Editor’s View: What’s scarier – snakebites or statistics?

Apologies prematurely if this text is suffering from typos or different errors, however it’s fairly exhausting writing on a laptop computer while you’re hiding beneath a mattress.

Why would somebody be writing an article hiding beneath a mattress, most individuals would ask, until it's for some type of samizdat being produced within the combat towards the scourge of communism?

The reality is, I’m scared. Of every part. Principally communism and toxic snakes, however apparently we’re meant to be fearful of every part.

There are “hidden” well being dangers all over the place, you see. We’re bombarded each day with messages alerting us to the hidden risks lurking the place you’d least anticipate it.

Final month, for instance, we learnt that bites from venomous snakes are the “world’s greatest hidden well being disaster”.

I raised an eyebrow when that headline got here previous my desk as, though toxic snakes are clearly a well being danger (and are notoriously shy and like to stay hidden), it’s an announcement that isn’t truly as blatantly or comically apparent because it sounds.

Snakebites kill between 80,000 and 140,000 individuals yearly: one particular person for each 5 minutes. One other 400,000 individuals undergo life-changing accidents, amputations and psychological trauma.

In keeping with Wellcome, the London-based impartial international charitable basis, these numbers are virtually definitely an underestimate, too. Many bites and deaths go unrecorded.

Wellcome – which is predicated simply across the nook from Well being Insurance coverage & Safety HQ (they placed on some nice exhibitions too when you’re passing that manner) – has simply introduced £80m in funding for a brand new programme to deal with altering the best way antivenoms and different therapies are researched and delivered. We want them effectively. In any case, though they’re scary, not less than toxic snakes are stunning, in contrast to, say, communism.

However what does all this should do with insurance coverage? Rather a lot. No, there isn’t a brand new product known as Snakebite Safety Insurance coverage (“Advantages with chew” anybody?) hitting the market. However statistics round well being and well being dangers – and particularly “hidden” ones – are manifest.

And the finger of blame usually will get pointed on the insurance coverage business, which is commonly (typically pretty, extra usually unfairly) criticised for fuelling concern in a bid to extend demand for canopy.

Take, for instance, most cancers. The “one-in-three individuals will develop most cancers in some unspecified time in the future of their life” has been hiked upwards to one-in-two individuals.

Thankfully, that statistic doesn’t appear to be utilized by insurers any extra – though it has been used previously. In any case, a lot of these cancers could be developed by older people who would fall outdoors the phrases of most safety contracts and so it’s hardly cricket to make use of these figures.

Or psychological well being. Statistics round which can be notoriously tough to deal with. In keeping with psychological well being charity Thoughts, roughly one in 4 individuals within the UK will expertise a psychological well being downside annually whereas in England, one in six individuals report experiencing a “widespread psychological well being downside” in any given week.

Once more, the medical health insurance & safety business, on the entire, resists the temptation to make use of such figures to its business benefit. Like most cancers, psychological well being issues clearly embrace situations related to previous age and palliative care that might fall outdoors the scope of insurance coverage.

However the sector should stay vigilant to make sure that such statistics – that are up for debate in any case – are fudged with a purpose to push extra product.

There are such a lot of well being dangers on the market – and, sure, most cancers and psychological well being dangers are sometimes “hidden”.

However the listing of hidden well being dangers is countless, risible and rising daily – and in order that’s why I’m beneath the mattress.

Fortunately, although, I can report that there aren't any toxic snakes right here and and so I must be protected (though that is South London, so that you by no means know).

Sadly, although, I’ve simply realised that I’m utilizing the laptop computer late at night time and you already know what they are saying in regards to the hidden well being danger of doing that….