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Outbreak of Salmonella

According to Reuters, the CDC announced today that there’s been an outbreak of Salmonella food poisoning, affecting 388 people across 42 states.  Sounds scary.  But…

There are about 300,000,000 people in the United States.

Three hundred million people, and 388 of them get sick.

Odds that it will affect you?  Roughly 1 in 773195.

Plus, only 18 percent of them (70 people) ended up being so sick they had to go to the hospital.  That puts the odds of you being sick enough to be hospitalized to 1 in 4,285,714.  On top of that, this didn’t just happen … the outbreak began in September, so it’s not like 70 people all ended up in the hospital today.  Seventy people over the last four months.  That puts your odds of being affected by this on any given day to somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 in five-hundred-million.

Always keep these numbers in mind when the news media announces these brash, fear-mongering reports.

Anyone remember the Bird Flu?  Are you dead from it yet?  No?

Right.