Visualizing the Coverage of Deaths in The New York Times vs. Actual Death Data

But as my mum says when I try to point out she's worrying about the wrong things, "I don't care what the statistics say, I read about it in the paper and I believe it's worse." So is it the papers that are distorting reality or are people wilfully obstinate in their beliefs? (Hint: it's both).

[OP] I spent some time categorizing death coverage in the first pages of The New York TImes compared to actuality over a 20 month period. I’ve been intrigued about why so many make threat assessments based on news coverage, and wanted to see if the “sampling” of news was close to representative.