This struck me when I was reading up on SIDS and wondering how people could go so long without realizing that, if you put your babies down to sleep wrong, somet

This struck me when I was reading up on SIDS and wondering how people could go so long without realizing that, if you put your babies down to sleep wrong, something like 1 in 1000 of them will die. And then you look at the historical statistics and realize that, depending on your time and place, something like 250-400 in 1000 infants died. And aside from how viscerally terrifying that thought is, it's no wonder you couldn't notice that extra 1 in 1000 until you fixed childhood plagues and nutrition. It was the terrifying scourge of the 80's, but just a drop in the bucket historically.