Liars Figure and Figures Lie--Part II

I love details. I really love details that give an issue perspective.

As I continue my ranting and raving about world events and the media’s presentation of same to the public, I continue to enjoy grabbing the few little tidbits of information that manage to leak out of a given story and put it into terms that everyone can understand.

Here is the amazing story of a young girl apparently successfully treated after the onset of the symptoms of rabies. They have yet to determine the long term effects of the illness on the girl’s mental capacities, but recovery from the disease is apparently nothing short of a miracle.

Rabies used to kill a lot of people here in the US before the development of the vaccine. There have only been a few dozen deaths in the past ten years because of the wide spread availability of the vaccine. Growing up in the rural south, the two things we were most afraid of was a rabid animal and getting “lock jaw” (tetanus) from getting cut running with rusty scissors. No kid in their right mind wanted to face “ten shots in the stomach” or whatever else the rabies treatment used to entail.

Based on the CDC statistic reported in this article, rabies still kills one person every 15 minutes. A little math tells me that that equals about 35,040 people each year (365 days per year times 24 hours each day times 60 minutes per hour divided by 4.)

The point of my story is this: where is the US government’s, the UN’s, and the media's outrage when it comes to this issue? I mean, thirty five thousand people. To read the papers and listen to the TV, sharks and air bags and bird flue and mad cow disease and anthrax are all imminent threats, but Rabies? Old News.

I say NO NEWS is worthy of your attentions without checking the facts for yourself.