Honestly, it takes an IDIOT to think 360,000 Americans die each year in swimming pools

[Goodheart]

How did that idiot ever garner such a following?

[Voltaire2]

1. idiots like other idiots

that was a rhetorical question, right?

[Goodheart]

4. Fox had those two idiots on because they knew beforehand that each would downplay this crisis

Fucking creeps.

[Blue Owl]

2. Only if those pools are Philled

n/t

[guillaumeb]

3. How big is that pool? eom

[PBC_Democrat]

5. Someone should introduce the doctor to Google

The Centers for Disease Control report that here in the United States, on average, 3,536 people died from drowning annually from 2005 to 2014, which equates to 10 deaths each day. Then there are the thousands of others who suffer swimming pool-related injuries each year.

Being off by a couple of hundred I can understand ... maybe even adding a extra zero.

But being off by almost 357,000 .... no excuse.

[dawg day]

6. Gunlovers always make arguments like that, and they don't care about the facts

One gun guy I know told me seriously that more people are killed by soda can poptop accidents than guns. I didn't even bother to look it up. I asked, "How would a poptop kill you?" He came up with "you could swallow it and it could cut your throat on the way down," but then he couldn't think of any other ways. I asked if he knew anyone who died of a poptop, and he admitted he didn't. But we could both come up with a dozen or so people we knew who had died from gunshot.

If I persuaded him at all, it was probably just to switch to swimming pools as being more lethal than guns.



Actual CDC figures for US (note: This is all drownings, not just swimming pool):
From 2005-2014, there were an average of 3,536 fatal unintentional drownings (non-boating related) annually in the United States — about ten deaths per day. An additional 332 people died each year from drowning in boating-related incidents.

So he was only off by a factor of 100.....

[Grins]

7. That's 986/day. How many died today from COVID-19?

More than 4,000...

[thesquanderer]

8. I can let that go as misspeaking... worse was not distinguishing pool deaths from contagious disease

in terms of the value of social distancing and stay-in-place being helpful for one but not the other. Getting a number wrong is nothing next to a completely nonsensical thought process.

[ProfessorGAC]

9. In Most Cases, I'd Agree With You

However, I don't believe that he misspoke.
I believe he made up a number to suit his position. Which of course, is a lie.

[thesquanderer]

10. I had thought it was misplaced decimals, but it looks like it was something else...

Here's the quote:

250 people a year die from poverty...45,000 people a year die from automobile accidents, 480,000 from cigarettes, 360,000 a year from swimming pools

At first it looked like a pair of misplaced decimals. The 250 from poverty was supposed to be 250,000. The accidental downing figure is supposed to be about 3,600. Though yes, the first is more clearly a mis-speaking when you hear him say it. The second is more questionable. As it turns out, he has now released a statement saying he was in error by quoting worldwide rather than U.S. statistics there, and that seems borne out by this:

https://www.wlsl.org/WLSL/The_Event/Drowning_Data/WLSL/Drowning_Data.aspx

Though in both cases, I believe he's lumping all accidental drownings as swimming pool deaths, which is also wrong. (One can drown in a river/bay/ocean, or a bathtub.)

Regardless, of course, drowning is not contagious, so it was a dumb point to make in the first place.