This was our textbook for the semester.
Posted on 07/27/2018 9:44:48 AM PDT by LurkedLongEnough
Do Statistics Matter To You?
Doctors
(A) The number of physicians in the U.S. is 700,000. (B) Accidental deaths caused by Physicians per year are 120,000. (C) Accidental deaths per physician is 0.171 Statistics courtesy of U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services.
Now think about this:
Guns
(A) The number of gun owners in the U.S. is 80,000,000+. (Yes, that's 80 million) (B) The number of accidental gun deaths per year, all age groups, is 1,500. (C) The number of accidental deaths per gun owner is .0000188 Statistics courtesy of FBI
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So, statistically, doctors are approximately 9,000 times more dangerous than gun owners.
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Remember, 'Guns don't kill people, doctors do.'
(Excerpt) Read more at thecoachsteam.com ...
We need common sense doctor control!
Well-meaning, but apples and oranges comparison. Doctors see people who are in a difficult situation, severely ill, and the doctors prescribe medication and/or perform surgery, inherently risky procedures.
I sure hope FReepers don’t start posting this as some sort of response. It does not take into account the number of people those physicians see over the course of a year. It would guess there are over a billion interactions a year with physicians.
This is actually quite childish.
At least that's what the MSM informs me.
You are correct. Safe to say at least 120,000 sick people would die if they depended on a gun to treat them.
In this graph, this column represents 23% of the population. This column represents 28% of the population, and this column represents 43% of the population.
Telling figures indeed, but what do they mean to you, what do they mean to me, what do they mean to the average man in the street? With me now is Professor Tiddles of Leeds University. Professor, you’ve spent many years researching into things, what do you think?
I think it’s too early to tell.
Well there is already a waiting period to use one of them.
This was our textbook for the semester.
After reading the whole blog, this is written somewhat tongue-in-cheek.
Don't take these things so seriously.
This is mostly false.
Although moreso, it is mostly unknowable, as the statistics for “number of people who die from an accident of a doctor” is not kept directly, or easily discernable.
Now, even the Snopes article intended to debunk this had to admit that there is a specific number from the government for both “accidental gun deaths” (591 in 2011) and “accidental medical deaths”. (2584 in 2011).
By their number, given the 80 million gun owners, and 700,000 physicians, you are still much more likely to die in an interaction with a physician than a gun owner.
The problem with the medical statistics is trying to filter out deaths solely caused by negligence, vs deaths that happen during treatment, whether or not some other treatment might have had a better chance of survival.
For example, a person might be dying of some infection. The doctor takes one or two shots at figuring out the infection, but it is not diagnosible. So, they choose the best chance drug, and try it, and if that fails, use the next one. But the patient dies. Now we can autopsy, and that reveals a rare type of infection that, if we had known it, we could have saved the patient.
Is that an “accidental death”, or one from mistreatment? Or is it just the normal course of medical treatment. I’d hardly blame a doctor in that instance, they can’t all be the fictional “House”.
Snopes then points out a very important point — the real issue isn’t raw numbers, but how often an a specific encounter leads to a bad outcome. So for the physician number, the question is how many deaths per physician interaction are there, rather than deaths per physician. And for guns, it should be the number of times you are in proximity of a person with a gun, vs how many times you accidentally die.
The problem is that Snopes then gives up, when any reasonable analysis of THAT question would reveal that it is much more dangerous to SEE a doctor than it is to see a person who owns a gun.
Because, as an example, if we simply do interactions by “day”, a family of 5 with a gun in the house gives us over 1600 interactions in one year, while that same family will be unlikely to interact with a physician more than a dozen times.
But it is clearly true that, given the number of gun owners, the number of accidental gun deaths is extremely low, much lower than the accidental deaths by physicians.
Garbage in, garbage out - the trouble with this “analysis” is that many of the people doctors deal with are already in danger of some sort of fatality, that’s why the doctors are dealing with them - the vast majority of people killed in gun accidents are in perfectly safe situations to begin with - sitting peacefully on their front porches, sometimes even blissfully asleep in their own beds - it’s surprising that more people don’t die in the care of physicians given the population they deal with - yes, I love the 2nd amendment and the NRA, but I’m in favor of the appropriate use of statistics too.....
I should be allowed to open carry at least one doctor...just for protection...he could do my shooting.
If you want to do a different comparison, use the 2010 statistics that 28 people per day were killed by drunk drivers, a negligent and avoidable circumstance. Not deaths caused by all vehicle accidents. Just those caused by drunk drivers.
70% of statistics are made up, 45% of the time.
And what percentage of the time is that true ? /sarc
Depends on the source.
If CNN, probably about 2.3% of the time. (Hey, nobody is perfect, they accidentally get one right now & again.)
Depends on the source.
If CNN, probably about 2.3% of the time. (Hey, nobody is perfect, they accidentally get one right now & again.)
” (Hey, nobody is perfect, they accidentally get one right now & again.) “
Got a broken CLOCK that does better ! ....LOL....
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