Allright, I'm an American. And I read the newspapers, and log on to CNN.com everyday at work. I like to keep abreast of whats happening in my world. And like any American, usually when I read the news I crap my pants. This week was no different.

I found out this week that the drug resistant staph deahts may surpass AIDS toll, according to a government report released this week. Now, staph infections are nothing new, but this stuff is getting really freaky. The report concentrated on the MRSA version of the staff infection which they called a "superbug". The troubling factors are the fact that this mutated version of Staph infections are completely resistant to the standard forms of treating staph infections, namely penicillin related antibiotics. What's worse, is that the old form of Staph infections were mostly related to hospital and health care facility exposure... but this new bug has become more prevailant in locker rooms and gyms. Ok, now I'm really freaked out.

So I'm reading this and my leg is shaking. I'm gonna lose it, because I KNOW that I'm going to get this. It'm just gonna be one of those people. But then I started to think about it rationally and realistically. I'm probably not going to get this. In fact, there's little chance that I will.

I started to think about odds, and I did some research. Here's some of the more interesting things that I found.

The Journal of the American Medical Association report this week estimated that there are approximately 94,360 cases of this new form of staph infection, of which there are 18,650 deaths. Ok, that's a big number. But so is the number of Americans (301,139,147) as of July this year, acording to the folks over at the C.I.A's factbook. So what does that give us? Well I'm glad that you asked. That tells us that;

The odds of you carrying this staph infection are approx. 1 in 3191
The odds of you DYING from this staph infection are approx. 1 in 16,146

I took a look at those numbers and realized I had no clue what I was looking at. So I went back and matched those odds against some other odds. I wanted a little perspective.

You have a 1 in 1,820 chance of dying on any kind of injury during the next year. So I'm about twice as likely to die in an accident, then I am just getting staph. I don't know if I feel any better about that.

http://tahilla.typepad.com/mrsawatch/

http://www.webmd.com/news/20071016/more-us-deaths-from-mrsa-than-aids

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4155/is_20060122/ai_n16016715

http://kdka.com/topstories/topstories_story_290073423.html

 

United States — Population: 301,139,947 (July 2007 est.)
According to https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/print/us.html

 

This week the Journal of the American Medical Association released a study estimating there are about 94,360 cases of the drug-resistant staph infection and some 18,650 deaths in the country each year.
http://www.djournal.com/pages/story.asp?ID=254825&pub=1&div=News

ODDS OF HAVING STAFF INFECTION - 1 in 3191
ODDS OF DYING FROM STAFF INFECTION - 1 in 16146

http://www.funny2.com/odds.htm

MORE

Odds of winning an Academy Award: 11,500 to 1
Odds of a person in the military winning the Medal of Honor: 11,000 to 1
Odds of finding a four-leaf clover on first try: 10,000 to 1
Odds of being considered possessed by Satan: 7,000 to 1
Odds of being on plane with a drunken pilot: 117 to 1
Odds of writing a New York Times best seller: 220 to 1

 

COMPARISON
Chance of dying from any kind of injury during the next year: 1 in 1,820
Chance of dying from a car accident: 1 in 18,585
Chance that Earth will experience a catastrophic collision with an asteroid in the next 100 years: 1 in 5,000

 

LESS
Odds of fatally slipping in bath or shower: 2,232 to 1
Chance of having a stroke: 1 in 6
Chance of dying from heart disease: 1 in 3
Chance of American man developing cancer in his lifetime: 1 in 2
Chance of an American woman developing cancer in her lifetime: 1 in 3
Chance of getting prostate cancer: 1 in 6
Chance of getting breast cancer: 1 in 9
Chance of getting colon / rectal cancer: 1 in 26
Chance of beating pancreatic or liver cancer: 1 in 9
Chance of beating thyroid or testicular cancer: 9 in 10