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Philissa,

I’ve been suggesting to everyone writing or reporting on the H1N1 flu in the city schools that they always include a couple of key statistics, so that readers a better understanding of the appopriate context.

1) There are over 1400 public schools in the city. That means that the DOE has only closed about 1% of them to due to flu.

2) Something like 1000 people die from the flu in this city every year. So far, only 2 people have died from H1N1.

Clearly swine flu is not about the flu, it’s about the hysteria, and don’t folks love to get themselves whipped up into a frenzy about mild forms of the flu. No thought whatsoever has been given to the THOUSANDS of healthy kids in the schools that have been closed who have had their lives disrupted for no good reason. These kids, though nothing was wrong with them, have also been branded with a scarlet letter by school administrators. Imagine being told that your school has closed for a week though nothing’s wrong with you and you are to go home and stay inside. And I even read a piece in today’s Daily News where the writer said ALL OF THE SCHOOLS should be closed. What is going on here? New York City needs a big Xanax and a shot of something very strong right now.

Phillissa,

But Ceolaf does make an important point that the media have been ignoring or not mentioning until well after the fold.

There’s a serious issue with the short news cycles and feeding the insatiable beast with sensational headlines. Clearly a headline declaiming that 99% of New York’s public schools were open for business yesterday would not draw much attention from readers.

There are a lot of times when you guys get it right, and spark meaningful deep discussions that engage policy makers, parents, wannabe wonks and thoughtful curmudgeons. Or get the good story that others miss, like sticking it out to the end of the D2 CEC meeting last week to hear Kathleen Grimm’s mea culpa on over crowding.

But if I wanted to read breathy headlines about the the “biggest crisis in the last SIX HOURS” along with a tearful heart wrenching extrapolation (from a sample set of one interviewee) about how this is a CRISIS of NATIONAL PROPORTIONS, there are a lot of less thoughtful media outlets from which I can chose. (or which I guess I hold to a much lower standard).

Tom Loveless at Brookings – sorry I can’t paste a hyperlink in your comment area – claimed in a report earlier this year that the failure to teach fractions effectively at the 4th grade level dooms a lot of our most vulnerable kids to trouble with Algebra, Geometry and trig. He points out that this is a bit of vicious circle since a lot of us adults didn’t learn them well, so we have a hard time supporting our kids at homework time.

In that vein, I would note that if all 1,000 of this year’s predicted deaths from all flu viruses (which is not just H1N1) occurred among just the 1,100,000 New York city public school population – and of course this is not remotely likely to be the case – it would amount to 0.091% of the students.

Each one of these 1,000 deaths will be a tragedy of epic proportions for the family and the community where that person lived. But not a public health crisis. Smart journalists like you owe it to the general public to provide this context.