Institutional and corporate outlets almost always find a way to soft-sell or half-forget about most of the really bad news that's out there, and a shining example of inanity-disguised-as-impartiality popped up in a headline about some very bad news indeed, from the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University:
"Death by Poverty?"
That doesn't look much different from...
Flying Saucers Over Arizona?
So you might think that these guys are merely "maintaining an open mind" or "waiting to hear all sides of the story" about some highly questionable concept, but surprise!
The story directly under this headline is a crushing demonstration that poverty kills.
Death by Poverty!
And how many deaths?
The investigators found that approximately 245,000 deaths in the United States in the year 2000 were attributable to low levels of education, 176,000 to racial segregation, 162,000 to low social support, 133,000 to individual-level poverty, 119,000 to income inequality, and 39,000 to area-level poverty. Overall, 4.5% of U.S. deaths were found to be attributable to poverty—midway between previous estimates of 6% and 2.3%.
That isn't
flying saucers.
That's people like you and me.