[baking]

Everyone dies. The only significance of death is if it occurs sooner than otherwise expected. For the vast majority of people that die in old age what to list on the death certificate can be a conundrum, but it is safe to say no one will ever be sued for malpractice if heart disease is listed as the cause of death. 80% of all deaths due to heart disease occur in the 65 and older population.

https://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/pdf/leading_causes_of_dea...

EDIT: Take the data from the above table multiply the deaths by the number of "years of life lost" (65 minus the mid-range age for each column) and ignoring the 65 and older age group and I think you might see a better correlation with news coverage.

[fastball]

Right, but I think the point of the OP is to say "Good news everybody! Despite what you've seen on TV and read in the paper, you're still overwhelmingly more likely to die of old age than at the hands of murderers/terrorists."

And to go along with that, I believe it is trying to ask the question "is it not just as important to follow the trends in so-called 'death by natural causes' as it is to follow trends for 'unnatural causes', at least as far as public awareness/good is concerned?"

[baking]

If I was over 65 (and I'm close) I would worry more about what put me in the hospital than what appeared on my death certificate. The two are surprisingly unrelated in the elderly.

[4mitkumar]

This is actually a very good point. I was thinking myself something along similar lines that intuitively speaking, death by unnatural causes like terrorism/homicide/suicide are of course more "newsworthy" than the ones due to "heart-disease".

Although the study is trying to do a larger scale comparison between the perceived and actul leading causes of deaths, it would serve it much better if it were to segment the results by age group.