The Varsitarian

ACCORDING to Peter Sandman, a self-described ‘risk communications consultant’ in Princeton, New Jersey, risks that scare and that kill are very different.

A few months ago, I was flooded with text messages with orders to apply povidone-iodine on my neck to protect my thyroid from radiation. For days, every kind of media exhausted the words “Japan,” “Dai Ichi,” “nuclear power,” and “radiation.” These thoughts have made many people anxious.

But soon enough, as if it was last month’s Happy Meal, the fear becomes hackneyed and shelved along with the epic swine flu, SARS, Anthrax, mad cow disease, and even organ theft and Y2K.

It’s media that create the rage. Media dig for spicy stories to tell, to serve us with what we want to hear and see. And we react the way media want us, (excessively or inadequately).

This impels us to spend too much time and money on issues that distract us from what is really happening.

According to GLOBOCAN, a project by the World Health Organization that aims to provide contemporary estimates of the incidence of, and mortality from cancer, of 10,643 Filipinos that were diagnosed with lung cancer in 2010, 80 percent or 8,518 of them did not survive. More people therefore die from cancer than media-reported threats I have mentioned put together.

But we won’t tell this story to our friends or family at the dinner table, we won’t post a status message about this on Facebook or Twitter. Because this is passé; to tell such a story would be unfashionable and it won’t get us that hefty number of “likes.”

This might even be the reason for Yahoo! News’ sudden offer of a smorgasbord of sensational articles; a great marketing strategy to lure their audience.

They know it would be difficult to interest anyone with a story about the development of a lung disease compared to a story of an organ-stealing syndicate who picks up random kids from the streets. They know that we crave for novelty; stories that are shocking and distressingly fast, these are the stories that we want to hear. These stories have the potential to be viral; they create panic, even with so little proof. Whereas lung cancer, which happens unobtrusively, though backed up by numbers, details, and any evidence you might want, is left to pass with a simple “tsk.”

It’s fine if we have to make the people terrified of diseases and threats. But to leave the people unwarned of the things that really kill— that’s disturbing.

If we are to panic, we might as well panic for the right reasons. We must earn to assess which problems have more weight. Then during your free time, maybe try to fix that car exhaust, buy a bike, or quit smoking. I don’t have any numbers that would prove this, but I know it gives a greater chance of saving lives than wiping antiseptic on necks.