“conditions expected to only concern at least 1% of the population”
Wouldn’t that make your two lists almost equal? Should 1% be (say) 75% or 90%?
A condition that affected one out of 200 is an example of one in which I would not include the Top Issues people in the ping.
Some background:
Free Republic gets to a lot more people than the people on the Ping list. On top of that, we all have friends and family we are aware of with health concerns. It doesn't take much for a thing that hits one out of a hundred people to directly affect a number of people.
I'm redigesting study write ups down to 300 words that were already digested from a many page study, so I'm hoping the value-add I bring makes it even more understandable and applicable, while further reducing the time needed to come up to speed on it.
That brings up another reason I am doing this. I am pinging only articles that show a positive action is available to change a real problem. Providing hope to those who have doctors that don't even know this cutting edge information is a novel and noble thing to do.
If I reduced the Top Issues to some other level, it would stop quite a few pings, but likely only get topics already breaking over the next several days on television news. Yes, it would happen before the Main Stream Media got to it, but the utility of what I bring would be effectively low. After all, “ConservativeMind” saying something has less impact than “Dr. Oz.” We know he won't talk to the vast majority of these items, but I made sure people at least had a good opportunity to hear it.
And a thing that only strongly affects just your life once out of every 100 threads I post, is still saying I am helping to positively change your life in a novel way, unexplored by the MSM, about every month.