health

Why more heart-related deaths happen around the holidays

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A statistical difference of 4.2% is considered insignificant in most research, as it is less than the 5% margin of error.

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Jim: How do you know the margin of error is 5%?

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Good question Scrote! I was referring to the 5% margin of error that the Medical Officer of Health here in Ottawa Canada quoted me on another health related issue, namely the threat to our drinking water from the spreading of city sewage sludge on nearby farms in our rural neighbourhood. The Health Department head doctor explained the government's refusal to investigate by saying "Jim, even if all the rural wells were poisoned by the city sewage and you all got sick, that wouldn't constitute an epidemic because people with private wells are less than 5% of Ottawa's population." This is the "risk management" model governments use to justify ignoring the possible harmful effects of polluting practices on human health.

Regarding the study under discussion: " researchers examined data on more than 738,000 deaths from 1988 to 2013 in New Zealand, where Christmas comes during the summer. Overall, about 197,000 of these fatalities were heart-related."

Note that the figures cited are rounded to the nearest 1000, creating a margin of error of + or - 500 for the reported 197,000 heart related fatalities. I'm not a mathematician, but it appears that introduces an error of 1/4 %, which could lower the claimed result from 4.2 to 3.95% Then there is the question of how accurate the reports this is based on were? What proportion of the fatalities might have been misdiagnosed as "heart related" when in fact the deaths were a result of something else? All of which causes me to wonder if this "study" may be much ado about nothing!

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