Really not sure about this at all:
How risky was the AstraZeneca vaccine?
Compared to other scenarios
Death from giving birth
1 in 12,500
That looks about right. Maybe? But it’s the number for those who give birth. Maternal mortality is 6 per 100k or something I think?
Death from receiving
general anaesthetic
1 in 100,000
Can believe that, not that I know anything about it.
Chance of being hit in your
home by a crashing aeroplane
1 in 250,000
Umm, no?
The other numbers are for people who do something. That one’s for the entire population. We do not have 268 people a year who die from a plane landing on them.
No, it’s possible that they’ve taken death as being already certain, so Bayesian and all that. Which would – given 500k deaths a year – mean 2 people a year die from planes hitting houses. About right. But then that’s not the risk of dying from – that the risk of the cause of your death being.
Yes, I believe you’re right about planes on houses. “The Norm Chronicles: stories and numbers about danger” by Prof David Spiegelhalter is an interesting read and develops the micromort assessment of danger referenced in the Telegraph piece. The journo writing it needs to read the book.
The number for an anaesthetic is reasonable (for someone in good health – it will be higher with more existing health problems)
Surely the actual risk is irrelevant rather was it safer not having a vaccine or not.
Personally I think for old people who had never had Covid – the vaccine was a good idea.
For people who had had Covid or young people – I am not sure that the risk was worth it to be honest.
Particularly since AFAIK no one died from getting Covid twice – all fatalities were from people who died the first time they had it.
The plane-on-house figure suffers from the effect of very-rare-but-very-high-body-count.
Think 9/11.
A bit like your risk of being killed by a meteorite. Much higher than you think, because although dinosaur-killers are very rare, multiplied by 5 billion deaths….
I read somewhere that you needed to buy your lottery ticket only minutes before the draw to have a higher chance of winning than being killed by a meteorite because of this.
Statistics eh?
Hmmmm!!!
I told them to give me an anaesthetic when they were replacing the lenses in my eyes. After all, since I’m a gutless wimp, I might have flinched and lost my sight. I’d certainly take a much greater risk of death to retain my vision.
“general anaesthetic” – never realised it was so low. A no brainer as you say BB.
The airplane one surely needs a time frame (in the absence of an event taking place)? You’ve assumed “per year”, Tim, is that what it said? Or was it over a life time? 250 per year in the UK (~60-65m/250K) seems rather high…
“How risky was the AstraZeneca vaccine?
Compared to other scenarios”
And then you don’t bother putting the AZ number in! You’re normally pretty good at provoking a scrap round here..;)
Just re-read the rest of your plane thing. OK, your “cause of death being” equates in effect to “over the period of a life time” rather than “per year”. Which makes sense although the article or whatever it was should really have emphasised that.
Death from giving birth
1 in 12,500
But unlimited abortion on demand is essential to “women’s health”.
Haven’t we reached 50 million abortions since legalisation 50some years ago? So that’s one million per year, so a 1 in 67 chance!
Enquiring mind wishes to know:
Chance of being murdered if you live in the country.
Chance of being murdered if you live in the city.
Chance of being killed as a result of a terrorist act. (which would include all the Lockerbie ground casualties which provide the numbers for ‘if a plane fell on you’).
@PF – “your “cause of death being” equates in effect to “over the period of a life time” rather than “per year”.”
A careful analysis of events and deaths will show that there is one single factor common to all deaths take over a period of a lifetime. The one thing that is inevitably fatal is being born.
@jgh – “So that’s one million per year”
So we should ban abortion to cause an increase in population of a million per year. Can you try that argument out on the people who are horrified at the prospect of immigration causing an increase of the population of a million per year?
“So we should ban abortion to cause an increase in population of a million per year. Can you try that argument out on the people who are horrified at the prospect of immigration causing an increase of the population of a million per year?”
Sure. Be a great test of how culturalist they are. More of us is different from more of them?
@ Rhoda Klapp
In London (and most other really big cities), the chances of being murdered are, at least, scores of times higher for black teenage boys (wholly innocent ones as well as members of gangs as we have just seen) than other categories so one needs to look at the odds for each category separately to see what the relevant odds are when comparing city and countryside.