An item in the National Briefing column in the national section of today's New York Times reports that Nevada, "which has the nation's highest rate of asthma," is being faulted "for not tracking the disease." The article runs under the header "Nevada: State Chided for Lack of Asthma Data." It goes on to report that state officials say asthma has killed 330 Nevada residents since 1990 and that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that "slightly more than 7 percent of Nevada's residents have asthma."
Well, if the state knows exactly how many people died of asthma and what percentage of residents have it, then how can it be faulted for "lack of asthma data" and for "not tracking the disease"? And how can the Times be so sure that the state has "the nation's highest rate of asthma" if the state isn't tracking the disease or collecting data on it? In fact, the claim that Nevada has "the nation's highest rate of asthma" -- a claim for which the Times cites no source -- is questionable. An April 24, 1998, report from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention listed the rates of asthma as the underlying cause of death among whites from 1990 to 1995. Nevada's rate was 15.8 deaths per million population -- below New York (17.0), Nebraska (23.0), Arizona (20.4), Hawaii (23.3), and New Mexico (22.9), among others. If you don't believe Smartertimes.com, you can go check out the report at http://www.cdc.gov/epo/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00052262.htm. While rate of death from asthma is not the same as rate of asthma, there's no reason to believe that the deadliness of asthma would be much greater in Arizona than in Nevada. And in general, death-related statistics are more reliable than those gathered by calling up a sample of individuals and interviewing them about whether they have asthma or not.
Why is the Times picking on Nevada? Perhaps it is still grasping at straws to support its claim in a front-page May 19, 2001, news article that "In Nevada, these experts say, a long legacy of low-tax, libertarian government, rural isolation and a steely tradition of self-reliance have combined with a population growth of more than 60 percent in the last decade that has left little sense of community to create huge challenges to the state's mental and physical health."
How, then, to explain that high asthma rate in New York, which doesn't exactly suffer from a "low-tax, libertarian government"?