Questions tagged [mortality]
Questions about the state or condition of being subject to death; mortal character, nature, or existence.
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Did Sweden experience lower all-cause mortality during the pandemic?
Sections of the Australian media have been claiming recently that Sweden experienced lower excess deaths during the pandemic years compared with other countries, including Australia. The implication ...
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Do sandcastles kill more people than sharks?
In 2007, The Guardian made the following claim:
Be afraid: sand castles can kill
The US bucket and spade brigade went on full alert yesterday after
research by a top physician revealed that people ...
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Are there more boys born in the US?
According to this article there are more boys born in the USA than girls.
between 1940 and 2005, an average of almost 92,000 more males than females were born annually in the United States.
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Has there been a 1101% increase in excess deaths among children aged 0-14 across Europe in 2022?
According to the blogger Peter Sweden:
If we take a look at the excess deaths among children aged 0-14 across Europe, there has been a HORRIFYING 1101% increase in excess deaths so far this year ...
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Is there an increase in sales of child-size coffins?
A number of "news sites" have been reporting an increase in child-sized coffins. (The linked is an example, there are many more). The implication being there is an increase of childrens ...
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Are women 8 times more likely to be murdered after being (non-lethally) strangled by their partner?
Training Institute on Strangulation Prevention - makes the claim:
A woman who has suffered a nonfatal strangulation incident with her intimate partner is 750% more likely to be killed by the same ...
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Do the majority of flood deaths happen in vehicles?
According to a radio broadcast of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)'s NOAA Weather Radio KHB36 162.550 MHz (Manassas, Virginia) on May 24, 2022, a few minutes before 00:00 ...
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Have about 170 million people been killed in the name of Allah?
In a question recently asked on the Christianity site, namely, Why don’t Christians accept Muhammad as the true prophet?, an answer quoted this article:
“Beware of false prophets who … inwardly are ...
user56618
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Are women 32% more likely to die if operated on by a male surgeon? [closed]
An article in the Guardian reports this headline:
Women 32% more likely to die after operation by male surgeon, study reveals
The author of the original report also claims:
In our 1.3 million ...
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Was there a dramatic rise in treatment-related deaths in US clinical trials during 2016-2017 compared to previous years?
For some reason when I googled "deaths in clinical trials" a page from a rather obscure (to me) US NGO "Center for Responsible Science" popped on the first page of results. It ...
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Is India drastically undercounting covid deaths?
The official count of covid-19 deaths from the Indian government currently (2 September 2021) stands at about 440 thousand, a rate of about 315 per million people (see Our World in Data).
This is a ...
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Did Spain have 433.13K deaths in 2020 and 428.44K in 2019?
In a related question the OP linked to this Knoema site to show that Spain has had no excess deaths in 2020 from Covid-19:
I'm skeptical because the site doesn't cite any source for their info.
...
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Are cadavers normally embalmed with "butt plugs" before burial?
According to this graphic, from the DarkestHumor page
That one time I went to a mortuary and some cute mortician girls gave me a butt plug. Seriously. This is to prevent post mortem [anal] leakage.
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Did COVID-19 take the lives of 3,100 Americans in a single day, making it the third deadliest day in American history?
This image is doing the rounds on Facebook:
The image reads:
Yes, people die everyday. Yes we know it's not you because you are reading this.
Cancer takes approx. 1,600 Americans a day.
Heart ...
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Does India have 101 COVID deaths per million population? [closed]
The Worldometer COVID-19 statistics by country currently shows
USA: 855 deaths per million population
UK: 891 deaths per million population
France: 829 deaths per million population
but India only ...
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Are 40% of the oceans' bacteria killed by viruses every day?
In the March 9, 2018 column of newspaper columnist Cecil Adams' column The Straight Dope, he speaks about the possible benefits of treating bacterial infections with bacteriophages, viruses that ...
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Did more more Pilgrims die from drowning after getting drunk than were killed by Native Americans?
Joy Browne's 2011 book Dating For Dummies says:
Alcohol has been, is now, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future the major drug of abuse in this country. (More Pilgrims drowned in the ...
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Is Covid-19 the biggest ever killer of Americans (mutatis mutandis)?
I was reading Stuart Stevens' interview on Politico, and came across this claim:
more Americans have died from a disease [referring to Covid-19] in the last four months than have ever died of ...
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As of August 2020, was the weekly mortality rate in the US the lowest in a decade and the second lowest in the 21st century so far?
There is an article, that has been circulating the past two days, entitled: Is There a Pandemic?
In the abstract the author gives her method:
However, only 32 weeks have elapsed in 2020. For each ...
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Is a reasonable prediction that by the end of summer there would be ~45,000 deaths in Mexico?
In this video
Funeral Homes in Mexico Reveal Coronavirus’ Hidden Death Toll | Coronavirus News says that government is underestimating the death toll.
In this part says that health analyst from the ...
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Could the COVID-19 mortality rate be way lower than we think, implying vastly more cases? [closed]
I was analyzing some of the data surrounding COVID-19, and was looking at the vastly different mortality rates (calculated as deaths / total cases * 100).
While there are probably many factors ...
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Are deaths of patients with, but not because of, COVID-19 recorded as COVID-19 deaths in the USA?
A long Mises Institute article questions the US COVID-19 metrics.
It ends with this claim, quoted from a Daily Caller reporter's Twitter feed:
Here is Dr. Birx saying that the government is recording ...
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Did a hypothermic, clinically dead boy revive in response to prayer defying "every expert, every case history, and every scientific prediction"?
The Impossible (a 2017 non-fiction book) and Breakthrough (its 2019 movie adaptation) purport to describe a case of miraculous healing.
Quoting the book’s webpage:
When Joyce Smith’s 14-year-old son ...
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Have 331 trans and gender-diverse people been murdered in the last year (to Nov 2019)?
Transgender Europe (TGEU) have a research project, Transrespect versus Trannsphobia Worldwide. They recently issued a press release, TMM Update Trans Day of Remembrance 2019:
The TDoR 2019 update ...
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Did hundreds of thousands of people die due to lack of seat belts in the period before they were made mandatory?
In a recent interview, Tesla founder Elon Musk gives a historical reference as example of slow government reaction to public harm:
At 8m15s:
Take something like seatbelts. It was known for, I ...
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Has austerity caused the death of over 130,000 people in the UK? [duplicate]
On BBC Question Time, Thursday 13 June 2019, Francesca Martinez said:
Austerity has caused the death of over 130,000 human beings in Britain. That is absolutely outrageous. That is 130,000 mums and ...
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Is the infant mortality rate among African-American babies in Youngstown, Ohio greater than that of babies in Iran?
In a town hall meeting on June 2, 2019 with Representative Tim Ryan (D-OH), the candidate stated the following (emphasis mine)
Now, a lot of people don't know, but Youngstown, Ohio is 50 percent ...
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Did more than 300 polling workers die as a result of their work during the spring 2019 Indonesian election?
So I read this CNN article titled bluntly, “More than 300 workers dead after Indonesian election” and am finding the sheer numbers of workers dead—or have fallen ill—due to being overworked a bit hard ...
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Are white and non-white police officers equally likely to kill black suspects?
Well, that's the conclusion of a 2018 US study, as reported in the press:
"White officers do not kill black suspects at a higher rate compared with nonwhite officers," concludes a research ...
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Is Ruth Bader Ginsburg alive as of February 2019? [closed]
Right wing sources on social media have been abuzz with rumors that Ginsburg has died. The conspiracy theory is that Democrats are hiding her death to avoid another Trump pick on the Supreme Court. ...
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Did 120,000 Egyptians die building the Suez Canal?
According to wikipedia > Gamal_Abdel_Nasser#Nationalization_of_the_Suez_Canal (current revision), on 26 July 1956, Nasser gave a speech in which he claimed 120,000 Egyptians died during the ...
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Was the United States the equal fifth deadliest country for journalists in 2018?
As reported in the CNN article In a violent year for journalists, United States among the deadliest countries for first time, the group Reporters Without Borders has claimed that the United States is ...
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Does excess salt in food cause thousands of deaths per annum in the UK?
The body responsible for promoting public health in England (prosaically called Public Health England) has faced recent criticism that it it has failed to secure sufficient reductions in the salt ...
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Is there as significant danger to frequent close contact with a pet dog? [closed]
An article in the National Geographic here talks of the dangers of dog licks.
On the other hand, this NYT article states that dog owners tend to live longer and healthier than non-pet owners.
Is it ...
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Have people died by being shocked through the headphone cord of their cell phone?
The headline of an article in Vice magazine claims that "A 16-Year-Old Has Died After Being Electrocuted by His Headphones"
Last week, a teenager was electrocuted to death while listening ...
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Did the Neolithic Revolution increase infant mortality rates?
I was reading this article, and it's honestly better cited than a lot of things I read, but one of the claims it includes contradicts my expectations. Specifically, this claim:
In the best-selling ...
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Do more people drown in deserts than die of thirst?
I had first heard about the claim that more people drown in deserts than die of thirst in school maybe 30 years ago. The explanation is that sudden rains can create dangerous flooding in normally dry ...
user22213
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Does Chinese astrology influence death rates?
In Joseph Henrich's book The secret of our Success he discusses the importance of culture as a factor in the rise to success of Homo sapiens.
In chapter 14 he specifically discusses examples where ...
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Was an elderly woman forcibly euthanized in the Netherlands?
A disturbing story appeared on my news feed this week,
Elderly Woman Forcibly Euthanized
The article says that in the Netherlands an elderly woman with dementia was euthanized against her will.
...
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Does each car in inner London cost society £8,000 in health and environmental cost over its lifetime?
The topic of air quality is getting a load of attention in newspaper headlines in the days leading up to Clean Air Day (21st June, apparently).
For example, The Independent reports a recent study on ...
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Do more people die from flying champagne corks and golf balls than are attacked by coyotes?
According to the Humane Society:
Coyote attacks on people are very rare. More people are killed by errant golf balls and flying champagne corks each year than are bitten by coyotes.
On a Wikipedia ...
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Is a tow truck driver killed every six days on average in the US?
Along I-90 in Massachusetts (and I presume elsewhere in the state), there is a digital billboard which sometimes displays a message from the Massachusetts Department of Transportation that a tow truck ...
user44729
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Does tobacco kill half of its consumers?
A World Health Organization "meme" doing the rounds claims:
Tobacco is the only product that kills half its consumers.
There are two claims here:
That tobacco kills half its consumers.
That no ...
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Do about 100 Germans die every year due to risky masturbation?
EveningStandard claims in Masturbation 'kills up to 100 Germans a year', new study shows that up to 100 Germans a year die to masturbation for using risky methods like auto-erotic asphyxiation or ...
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Are ladders more dangerous than guns? [closed]
You know, studies show that keeping a ladder inside the house is more dangerous than a loaded gun. That's why I own ten guns, in case some maniac tries to sneak in a ladder.
- Grunkle Stan
I've ...
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Has Pokémon Go caused hundreds of deaths?
This article in The Register claims that Pokémon Go may have a bad side effect on road safety. The headline is:
Pokémon GO caused hundreds of deaths, increased crashes
And the article summarises ...
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Is austerity in the UK responsible for "120,000" extra deaths?
The UK government has been implementing tight constraints on public spending to attempt to recover from the 2008 financial crash and bailout. But this austerity is controversial.
A recent report in ...
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Death by electroshock from 12V battery
A solar power book makes this claim:
A low voltage system can cause major problems simply because of the huge current that a 12v battery can generate: in excess of 1,000 amps in short burst can ...
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Killed by 9V battery (via multimeter)
I found a Darwin award story claiming that someone was killed by pushing the leads of a Simpson 260 into his skin in ohmmeter mode. Furthermore, the story claims it is based on an unnamed US Navy ...
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Is it possible to survive landing in water when free-falling?
This popular YouTube video which is about surviving when jumping from a plane with the parachute failing says at 1:03:
You're looking for 3 things: Swamps, snow, trees. Your best chance of ...
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