A Time to Remember: Drowning Doesn't Look Like Drowning and When Thunder Roars, Go Indoors!

Summertime causes of death season begins!

Many others will be focusing on the meaning of Memorial Day, and that is right and good.

But that is not my specialty.

My specialty is causes of death, and preventing them, and two causes in particular are of interest to me, and they have their highest incidence in summer: drowning and lightning strike deaths.

Drowning prevention: learn to swim and be aware

Here is the video I have been using for years to raise awareness:

One of the biggest issues around drowning, at least for teens and adults, is being able to swim.

This crops up in New York a lot, and some is just having access to pools, as natural water around here is not that swimmable. The Atlantic Ocean is cold as hell up here, and the lakes and ponds aren’t much better for most of the year. Many of the people from NYC never really learn to swim.

CDC: Preventing Drowning

KEY POINTS (from the CDC)

• More children ages 1–4 die from drowning than any other cause of death.

• Drowning happens in seconds and is often silent.

• Drowning can happen to anyone, any time there is access to water.

As the CDC link notes, drowning is a top cause of death for toddlers. I wrote about this here:

Pools are more dangerous than Covid to small children

You can see from the graph that drowning is a bigger category than motor vehicle accident deaths, for instance.

I’m working on an updated finalized cause of death tool, and one choice is:

Accidental drowning and submersion (W65-W74)

Here are the aggregated results for recent years:

And the percentage changes, year-over-year:

You can see that there was a large increase in 2020. And a continuing increase in 2021. And more of an increase for the 65-84 year old age group in 2022.

These death numbers are very small compared to major causes of death like cancer and heart disease, but they are preventable in a short-term, acute way (as cancer tends to be a slower, long-term issue, and heart disease can be a bit fast or slow, depending).

It may be, as with plague years, people may have gotten a bit unsafe while having fun on the water… which leads me to:

Lightning Safety: When Thunder Roars, Go Indoors

Lightning safety has generally been a big success, but let me link to the Lightning Safety Council page as well as a few prior posts.

National Lightning Safety Council

Lightning strike deaths have generally occurred in the summer, as that’s when thunderstorms are most frequent, and people are outside.

Stay safe!