Agreed.
I called my 3 local TV news stations this morning because they're still reporting "over 16 dead"... I wanted to alert them to the huge discrepancy in their numbers vs. the petconnection.com numbers (and to rag on them for not doing their homework better), and NONE of the people I spoke with had even heard of the petconnection.com database.
So if the news people, who's job it is to investigate this stuff (I know, I know, they don't investigate, they just report the wire stories... but I keep hoping)... anyway, if the news people don't know about petconnection.com, think how FEW people in the general public know about it. In other words, if only 1% of the population even knows about petconnection.com to report their pet's death, and there are 1,300 dead reported already... imagine how many deaths would/will be reported once the general population starts to hear about petconnection.com.
Scary.
This is unbelievable.
"So if the news people, who's job it is to investigate this stuff...."
I just got back from a meeting, and the TEN PM news was on the TV in the background. Same thing, except they reported "up to fourteen dead." HOW OLD IS THIS STORY NOW??? And it hasn't occurred to ANYONE in the news biz that if SIXTY MILLION products are being recalled, that there just MIGHT be more than fourteen dead?
Okay, just on the off chance one of these "journalists" (I use the term loosely) managed to put two brain cells together and question the number of deaths being quoted, HOW DIFFICULT WOULD IT BE to:
a) Get the phone book
b) Identify the Yellow Pages
c) Find "VETERANARIANS" (chances are it's toward the back)
d) Phone each one with the following query:
"Good morning, I'm Barbara Bonehead from See B.S. 2 news at five, and we're doing an informal, unscientific survey of ALL vets in the area, and we will NOT be using your name. Could you give us a rough idea of how many pets you've lost to the tainted food?"
If you're located in a major metro area, forty or fifty replies should not be difficult. A hundred would be better. Not located in a major metro? MAKE SOME LONG DISTANCE CALLS for heaven's sake! Anyway, forty or fifty should give you a good average.
THEN...(here comes the hard part)....
Find out approximately how many veteranarians there are in the Continental U.S.! (This may require an intenet search engine, or even a phone call to a veteranary trade publication) THEN....
Extrapolate (big word I know, but you'll have to look it up!) the average number obtained from your survey to the number of vets in the U.S., and you'll have a PRETTY GOOD IDEA how many Fluffies and Fidos have actually succumbed to the rat poisoned pet food!
Am I missing something? Not a big tough assignment, but it doesn't seem to have occurred to ANY of them to look into this. Otherwise it would have hit the wires already.
Do we have to do their jobs for them or what? Oh wait, I forgot. If it can't be blamed on a Republican or and Evangelical Christian, they don't care!