A Misleading Graphic or No Big Deal?

A picture entitled “Epidemic Scorecard” was published in the New York Times in April 2003 and was meant to show all the epidemics of the world and how many people they kill a year. The main focus of the picture was SARS (a serious disease at the time). However, the picture was arranged so that SARS was a tiny bow of information down at the bottom with tuberculosis and malaria being the “main players”, i.e. the disease attracting the most attention. This graphic was criticized for being very misleading by misrepresenting the degree of severity of SARS and the other diseases on the picture.
In my opinion, this graphic was extremely misleading because it would lead the general public to believe that they should really be on the lookout for diseases such as tuberculosis and malaria but not pay too much attention to something like cardiovascular disease or tobacco use. Also, the text on the left side of the picture reiterates this point be saying that “SARS just isn’t as formidable a threat as we’ve made it out to be” (New York Times, 1). This is such a horrible statement to say because it could cause people to become careless and decrease their perceived risk of being infected with SARS or some of the other diseases that we see in the US. Because this information is being read in the New York Times, it is more likely to be taken seriously and could lead to disastrous results.
Being a health major, this statement really disturbs me because SARS is a serious threat and should not be taken lightly. In the Western world (mainly the United States), we have had many advances in medicine that has almost eradicated infectious diseases like TB or malaria but still have to worry about things like SARS or influenza, which is something that most of the readers of this article will most likely be exposed at some point in their lives. The biggest epidemic of TB was in the early 20th century but the SARS epidemic was only in 2003 so it is still a very real threat that could be ignited at any moment. This graphic would not have been so bad if it had been made known in clear text that these values were for the world’s population and that the numbers for the US would be in a much different order.