- Hemera Technologies/Photos.com
- Zeke Emanuel and the New York Times would have us think that there’s an STD epidemic among seniors.
My problem with numerical illiteracy among journalists, which I’ve argued before in this space and surely will again, might boil down simply to this: numbers intimidate us. Journalists’ skepticism stops where statistics begin.
Contributing op-ed writer Ezekiel Emanuel (a brother of our mayor) contributed a piece on sex among seniors. He implies that it’s rampant. “Combine retirement communities, longer life, unfamiliarity with condoms and Viagra—and what do you get? You get an S.T.D. epidemic among the Social Security generation that rivals what we imagine is happening in those “Animal House” fraternities.”
Emanuel doesn’t want to confuse us with a lot of dry numbers, but some context would have helped. For instance, here’s a CDC chart that shows that from 2007 to 2011 the incidence of chlamydia among men 20 to 24 rose from 932.1 per 100,000 population to 1,343.3. Among women that age it rose from 2,940.4 to 3,722.5.
