California Health Insurance

Busting Some Myths About Dying

The National Safety Council put out the odds of dying from injury based on 2003 data.  I recently reviewed this very interesting data and thought it was time to break some myths.  The media typically makes a big deal about shark attacks, alligator attacks, death by guns in the home, air crashes, etc.  These are the big ticket items to get attention and ratings.

What is the reality?

Here are the top causes of death and the odds of dying from them:

Cause                                       Odds of Death

Heart Disease                           1:3.6

Cancer                                     1:4.5

Stroke                                      1:15

Lung disease                             1:20

Accidents                                 1:22

For example 1 out of 15 people will die from a stroke.  But more specifically let's look at some stats based on the lifetime risks of dying from various types of accidents. Let's start with Transportation related risks:

Pedestrian                               1:626

Bicycle                                    1:4919

Motorcycle                               1:1020

Car occupant                            1:237

Pick-up or van occupant            1:900

Heavy transport vehicle              1:8480

Bus                                          1:104,113

Train                                        1:156,169

Streetcar                                  1:1,874,34

Well this all seems to make sense, the larger and heavier the vehicle the less likely you are to die.  The exceptions being a street car which I always thought of being more like a heavy bus which is extraordinarily unlikely to result in death, and being a pedestrian being safer than being an occupant of a car. I guess it all depends where you walk. But you say wait EMDoc, everyone says air travel is pretty safe, and it is, with odds of 1:5051.  Not however better than a bus, train or streetcar.  Why Greyhound and Amtrak are not capitalizing on this I have no idea.

There is often discussion about how dangerous it is to have firearms in the home. Opponents of the right to bear arms would say that they might accidentally misfire and kill someone.

Unintentional Firearm Discharge            1:5134

Assault By Firearm                               1:314

I think this justifies my having a firearm to protect my family who has a much greater chance of killing me than I do accidentally killing myself or one of my family members.

Most towns require fences around your pool that are a minimum of 4 feet tall, anyone could hop over them, it is a joke. What's the real risk of drowning:

Bathtub                        1:11,289

Swimming Pool             1:7278

Natural Body Water       1:3060

Last time I looked 4 foot fences were not required around the oceans, lakes and streams, but  you have more than double the chance of drowning there. And if you did not notice you are safer in a bus, train or streetcar than in your own bathtub!

And to those of you who continue to believe that using illegal drugs like heroin and other psychedelics is okay, your odds of dying is 1:406, making it nearly as risky as walking down the street.  Sadly, death from complications of medical and surgical care is 1 out of 1313.  A number that in my mind I should always be trying to improve during my clinical practice.  Going to your doctor should never be more dangerous than riding in a bus in my mind.

There is so much more interesting information at the National Safety Council site so go check it out....in the meantime I've got to run off to a shift, I think I'll catch the streetcar.

SoundMatters MAINstage HD - Surround Sound Home Theater Without The Wires

Recently, I had a small room that I wanted a surround home theater in but did not want the need to run wires to rear surround speakers. So I checked out the Yamaha YSP-800 and the Polk Audio Sound Bar.  The Yamaha was the better of the two for sure, but at $800 and the need for an additional amount of money for a subwoofer this was way over budget.  I had heard the SHARP SD-SP10 with new Dolby virtual 1.1 was pretty awesome but it has yet to land in the US from Japan, although I did see one on eBay but again the budget numbers did not meet.

Then I found the Soundmatters MAINstage HD.  This is a small box about the size of a cable TV box that can sit on the TV itself or above it or below it. It has 80 watts, and 3 speakers, left, right and a woofer. I opted for an additional SONY SAW2500 10" 150 watt sub for $100; this brought me to $500 dollars for the system well within budget.

The sound from this little box is really amazing.  I have been tempted to open it and take it apart to see how the richness of the sound is actually accomplished.  Sound from CD/mp3 is as good as some more expensive Cambridge Soundworks speakers I have, and the virtual surround it good enough to make me think someone is sneaking up behind me in a scary movie. The remote allows volume, bass and input control, as well as a "dialog" button that focuses spoken word towards you allowing the volume to be lowered.  This is handy when other are sleeping while you are watching sports or news late at night.  It certainly is not as good as a hardwired surround home theater, but for a small room it is excellent.  It has coaxial input and digital optical input for Dolby digital sources (it does not support DTS).  So you can hook up the digital cable box, the DVD player and have a full system ready to go.

So again, this is great for a small room where running speaker wires is difficult or just ugly, if you had a bigger room I would go for one of the Yamaha units.