4 ms·

Perhaps its one of those things where “95% of the time you’ll be fine, but be careful if you do it 20 times, because botulism only needs to happen once.”

jandrese 5y ago
The fact that most people don't know to remove the plastic and yet there are virtually no reported cases of people being poisoned by wrapped fish suggests that the danger is remote. It probably helps that if you fish get to the point where the bactera become active again it tends to smell bad and discolour.
- foobarian 5y ago
  I think if the fish was consumed raw there would be a lot more cases. But the toxin is destroyed by cooking even if the spores do grow.
mdp2021 5y ago
> be careful if you do it 20 times Probably just a locution, but be careful with that idea about numbers: The probability of remaining in a safe zone of 95% for 20 consecutive times is ~36%. It ( (1-(1/n))^n ) approximates to 1/e. The number of tries to reduce that 95% to a 50% coin toss is 13. It is not fully intuitive. One will put his threshold wherever one may think appropriate, but. A chance of tenth, a hundredth, a thousandth etc. for ten, a hundred, thousand etc. times approximates to 63.2%. ...Maybe a locution like 'Maybe 9 out of 10 times you'll be fine, but be careful about doing it 7 times' could work well (as 6.931 approximates the risk to a coin toss).
- cseleborg 5y ago
  So that explains the seven lives of cats, who 9 times out of 10 land on their feet. (Also, 85% of statistics are made up on the spot.)
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  NB: This failure of statistical logic also shows up in "100 year storm" statistics. The actual measurement is "storm with a 1% likelihood of occurring in any one year". The odds of that storm occurring in a century is actually about 63%, and of occurring in any ten year period, about 10%. Add to that the fact that the measurement is based on a storm of a given magnitude (usually total rainfall / precipitation, wind speed, storm surge, etc.) occurring, and small changes in the likelihood of such events can dramatically change the rate at which a storm of a given magnitude is observed. If you live in/near flood-prone areas, keep an eye on, e.g., changes in what are considered flood stages (say, as flood control structures are added or removed), or to likelihoods of events of a given precipitation level or stream height.

jandrese 5y ago

The fact that most people don't know to remove the plastic and yet there are virtually no reported cases of people being poisoned by wrapped fish suggests that the danger is remote. It probably helps that if you fish get to the point where the bactera become active again it tends to smell bad and discolour.

foobarian 5y ago
I think if the fish was consumed raw there would be a lot more cases. But the toxin is destroyed by cooking even if the spores do grow.

mdp2021 5y ago

> be careful if you do it 20 times Probably just a locution, but be careful with that idea about numbers: The probability of remaining in a safe zone of 95% for 20 consecutive times is ~36%. It ( (1-(1/n))^n ) approximates to 1/e. The number of tries to reduce that 95% to a 50% coin toss is 13. It is not fully intuitive. One will put his threshold wherever one may think appropriate, but. A chance of tenth, a hundredth, a thousandth etc. for ten, a hundred, thousand etc. times approximates to 63.2%. ...Maybe a locution like 'Maybe 9 out of 10 times you'll be fine, but be careful about doing it 7 times' could work well (as 6.931 approximates the risk to a coin toss).

cseleborg 5y ago
So that explains the seven lives of cats, who 9 times out of 10 land on their feet. (Also, 85% of statistics are made up on the spot.)
dredmorbius 5y ago
NB: This failure of statistical logic also shows up in "100 year storm" statistics. The actual measurement is "storm with a 1% likelihood of occurring in any one year". The odds of that storm occurring in a century is actually about 63%, and of occurring in any ten year period, about 10%. Add to that the fact that the measurement is based on a storm of a given magnitude (usually total rainfall / precipitation, wind speed, storm surge, etc.) occurring, and small changes in the likelihood of such events can dramatically change the rate at which a storm of a given magnitude is observed. If you live in/near flood-prone areas, keep an eye on, e.g., changes in what are considered flood stages (say, as flood control structures are added or removed), or to likelihoods of events of a given precipitation level or stream height.