In 2004, the U.S. beef industry slaughtered 32-million cattle. Yesterday, the U.S. confirmed the third case of mad cow disease. None of those three got into the food chain. If they had, your chances of eating beef from a mad cow would be approximately one in 10 million.

By comparison, your chances of being killed by lightning in your lifetime is 1 in 56-thousand. Your chances of being killed while crossing the street are one in 612.  You have a one in 228 chance of dying in an auto accident. Your chances of drowning in your bathtub are one in about 10-thousand.

If you do a Google News search for “mad cow,” you will find 3,680 pages of links to news stories about mad cow disease. No doubt about it – Mad Cow is the scare du jour, but I submit that the facts don’t support the perception.

So, why is it that we – and the news media – latch onto these highly improbable dangers and make them out to be more than they are?

The answer is as old as dirt. News = man bites dog.  For a dog to bite a man is not really new, but if the man bites the dog, now you’ve got something unusual to report.

Life in general is relatively boring because the same stuff happens over and over. It’s when the unexpected happens that the event breaks the monotony of everyday life.

The more unlikely it is, the more exciting it is for the news media. The more exciting it is for the news media, the more they report on it. The more they report on it, the more threatening it appears to be.  And therefore, things in life that pose the least threat often appear to pose the biggest danger.

About 800 people will die this year from choking on their food. If 800 people died from mad cow disease, practically no one would eat beef, the beef industry would suffer a huge financial loss, and tens of thousands of people would be out of work as a result.

We really need to learn how to keep the news in its proper perspective. (feedback)

Why don’t people care about this?

The USA Today has done a very good job today describing the explosion of “entitlement” spending in America. Why doesn’t anyone care about this?