A Nagasaki A Year

[mindstalk]

100,000 Americans die of hospital-acquired infections every year.
http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2007/09/the-silent-kill.html

The "Islamofascists" can't kill nearly as many people as our lax hospital procedures and abuse of antibiotics. How much scrubbing and autoclaving could the Iraq Fiasco buy?

Alternate post title: "Evolution in Action"

Related, the low hanging fruit of flu prevention
http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2007/09/influenza-and-l.html
Hey, it's only ten 9/11s a year.

"There are very few problems can be solved solely by throwing buckets of money at them (although buckets of money are either helpful or necessary). Annual influenza is one of those problems than can be solved simply by investing more resources."

Comments

[pompe.livejournal.com]

Sounds high, 100 000. A rough Swedish figure I found was 800/year (which was considered high, I think), which times 35 would equate to 28 000.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

"High" meaning what? You think the Center for Disease Control is overestimating?

[pompe.livejournal.com]

No, I mean I found the Swedish figure on a fairly health-care-as-it-is-now-organized-critical blog with no direct reference to a specific survey, so I take that number as an high estimate which means the American estimate seems even higher to me. I have no reason to believe the CDC is overestimating so I have to wonder if the statistics are based on the same premises and are comparable at all - the US having 3.5 times the death rate from infections on hospitals seem strange. I mean, many old people - and a good deal of otherwise chronically ill people - ultimately die from infections as a final blow, including on hospitals. Pneumonia and urinary tract infections are killers of old people both on and off hospitals, as far as I know (My mother was a geriatrics doctor). And old people who end up in a hospital are already likely sick and weakened, so they are extra vulnerable. The same goes for people having undergone difficult, lengthy treatment of other kinds.

But arguably resistent bacteria is perhaps less of a problem up here than in some other places because of a slightly restrictive policy regarding antibiotics.