Comfort Math

Here is what a recent slideshow on a news website had to say about food-borne illness in the US:

"Did you know that 1 in 6 Americans gets sick every year from eating food contaminated with pathogens: Bacteria, viruses or parasites? It’s a serious health problem that sends tens of thousands of people to the hospital every year."

Camplyobacter and toxoplasma and listeria, oh my! (And don't forget the old stand-by Salmonella!)

Hmmm.

Immediately I was struck by the vast difference between "1 in 6" and "tens of thousands." Clearly not every person that gets a food-borne illness does or even needs to be hospitalized. That said it makes for a nice comparison between getting sick and getting so sick that a trip to the emergency room is warranted.

First, 1 in 6 is 0.1667 or 16.67%. For a US population of approximately 312 million this is 52 million people. That seems like a lot, and it is.

But compare that to tens of thousands. Let's go high and use 90,000 (any more than that would be hundreds of thousands, right?). That's 0.029% of the US population and a not much more significant 0.17% of those who get sick in the first place.

So 1 in 6 might seem dire, but we've all revisited a meal or two over the years and are still kicking. What it comes down to is that you're as likely to die in the car getting to the restaurant than from eating the food when you get there. See how math can actually be comforting? Sort of.

Interestingly, the article said absolutely nothing on preventing food-borne disease. So here's a handy link to the CDC page.