If you think it’s good news that the death rates by stroke, heart disease, cancer, and just plain accidents have declined last year (diabetes deaths have remained steady), then you’re not trying hard enough to find the dark lining to this silver cloud.

But, thank goodness, death rates from COPD have “skyrocketed“, so we don’t need to stop worrying! The New York Times even supplied a graph (below) as evidence of this calamity.

There are two things wrong with this bleak outlook. The first is an error in logic, the second is one of bad graphics.

Can you see what’s wrong with the statistical graph? Looks like a dramatic increase in COPD deaths, right? Well, maybe. But hasn’t the population, for men and women, also increased—skyrocketed—since 1980? I have only been able to discover (from this site) the COPD deaths per 100,000 up until 2004 (not 2005 like the Times picture), but here is that picture: