If for some reason you’re still holding out hope that some of the “public health experts” you see all the time in the national news media actually care about the public, or health, consider the story that did not dominate the news cycle this week. Here’s the headline: “49,449 Americans killed themselves last year.” The data just came in a few days ago. That’s the highest number of suicides ever recorded in this country’s history.
If you viewed that as a problem worth solving as quickly as possible — as any decent person would — then you’d dive much deeper into that data. You’d want to know who exactly is committing all these suicides. You’d want to know their age, sex, race, occupation, and so on. And then you’d present your findings honestly, as a starting point to address the problem.
It’s not happening. They’re not even trying. Instead, we’re getting quick-hit reports like this one, from Good Morning America:
What the doctor tells us is that “veterans, physicians, and LGBTQ youth” are particularly at risk. She doesn’t delve more deeply into the numbers, though, and neither does anyone else in that segment, which lasts less than two minutes.
