Thursday, 29 November 2012

Tabloid Interpretation.

Every year in Britain (and presumably most other places, too) the death rate rises during the winter. This is due to such things as elderly people being more prone to illness during the winter, a generally greater risk of accidents etc. The extent to which the winter rate exceeds that for the rest of the year is measured and used for the purpose of comparison, and today it was reported that the ‘excess deaths’ for last winter were encouragingly lower – at around 24,000 – than they had been for the previous year. One news source I saw headlined this as:

Winter Kills 24,000 People!

I do believe there are probably people around the country who think that 24,000 people froze to death last year.

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