Wow, I love that first version of the graphic. Though, Cancer it’s self is a microcosm of it. People worry about extremely rare cancers like childhood leukemia (because it’s so terrible), when statistically, it’s a geriatric disorder. Drowning would be a simpler alternative. People wouldn’t touch a beer around water if they understood the risk rationally.
Can you elaborate on that last bit? Asking because I suspect that statement itself is an irrational understanding of risk and actually blowing a relative risk out of proportion. Ie, drinking and swimming might have a higher chance of drowning than swimming sober, it probably even has an alarming looking number like “if you drink and swim, you are 1000% more likely to drown than if you swim sober”, but the absolute risk might still be negligible, like a 0.01% to drown sober and a 0.1% chance to drown drunk (numbers pulled from ass for illustrative purpose, even a 0.01% chance to drown sounds high).
I love your skepticism and that you went straight to relative vs absolute statistics.
Just pulling a random website from a search seems to support my memory that drowning is a much more common cause of death than people tend to realize and that alcohol is commonly involved. Then you need to think about the fact that the vast majority of people are no where near a situation where drowning is a risk most of the time, and you can start appreciating the risk of drowning when near or on water and drinking alcohol.
Of course, I’m just saying this problem that does indeed exist is blown out of proportion by the messaging we’re bombarded with.
A bit of a case of this, basically:
Wow, I love that first version of the graphic. Though, Cancer it’s self is a microcosm of it. People worry about extremely rare cancers like childhood leukemia (because it’s so terrible), when statistically, it’s a geriatric disorder. Drowning would be a simpler alternative. People wouldn’t touch a beer around water if they understood the risk rationally.
Can you elaborate on that last bit? Asking because I suspect that statement itself is an irrational understanding of risk and actually blowing a relative risk out of proportion. Ie, drinking and swimming might have a higher chance of drowning than swimming sober, it probably even has an alarming looking number like “if you drink and swim, you are 1000% more likely to drown than if you swim sober”, but the absolute risk might still be negligible, like a 0.01% to drown sober and a 0.1% chance to drown drunk (numbers pulled from ass for illustrative purpose, even a 0.01% chance to drown sounds high).
I love your skepticism and that you went straight to relative vs absolute statistics.
Just pulling a random website from a search seems to support my memory that drowning is a much more common cause of death than people tend to realize and that alcohol is commonly involved. Then you need to think about the fact that the vast majority of people are no where near a situation where drowning is a risk most of the time, and you can start appreciating the risk of drowning when near or on water and drinking alcohol.
This graph is really cool. Do you have the source ?
I agree! The origin seems to be Susanna Ertrich
Her site: Link