What is the Most Deadly and Scary Day Right Now
Kamis, 27 Januari 2022
Tulis Komentar
Back in 2010, sociologist David Phillips compiled 57 million death certificates, ranging from 1979 to 2004, and noticed something interesting at least in the United States, there’s a noticeable spike in deaths at the end of every single year, and it always peaks exactly on New Year’s Day.
At first, the explanation seems pretty simple: there are more people drinking champagne, more people lighting their roof on fire with bootleg fireworks, and more people driving down residential streets at 150 miles an hour because they lit their friend’s roof on fire with bootleg fireworks.
But here’s the catch: this pattern holds, even if you’re only counting deaths due to natural causes, like heart attacks or pneumonia. So, maybe, it has something to do with the colder weather—after all, natural deaths do tend to increase in the colder months and decrease when it gets warmer.
But yet again, even when looking at deaths from perpetually-warm climates, the New Year’s Day spike remains. “Well,” you might be thinking, “Last New Year’s I spent the whole day thinking about how I’ve been wearing the same sweatpants since the New Year’s before, and the stress of that nearly killed me.”
And yeah, Phillips does acknowledge that stress levels are heightened on holidays like New Year’s and Christmas… but he also points out that there’s no evidence that it’s actually killing people, at least in numbers this large.
So what makes New Year’s Day so deadly? Well, there seem to be two main theories: the first is that people simply don’t like going to the hospital during major holidays—like, say you’re at a party where you might get a kiss from a mysterious stranger at midnight, but you also might currently be having a heart attack… better to play it safe and just stay at the party.
This is why you see spikes on other holidays, too, with Christmas being a close runner-up. The other theory has something to do with the way that hospitals operate: generally speaking, hospital mortality rates are slightly higher—by just a few percentage points—during public holidays, because there are fewer staff on call, and test results can be delayed by a few more days.
The same principle has been shown to apply to weekends, and, in some hospitals, July 1st: the day that many new medical students start their real-world practice, where they have about a 10% higher chance of slipping up with a fatal medication error. Well, unfortunately, there are still a few days you should watch out for.
If you’re not the greatest driver, you might want to stay off the roads on August 2ndthat’s the day, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, that the most fatal car crashes occur, owing to an increased volume of traffic and longer travel times as people head to the beach, or the lake, or the haunted amusement park, or wherever they spend their summer vacations.
If you’re okay at driving but you’re just generally unlikable, then you should really avoid that New Year’s party, cause… that’s also the day you’re most likely to be murdered, followed by the 4th of July, and then Christmas. You might also want to stay home on Sundays, which have a 20-30% higher homicide rate than weekday
So, let’s say one of these fatal days rolls around… is there any way to know what time of day you’re most likely to keel over? Well, it turns out that there is, and it has to do with your DNA. You see, there’s a single nucleotide polymorphism—meaning a single base pair in your DNA sequence that can vary from person to person—that helps inform your circadian rhythms.
This sequence can either be AA, AG, or GG, and people in the AA group tend to have biological clocks that run just a little bit faster than the GG group, resulting in naturally earlier wake-up times by about an hour or so. The thing is, your circadian rhythm also regulates things like hormone releases, body temperature, and blood pressure, and all of these factors play a part in potentially fatal events, like
strokes or heart attacks. Because of the way that the timing works out, people in the AA and AG group are most likely to experience a natural death at about 11 am, and people in the GG group are most likely to experience one at about 6pm.
So the next time the clock strikes 11 on January 1st, brace yourself… or, just, like, go to the hospital if you’re having a heart attack. Of course the best way to not be forced to decide between a midnight kiss and a deadly heart attack is to not have a heart attack in the first place, and one way to do that is to eat right.
At first, the explanation seems pretty simple: there are more people drinking champagne, more people lighting their roof on fire with bootleg fireworks, and more people driving down residential streets at 150 miles an hour because they lit their friend’s roof on fire with bootleg fireworks.
But here’s the catch: this pattern holds, even if you’re only counting deaths due to natural causes, like heart attacks or pneumonia. So, maybe, it has something to do with the colder weather—after all, natural deaths do tend to increase in the colder months and decrease when it gets warmer.
But yet again, even when looking at deaths from perpetually-warm climates, the New Year’s Day spike remains. “Well,” you might be thinking, “Last New Year’s I spent the whole day thinking about how I’ve been wearing the same sweatpants since the New Year’s before, and the stress of that nearly killed me.”
And yeah, Phillips does acknowledge that stress levels are heightened on holidays like New Year’s and Christmas… but he also points out that there’s no evidence that it’s actually killing people, at least in numbers this large.
So what makes New Year’s Day so deadly? Well, there seem to be two main theories: the first is that people simply don’t like going to the hospital during major holidays—like, say you’re at a party where you might get a kiss from a mysterious stranger at midnight, but you also might currently be having a heart attack… better to play it safe and just stay at the party.
This is why you see spikes on other holidays, too, with Christmas being a close runner-up. The other theory has something to do with the way that hospitals operate: generally speaking, hospital mortality rates are slightly higher—by just a few percentage points—during public holidays, because there are fewer staff on call, and test results can be delayed by a few more days.
The same principle has been shown to apply to weekends, and, in some hospitals, July 1st: the day that many new medical students start their real-world practice, where they have about a 10% higher chance of slipping up with a fatal medication error. Well, unfortunately, there are still a few days you should watch out for.
If you’re not the greatest driver, you might want to stay off the roads on August 2ndthat’s the day, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, that the most fatal car crashes occur, owing to an increased volume of traffic and longer travel times as people head to the beach, or the lake, or the haunted amusement park, or wherever they spend their summer vacations.
If you’re okay at driving but you’re just generally unlikable, then you should really avoid that New Year’s party, cause… that’s also the day you’re most likely to be murdered, followed by the 4th of July, and then Christmas. You might also want to stay home on Sundays, which have a 20-30% higher homicide rate than weekday
So, let’s say one of these fatal days rolls around… is there any way to know what time of day you’re most likely to keel over? Well, it turns out that there is, and it has to do with your DNA. You see, there’s a single nucleotide polymorphism—meaning a single base pair in your DNA sequence that can vary from person to person—that helps inform your circadian rhythms.
This sequence can either be AA, AG, or GG, and people in the AA group tend to have biological clocks that run just a little bit faster than the GG group, resulting in naturally earlier wake-up times by about an hour or so. The thing is, your circadian rhythm also regulates things like hormone releases, body temperature, and blood pressure, and all of these factors play a part in potentially fatal events, like
strokes or heart attacks. Because of the way that the timing works out, people in the AA and AG group are most likely to experience a natural death at about 11 am, and people in the GG group are most likely to experience one at about 6pm.
So the next time the clock strikes 11 on January 1st, brace yourself… or, just, like, go to the hospital if you’re having a heart attack. Of course the best way to not be forced to decide between a midnight kiss and a deadly heart attack is to not have a heart attack in the first place, and one way to do that is to eat right.
Belum ada Komentar untuk "What is the Most Deadly and Scary Day Right Now"
Posting Komentar