There's a parasite called cyclospora touring America's produce aisles right now — 31 states, source unknown, suspects ranging from basil to snow peas. That's your one sentence of background. The outbreak we're here for is in the numbers. * NPR's explainer opens the count with the official figure: the CDC has logged 843 cases nationwide as of Thursday. The very next paragraph notes that Michigan alone had counted 1,562 cases by Friday. Sit with that. One state has nearly double the national total — and the word alone is all the alarm NPR permits itself. No headline, no arithmetic. Just alone, quietly, like a cough in a library. * There's an innocent explanation: states report to the CDC the way you reply to a group chat you've muted — eventually. The federal number lags days or weeks behind, and NPR does gently note the true number is likely much higher. Fine. Bureaucracy has a speed. But then 843 isn't the size of the outbreak. It's the size of the paperwork. Every newsroom that led with the CDC figure was, strictly speaking, measuring a fax machine. * NBC News actually did the homework — went around the CDC, added up the state health departments' own counts, and got past 4,000 cases. Five times the official number. That's a genuine scoop about the national scoreboard being broken. And here's the headline NBC dressed it in: "What is cyclosporiasis? Symptoms, total cases, map and latest as parasite outbreaks reach 31 states." A scoop, wearing an FAQ costume, written for a search engine. Google will love it. A human reading it has no idea there's news inside. * NPR's headline is the same genre: "What to know about the cyclosporiasis outbreak hitting more than half of U.S. states." What to know. News as customer service — press 1 for symptoms, press 2 for the map. * To be fair to everyone: 86 hospitalizations, no deaths, and the explainers are genuinely useful — an Ohio health official calls it a "serious illness that can cause dehydration," and you should probably wash your cilantro. Service journalism isn't the sin here. The sin is having the number that changes the whole story sitting in your own copy — and filing it under frequently asked questions. * The parasite is in the lettuce. The story was in the arithmetic. Only one outlet did the math, and then it hid the answer under a map.