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That stat being buried in the article felt like poor journalism to me. Chipotle is a really popular restaurant, and the article states that 500 people got sick

• dragonwriter 11y ago
  The impression you got is, well, somewhat distorted. While 48 million are estimated to get sick from foodborne diseases annually, only 128,000 are hospitalized [0]; while the ratio between 513 sick in the Chipotle outbreaks to the 48 million annual sick from food borne diseases is miniscule (on the order of 1 in 100,000), the ratio between even the 20 hospitalized (of 53 sick) in the E. coli outbreaks in the whole set of Chipotle outbreaks to the 128,000 hospitalized annually from foodborne diseases is (while still small, by itself) a lot bigger than the ratio of the Chipotle-sick to the annual total sick (1 in 6,000 instead of 1 in 100,000). (Also, the annual total sick-from-foodborne-illness count is an estimate, the sick-from-the-Chipotle-outbreak count is confirmed.) [0] http://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/foodborne-germs.html http://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/foodborne-germs.html