Poor kid. He’s one of way too many.
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I started laughing, but then realized this is probably a pretty accurate prediction.
Although Trump and the Republicans keep talking about “skyrocketing” crime rates and murder, so I expect we’ll also see a lot of basic denial of the facts, too. (And probably, somehow, both - blaming Biden for imaginary skyrocketing crime, while also creating a panic about crime falling at the same time.)
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Looking at those stats, I’m frankly most concerned about the sharp rise in murders committed by hardened toddlers.
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That used to be the official way to indicate pronouncing both vowels separately in English. Even most publications don’t bother anymore.
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They’re criming at the kindergarten level!
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But they have been for a while.
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It’s true. But sometimes he does hit upon something. Now it’s got me wondering if any decline in murder rates can be tied to better ER treatments.
Similarly to how our foreign wars are causing fewer deaths of American servicemen and women, but leading to far more permanently maimed soldiers, with missing limbs and traumatic brain injuries, etc.
In the past, people would’ve just died in the field, and now they survive. It skews the statistics.
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The horrific injuries of WWI might have something to say on this topic.
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It would be more surprising if improved medical care weren’t converting some murders into attempted murders, or if one could not find any differences in outcome between people who get shot within bleed-out range of a solid trauma center and people who get shot further out; but on the timescale being described here it seems much less likely to be the factor at play: 20+ percent changes in survivability vs. just last year would be a wild result for team trauma surgery.
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I don’t understand.
I’m saying, maybe it’s true that the stats around murder are skewed because we have better medical interventions than we did in the past, so victims of attacks don’t die as often.
There’s no other value statement here….
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it’s certainly an interesting question, but i’m inclined to disbelieve pretty much everything he says. if someone has data to back his assertion up, i’d be all ears. till then, i’d assume he’s wrong because he generally is
here’s raw numbers ( granted not per capita adjustments… )
one aspect here i think might be correct… what if the rise in homicides specifically during the pandemic was in part because of the healthcare crisis?
we know people died because of lack of access to medical care ( well, more often than normal. thanks private healthcare industry ) - so it would stand to reason at least some of those were from gunshot wounds.
the data is probably somewhere…
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It’s exactly what was said back then as well, because there were so many more wounded-not-dead in comparison to previous wars. I guess I was just thinking that it’s a continuum and not a unique situation at this particular point in history. Yes, a higher percentage of people are saved than before, but if even more people are being attacked, the total numbers go up even if the percentages go down, you know?
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yeah. to add another thought, if gladwell had said the murder rate would be higher without modern medicine: that would be uncontroversial.
america however is awash in guns. it would boggle the mind to think medical treatment could offset that. and i don’t even know how one could go about assessing it. ( worse, his statement implies that’s the primary reason, which is hogwash )
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While true, it’s also bunk as far as crime numbers go.
Sure a murder is now slotted as an attempted murder, but those are down as well.
I’ve heard cops say something similar when they try to justify how dangerous their jobs are. When you point out the statistics that their job isn’t as dangerous as they make it out to be, they claim that’s because most wear bullet proof vests that save lives. There is a grain of truth to that, but you can look at the stats for cops shot but survived in the line of duty and see that it still way less dangerous than say roofing.
And more cops die due to traffic accidents than gun fire or stabbings, etc.
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IMO, because violent crime in general had an uptick, it was due to the very tough economical impact of Covid. You have a guy who cooked or washed dishes at an Applebees, and now it’s closed and so are most other restaurants and you can’t find a job. So you get mixed up in drugs or some other illicit activity to pay rent and bad things happen.
It is clear that policing rarely has a direct correlation to crime rates. It is environmental and economic conditions that I believe is the cause for most of it. Focusing on root cause mitigation (housing, food, drug abuse counseling, healthcare services, single parent support, etc) will have the greatest effect, but it’s also a lot harder and probably more expensive than just hiring more cops. But we should be doing it more anyway.
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agreed. and not just economics, but also emotional upset and disruption of routine. that’s super hard on people, and men in particular aren’t given a lot of tools for how to cope with that well. so it leaks out in fear and anger.
feeling trapped with nowhere to go and nothing to do isn’t healthy for anyone
totally agree. and while, yeah, probably more expensive than cops, i definitely think it’s cheaper than the cost of jail and prison. but i think because it’s indirect, it’s easier to get chipped away. ( ex. reaganomics )
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But that number is only so low because of seat belts and airbags!
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Misogynistic violence had a very noticeable uptick here and I do remember reading this was the case in other countries too. People were locked in with their abusive partners.
Gang related (and that term has no racist overtone here, it relates most particularly to white people) violence dropped.
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If we were comparing across a longer timeframe, this would be a possibility. We are certainly better at managing GSW today than in the '70s, but comparing across a few years? There really have not been any tremendous breakthroughs in trauma care in the last 5 years or so, and with more rural ERs closing, there is an argument that we might be worse. I think this sounds better than it actually is.
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