Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think

Bears and Axes
Mari Larsson was 38 years old when she was killed by multiple blows to the
head from an axe. It was the night of October 17, 2004. Mari’s former partner
had broken into her house in the small town of Piteå in the north of Sweden
and was waiting for her to come home. The tragic and brutal murder of a
mother of three was barely reported in the national media and even the local
newspaper gave it only modest coverage.
That same day a 40-year-old father of three, also living in the far north of
Sweden, was killed by a bear while out hunting. His name was Johan
Vesterlund and he was the first person killed by a bear in Sweden since 1902.
This brutal, tragic, and, crucially, rare event received massive coverage
throughout Sweden.

---

In Sweden, a fatal bear attack is a once-in-a-century event. Meanwhile, a
woman is killed by her partner every 30 days. This is a 1,300-fold difference
in magnitude. And yet one more domestic murder had barely registered, while
the hunting death was big news.
Despite what the media coverage might make us think, each death was
equally tragic and horrendous. Despite what the media might make us think,
people who care about saving lives should be much more concerned about
domestic violence than about bears.
It seems obvious when you compare the numbers.
Tuberculosis and Swine Flu
It is not only bears and axes that the news media gets out of proportion.
In 1918 the Spanish flu killed around 2.7 percent of the world population.
The risk of an outbreak of a flu against which we have no vaccine remains a
constant threat, which we should all take extremely seriously. In the first
months of 2009, thousands of people died from the swine flu. For two weeks
it was all over the news. Yet, unlike with Ebola in 2014, the number of cases
did not double. It did not even go up in a straight line. I and others concluded
this flu was not as aggressive as the first alarm had indicated. But journalists
kept the fear boiling for several weeks.
Finally I got tired of the hysteria and calculated the rate of news reports
versus fatalities. Over a period of two weeks, 31 people had died from swine
flu, and a news search on Google brought up 253,442 articles about it. That
was 8,176 articles per death. Over the same two-week period, I calculated that
roughly 63,066 people had died of tuberculosis (TB). Almost all these people
were on Levels 1 and 2, where TB remains a major killer even though it can
now be treated. But TB is infectious and TB strains can become resistant and
kill many people on Level 4. The news coverage for TB was at a rate of 0.1
article per death. Each swine flu death received 82,000 times more attention
than each equally tragic death from TB.