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An important factor to consider any time you see really worrisome things like medical errors or suicide as leading causes of death: counter-intuitively, that ca
by pdpi 4y ago
An important factor to consider any time you see really worrisome things like medical errors or suicide as leading causes of death: counter-intuitively, that can be good news. Every time you solve your #1 highest priority problem, your #2 becomes your new #1. At some point, if you have good-enough solution for a broad-enough range of problems, the only option left is that your biggest problem is now failing to apply those solutions correctly!
By way of example, let's take a look at WHO data[0]. Across Europe, the leading cause of death for children under 4 is congenital anomalies. That sounds bad in isolation, but is actually pretty good in context. First, because the actual rate at which children die from congenital anomalies in Europe is a fair bit lower than the world-wide average, but most importantly because those anomalies float to the top simply by virtue of every other cause of death being exceedingly rare.
0. https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/indicators/indicator-details/GHO/deaths-per-1-000-live-births https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/indicators/indicator-detai...
- npteljes 4y agoThis really is similar to the statistic of head protection increasing the number of head injuries. With the explanation being that otherwise, many of those injuries are deaths instead.
- pdpi 4y agoYes. Another, really counterintuitive scenario is Abraham Wald's "reinforce the planes'armour in the places where you don't see bullet holes".
- montjoy 4y agoDefinitely. The important thing is to not hide the facts. In a counter example sometimes a botched procedure can lead to suicide (if the person is in too much pain for example). That should probably count as a fatal medical error but I doubt it would be counted as such.