A drastic increase in autism?

[Ellsworth]

If you read the current news cycle, then there seems to be a sudden and drastic increase in the number of Autism cases.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...s/75915088007/

I dug as far back as 2015.
If a news cycle is 24 hours, that's going back a lot of news cycles.
https://www.science.org/content/arti...it-really-rise

Between 2000 and 2010, the number of children in the autism category more than tripled from 93,624 in 2000 to 419,647 a decade later. Yet nearly two-thirds of that increase was matched by a decline in the rate at which children were labeled as having an "intellectual disability." The number of kids in that category fell from 637,270 to 457,478.

The data indicate that the autism rise is partly the result of students being moved from one category to another

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Personally I consider it interesting and not a healthcare/social plot.
And perhaps it's a mix of obtaining more accurate diagnosis and switching to labels that have less stigma.
The label might also greatly affect the care/treatment for those with symptoms above or below a specific level of social / life impact.
*The label change may have been partially an issue of funding access (that's the jaded political side of myself talking)

Those are my own personal speculations at the end.
And part of the intended message in my post is that news sources sell clicks, not greater context (unless it means more clicks/views/reads).