Recall Sanity

UPDATE: When I wrote this, I was suffering from sleep deprivation. There is a serious logical flaw in it that does a wonderful job of pretty much demolishing my point. I thought a good while about simply taking down the post, but I decided to leave it up for a few reasons. 1) It is a shining example of how sleep deprivation does indeed negatively affect performance, 2) it illustrates why one should not think statistics when tired, 3) the main idea is still valid, I think, even if there is a serious flaw in the example, and 4) it will be interesting to see if anyone reading this will pick up on the mistake other than me. I will say again though, the main idea of the post is still valid in today's overly fear-driven society and is something we all need to think about. Are the fears we panic about really significant compared to dangers we ignore? Just how messed up are our priorities?  

The United States has decided to recall sanity. What am I talking about? The decision to recall 380 million eggs from all across the country because "hundreds" of people in a four state area have gotten sick due to salmonella. No one has died, just gotten sick.
Why do I think this is an overreaction? Consider the odds of getting salmonella from one of these possibly infected eggs. The number of salmonella cases in the country that has been attributed to this particular outbreak number less than 300. Consider that according to the CDC, the total number of salmonella cases every year from all sources is about 4000, I hardly think this qualifies as something to worry about. But if we take the 300 cases, that means that there is less than a 1 in a million chance of getting salmonella from the eggs being recalled.

Let's compare this to a few other facts, shall we? According to Eggsafety.org, the chances of getting exposed to salmonella in eggs just normally is 1:20,000, which, they estimate, means you should eat an egg with salmonella, on average, once every 84 years. Seems to me the chances of getting salmonella from the NON-recalled eggs is certainly no worse than getting it from the recalled eggs.Now admittedly, we are comparing numbers of people who actually got sick, supposedly from contaminated eggs, to the number of people who get exposed to the salmonella bacteria, which are not at all the same. Still, it is clear that the recalled eggs are not exactly posing a major health hazard.

Let's compare this with some other statistics. The national Weather Service estimates your chances of being struck by lightning this year are between 1/500,000 to 1/750,000. Being struck by lightning in your entire life runs you a risk of about 1/6250. Most people don't panic overly much about being struck by lightning because it is a real, but very rare event. But it is MUCH MORE LIKELY than getting salmonella from these recalled eggs.

Now, suppose you beat the astronomical odds and actually get an egg with salmonella. How dangerous is it? If you bother to cook it and don't eat it raw, the chances of actually contracting salmonella is approximately, um...uh...ZERO because cooking the egg kills the bacteria. Turns out these particular bacteria are not that resistant to heat.

Suppose you really beat the odds and get an infected egg AND you eat it raw AND you get sick. How dangerous is it? The answer? Not all that much. You will get nauseous, you may vomit, get a fever, diarrhea, and in general feel sicker than a dog, but you will be fine in a few days with no, ahem, ill effects. Most likely, you will simply feel a little queasy like you ate something that didn't agree with you and you won't miss a lick of work. Sorry bout that. It is possible you may get so sick that you could die if completely cut off from any sort of health care, but that is really, really, really unlikely unless you are a) very young, b) very old, or c) already sick as a dog from something else, in which case you may die if your neighbor sneezes in your general direction.

All in all, I'm not seeing the threat here, certainly not one worth spending millions of dollars and scaring lots of people about. So apparently, we are not recalling eggs per se, but any shred of sanity.