Interesting Stats Day

In a broader NYTimes story today -- based on this CDC report -- about various racial health disparities, a few factoids deserve special attention and a little discussion because (drumroll ... it's Interesting Stats Day).

• Prescription overdoses now kill more Americans than overdoses of illegal drugs.  We might conclude that illegal drug users are just smarter than prescription drug users, but it's probably a function of all of those easy-to-get painkillers and the like, plus all those silly pharmaceutical pushing drugs on us.  A liberal will blame drug companies.  A conservative will blame the idiots who take the wrong dose.  As is often the case, the truth is somewhere in the radical moderate middle.  By the way, this is a flip on the old data, which used to find illegal drug overdoses caused more deaths than legal drug overdoses.  Interesting.

• People in three very different states report the most healthy days (Utah, North Dakota, and Connecticut).  People in three very similar states report the most sick days (West Virginia, Kentucky, and my home state of Tennessee).  My first reaction to this is obesity, based only on what I see on my trips home.  Of the three "healthy" states, I see Utah and the Mormon effect, but the other two?  No idea.  But, the reporting of "healthy days" is correlated with income.  But ... and more important ... the states "with that have the highest mean healthy days have the lowest health inequality, and vice versa," according to the full report.  In other words, the state health systems do a good job of breaking down health inequality in access to care.

• Binge drinking "is more common among the better-educated and more affluent, including college students. But poor people, and especially American Indians, drink much more heavily when on binges."  As a university professor, I can confidently support the first sentence.  Our students definitely binge drink.  They're amateurs, mind you, but they try hard, usually with cheap, crappy booze that no one else will drink, so it gets sold to college kids.  Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son. And I say "son" because men far outnumber women, according to the full report (20 percent of men, 10 percent of women).  Only 3.8 percent of those 68 years or older binge drink; that's heartening, I suppose, since we do not want to combine cheap liquor with Alzheimer's.

So that's my Interesting Stats Day.  At least until later, when I'll probably find something else to go on about instead of finishing a review of a textbook that's due -- rut roh -- today.

Where Ya Get Your H1N1Info

H1N1, or swine flu. Where are people getting their info on this much-discussed version of influenza? I give you two different lists, both courtesy of the great folks at the Pew Center in this new report.

Most Useful Sources (in order)

1. Internet
2. Cable news
3. Local TV news

Source of Information

1. Local TV news
2. Cable news
3. Network evening news

That second, disturbing list, deserves some explanation. Respondents were asked where they learned something about H1N1 and they could rattle off any number of sources, so 69 percent somehow managed to find local TV news as a source of swine flu info and 63 percent identified cable news. Both have covered this frothing at the mouth, but that's a different matter.

Indeed, the Pew folks found H1N1 to be the big story in terms of interest, even besting that perennial favorite the economy.

Of course H1N1 so far isn't as bad as TV went on and on and on about, and there are even reports of people thinking about swine flu parties to get infected. Why? Apparently there is anecdotal evidence that back in the big one, the 1918 epidemic, people who caught an easier Spring version were better able to handle the next Winter version that killed so many people. The thinking goes -- and I do NOT recommend this because it's dumb -- that catching it now will help you next Winter when we get a nasty, mutated, angry version of the swine flue sweeping across the globe.

The Internet is the growing source of info, and compared to TV I have to say -- thank god. Then again, it's hard to know where on the Net people are getting their info, so lemme take back that thanks until we know more.

Knowing More -- Added Stuff

A Pew Center person pointed me to a report that breaks down where on the Net people are going for H1N1 info. Thanks!

The good news? The CDC is #1. The bad news? Wikipedia is #2. Then there's Google and Yahoo, basically search engines, and then oddly enough ... MySpace? The land of awful music and even awfuler web pages, a source of swine flu info? CNN shows up on the list at #6 and sadly is the only news site mentioned. There's also another government web site, and ... Facebook?

The only thing missing from this frightening scenario is Twitter. Probably comes in at #11.