There’s a tendency among public officials and journalists, when they discuss disease, to dress good news up as bad. My favourite example was a BBC website headline from 2004 when mortality from the human form of mad-cow disease, which had been falling for two years, rose from 16 to 17 cases: “Figures show rise in vCJD deaths” wailed the headline. (The incidence fell to eight the next year and zero by 2012, unreported.) Talk about grasping at straws of pessimism.
Last week there was a neat example of how good news is no news in the world of public health. Newspapers widely reported a scientific paper, which argued that malaria might get worse in the future at high altitudes as a result of global warming allowing mosquitoes and parasites to survive in higher regions such as Ethiopia and Colombia. Breathlessly, the reports suggested an extra three million people a year might catch the disease.
