Natasha Richardson's Legacy: Fleeting Health Care Muse
Natasha Richardson's death was indeed tragic, sudden and, yes, a media sensation. Who ever heard of someone hitting their head and then falling dead? Wild. And, proving that celebrities control all trends, sparked a new craze: traumatic hypochondria!
Emergency rooms across the land saw a 73% increase in head trauma-related visits in the days following Richardson's death. But, since normal people aren't as important as celebrities, only about 3% of those visits were of a serious matter.
Like all fads, however, this one passed: within two weeks the number of ER-flybys went back to the pre-Richardson death levels.