by WashingtonsBlog
April 28, 2013
from
WashingtonsBlog Website
You’re More
Likely to Die from Brain-Eating Parasites,
Alcoholism, Obesity, Medical Errors, Risky Sexual
Behavior or Just About Anything, OTHER THAN
Terrorism.
We
noted in 2011:
-
You are 17,600 times more likely to die
from heart disease than from a terrorist attack
-
You are 12,571 times more likely to die
from cancer than from a terrorist attack
-
You are 11,000 times more likely to die
in an airplane accident than from a terrorist plot involving an
airplane
-
You are 1048 times more likely to die
from a car accident than from a terrorist attack
-
You are 404 times more likely to die in
a fall than from a terrorist attack
-
You are 87 times more likely to drown
than die in a terrorist attack
-
You are 13 times more likely to die in a
railway accident than from a terrorist attack
-
You are 12 times more likely to die from
accidental suffocation in bed than from a terrorist attack
-
You are 9 times more likely to choke to
death on your own vomit than die in a terrorist attack
-
You are 8 times more likely to be killed
by a police officer than by a terrorist
-
You are 8 times more likely to die from
accidental electrocution than from a terrorist attack
-
You are 6 times more likely to die from
hot weather than from a terrorist attack
Let’s look at some details from the most recent
official statistics.
The U.S. Department of State reports that only
17 U.S. citizens were killed worldwide as a
result of terrorism in 2011. That figure includes deaths in
Afghanistan, Iraq and all other theaters of war.
In contrast, the American agency which tracks
health-related issues - the U.S. Centers for Disease Control -
rounds up the most prevalent causes of death in the United States:
Comparing the CDC numbers to terrorism deaths
means:
-
You are 35,079
times more likely to die from heart disease than from a terrorist
attack
-
You are 33,842
times more likely to die from cancer than from a terrorist attack
(Note: Keep in mind when reading
this entire piece that we are consistently and substantially
understating the risk of other causes of death as compared to
terrorism, because we are comparing deaths from various causes within the
United States against deaths from terrorism worldwide.)
Wikipedia
notes that obesity is a a contributing factor in 100,000-400,000
deaths in the United States per year. That makes obesity
5,882 to times
23,528 more likely to kill you than a terrorist.
The annual number of deaths in the U.S. due to
avoidable medical errors is as high as
100,000.
Indeed, one of the world’s leading medical
journals - Lancet -
reported in 2011:
A November, 2010, document from the Office
of the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services
reported that, when in hospital, one in seven beneficiaries of Medicare
(the government-sponsored health-care program for those aged 65 years
and older) have complications from medical errors, which contribute to
about 180,000 deaths of patients per year.
That’s just Medicare beneficiaries, not the
entire American public.
Scientific American
noted in 2009:
Preventable medical mistakes and infections
are responsible for about 200,000 deaths in the U.S.
each year, according to an investigation by the Hearst media
corporation.
But let’s use the lower - 100,000 - figure. That
still means that you are
5,882 times more likely to die from medical error than terrorism.
The CDC says that some
80,000 deaths each year are attributable to excessive alcohol use. So
you’re
4,706 times more likely to drink yourself to death than die
from terrorism.
Wikipedia notes that there were
32,367 automobile accidents in 2011, which means that you are 1,904
times more likely to die from a car accident than from a terrorist attack.
As CNN reporter Fareed Zakaria
writes this week:
“Since 9/11, foreign-inspired terrorism has
claimed about two dozen lives in the United States. (Meanwhile,
more than 100,000 have been killed in gun homicides and more than
400,000 in motor-vehicle accidents.) “
According to a 2011 CDC report,
poisoning from prescription drugs is even
more likely
to kill you than a car crash.
Indeed, the CDC stated in 2011 that - in the
majority of states -
your prescription meds are more likely to kill you than any other
source of injury. So your meds are thousands of times more
likely to kill you than Al Qaeda.
The number of deaths by suicide has
also surpassed car crashes, and many connect the increase in suicides
to the downturn in the economy. Around
35,000 Americans kill themselves each year (and more American soldiers
die by suicide than combat; the number of veterans committing suicide is
astronomical and
under-reported).
So you’re
2,059 times more likely to kill yourself than die at the hand of a
terrorist.
The CDC notes that there were
7,638 deaths from HIV and
45 from syphilis, so you’re
452 times more likely to die from risky sexual behavior than terrorism.
The National Safety Council reports that more
than
6,000 Americans die a year from falls… most of them involve people
falling off their roof or ladder trying to clean their gutters, put up
Christmas lights and the like. That means that you’re
353 times more likely to fall to your death doing something idiotic than
die in a terrorist attack.
The agency in charge of workplace safety - the
U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration - reports that
4,609 workers were killed on the job in 2011 within the U.S. homeland.
In other words, you are
271 times more likely to die from a workplace accident than
terrorism.
The CDC notes that
3,177 people died of “nutritional deficiencies” in 2011, which means you
are
187 times more likely to starve to death in American than be killed by
terrorism.
Scientific American
notes:
You might have toxoplasmosis, an infection
caused by the microscopic parasite Toxoplasma gondii, which the CDC
estimates has infected about 22.5 percent of Americans
older than 12 years old
Toxoplasmosis is a brain-parasite. The CDC
reports that more than
375 Americans die annually due to toxoplasmosis.
In addition,
3 Americans died in 2011 after being exposed to a brain-eating amoeba.
So you’re about
22 times more likely to die from a brain-eating zombie parasite than a
terrorist.
There were at least
155 Americans killed by police officers in the United States in 2011.
That means that you were more than
9 times more likely to be killed by a law enforcement
officer than by a terrorist.
And the 2011 Report on Terrorism from the
National Counter Terrorism Center notes that Americans are
just as likely to be “crushed to death by their televisions or furniture
each year” as they are to be killed by terrorists.
Let’s switch to 2008, to take advantage of
another treasure trove of data.
According to the Council on Foreign Relations,
33 U.S. citizens were killed worldwide in 2008 from terrorism. There
were 301,579,895 Americans living on U.S. soil in 2008, so the risk of dying
from terrorist attacks in 2008 was 1 in
9,138,785.
This graphic from the
National Safety Council - based upon 2008 data - shows the relative
risks of dying from various causes:
If the risk of being killed by a terrorist were
added to the list, the dot would be so small that it would be hard to
see.
Specifically, the risk of being killed by
terrorism in 2008 was
14 times smaller than being killed by fireworks.
Reason provides some
more examples:
[The risk of being killed by terrorism]
compares annual risk of dying in a car accident of 1 in 19,000;
drowning in a bathtub at 1 in 800,000; dying in a
building fire at 1 in 99,000; or being struck by lightning
at 1 in 5,500,000.
In other words, in the last five years you
were four times more likely to be struck by lightning than killed by a
terrorist.
The National Consortium for the Study of
Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) has just published,
Background Report - 9/11 - Ten Years Later.
The report notes, excluding the 9/11
atrocities, that fewer than 500 people died in the U.S. from terrorist
attacks between 1970 and 2010.
Terrorism pushes our emotional buttons. And
politicians and the media tend to blow the risk of terrorism out of
proportion.
But as the figures above show, terrorism is a
very unlikely cause of death.
