aren't most important and worth tackling. If in the future due to medical advancement most people are living to 100+, we will regard dying at 80 an early death and a travesty.
I'm not sure I understand the point you're trying to make.
Are you saying that dying of heart disease and cancer are over-diagnosed? Why does that matter in the context of this analysis? It's a comparison between CDC data and news coverage -- any "over-diagnosis" (or under-diagnosis) should be reflected in all datasets equally, so it doesn't really effect the overall review.
Everyone dies. The only significance of death is if it occurs sooner than otherwise expected. For the vast majority of people that die in old age what to list on the death certificate can be a conundrum, but it is safe to say no one will ever be sued for malpractice if heart disease is listed as the cause of death. 80% of all deaths due to heart disease occur in the 65 and older population.
EDIT: Take the data from the above table multiply the deaths by the number of "years of life lost" (65 minus the mid-range age for each column) and ignoring the 65 and older age group and I think you might see a better correlation with news coverage.
Right, but I think the point of the OP is to say "Good news everybody! Despite what you've seen on TV and read in the paper, you're still overwhelmingly more likely to die of old age than at the hands of murderers/terrorists."
And to go along with that, I believe it is trying to ask the question "is it not just as important to follow the trends in so-called 'death by natural causes' as it is to follow trends for 'unnatural causes', at least as far as public awareness/good is concerned?"
If I was over 65 (and I'm close) I would worry more about what put me in the hospital than what appeared on my death certificate. The two are surprisingly unrelated in the elderly.
This is actually a very good point. I was thinking myself something along similar lines that intuitively speaking, death by unnatural causes like terrorism/homicide/suicide are of course more "newsworthy" than the ones due to "heart-disease".
Although the study is trying to do a larger scale comparison between the perceived and actul leading causes of deaths, it would serve it much better if it were to segment the results by age group.
A reasonable expectation for news coverage would be that coverage is proportional to deaths weighted by years of HealthSpan lost.
That cannot be exactly right. But coverage of loss of GrimSpan is a separate issue. If hip replacements and cataract operations are reducing the GrimSpan by increasing the HealthSpan that is a happier story than better infection control at Alzheimer's units increasing the GrimSpan. It is hard to state an expectation about news coverage of loss of GrimSpan
