Literally the best I can do.
Anyway, the site is a blog that illustrates various factual things in a visual way. Simplicity is the key: it simply shows you the facts and allows you to make up your own mind, which is a refreshing change.
It will often illustrate something that's been in the news recently, allowing you to escape whatever media bias you've been subjected to thus far. For instance, there's a brilliant post entitled How safe is the HPV vaccine? which was published soon after a lot of press stories about serious side effects and even death resulting from the vaccine against cervical cancer. The Sunday Express had even published a front-page article headed Jab 'as deadly as the cancer', which is the kind of thing that makes me want to shoot all tabloid journalists dead.
The HPV vaccine graphics show quite clearly how likely it is that you'll die from the vaccine, against how likely it is that you'll die from cervical cancer. For comparison, it also shows how likely you are to die from being struck by lightning, or driving a car.
The site doesn't go into a lot of detail or analyse its findings: it just gives you the ammunition to be able to say "well actually, it seems that the risk of cervical cancer far outweighs the risk from the jab, so my child will still have the jab", or even "I know it's not as high as the number of people who die from the cancer, but the number of people who've died soon after the jab is higher than I thought it was, and I don't want my daughter to die from something I've made her do, so she's not having the jab".
It enables you to make your own informed decisions by exploding some of the myths you'll have been encouraged to believe.
The blog's author puts a lot of these graphics together, but there are also bits and bobs from other sources, and they can be really pretty as well as informative. If you want to know the generally-accepted views of left vs right in British politics, here you go: LINK. Isn't that pretty? Or if you want a timeline showing time travel in popular film and TV, it's here.
See? Information IS beautiful, and fun, and awesome. I sound like a geography teacher, don't I? Arse.
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5 comments:
It is an interesting site and a fun way to look at the information. However, it doesn't always mean it is right. I am afraid I am going to get a bit anal here about the risk from the vaccine. Along with other things, pharmacovigilance is what I do. And the site misrepresents the situation. You see the site looks at the chance of dying within a year of vaccination. All the other things are exact points (you die at the time of the train accident/drowning etc). What you need as a comparison is what is the chance of dying a year after, o I don't know, let's say a cup of coffee. You see, people die, an you can pick anything in their life to link it to. If you actually look at the case histories (link provided on the site, which I do think is very impressive) you will see that most cannot be attributed to the vaccine or are exceedingly unlikely. A report of a suspected drug reaction is logged no matter how unlikely it is.. So someone having vaccine and walking out then being hit by a car clearly isn't the vaccines point BUT, if a family member in a state of stress blames the vaccine anyway then it will be recorded as such.
Sorry. Pharmacovigilance is a fascinating area of science and incredibly complex. I get rather carried away with it.
I very much definitely take your point about that - sometimes the site does have to compare statistics that don't quite square with each other in some ways.
But I think the main aim of Info is Beautiful is to try to put forward the information as best it can - these were probably the only statistics that were released, in this particular case, but the site does make it clear where its information has come from, and what it relates to. It also, as you say, offers links to related or other important information, and encourages you to find out more.
PS My own reaction to seeing that little "risk of dying within a year of jab" note was to think "woah, that number is really tiny, and that's within a year so very few of those deaths will have been caused by the jab, if any."
I suppose maybe there is no statistic on "deaths with the jab as their immediate cause" because cause and effect haven't been proven...? But, as I say, the site itself doesn't analyse these statistics - it just presents them - so readers have to work it out themselves or do some digging and find out more, which is a pretty healthy outlook.
Oh, I agree, it is more honest about the facts than most things because it doesn't try to put a spin on it (and you get pretty graphs such as the time travel as well). I did admit I was being anal, you hit on a pet subject (while everyone else just thinks I am mad)
Ah, yer not mad (well you might be, I don't know) - it's good to be a bit critical about these things and not take everything at face value.
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