I think the concept here is fascinating. One thing I didn't see addressed was that it's not totally unexpected for rare causes of death to be overrepresented in the news (apocryphally, it's been said that "dog bites man" is not news--"man bites dog" is).

That said, it seems like the modern short news cycle has edged out attention being paid to long term trends (kidney disease mortality prevalence was surprising to me as well).