[golfing eagles]

Originally Posted by GoodLife

So we had a black man who was killed during an arrest by Police. This led to huge protests/riots/arson.looting all over the country.

So I looked at the numbers, and thought, what other professions kill unarmed civilians, by mistake or on purpose?

According to the Washington Post database, a total of 41 unarmed people were shot and killed by US police in 2019. The racial composition of victims is:

White: 19
Black: 9
Hispanic: 6
Other: 4
Unknown: 3
Total 41

In some of these cases Police were charged and tried, others were ruled justifiable.

According to the DOJ Police have more than 50 million encounters with citizens every year, traffic stops, domestic violence, burglaries etc etc. Any of these encounters can turn violent. Of course you would like for the number to be zero, but Police killings of unarmed citizens are statistically insignificant compared to the number of encounters.

So chance of unarmed civilian being killed by Police = 41/50,000,000 = 0.00000082

In 1999, the Institute of Medicine published the famous “To Err Is Human” report, which dropped a bombshell on the medical community by reporting that up to 98,000 people a year die because of mistakes in hospitals. The number was initially disputed, but is now widely accepted by doctors and hospital officials — and quoted ubiquitously in the media. More recent studies estimate the number is now more than 200,000 per year.

How Many Die From Medical Mistakes in U.S. Hospitals? — ProPublica

Average number of hospitalizations per year in US is 36,000,000

so chance of being killed by medical error is 200,000/36,000,000 = 0.00555

A small chance, but much much larger than Police chance

You can say well Doctors don't kill people on purpose, these are mistakes. Same can be said for Police, in a few cases they might be convicted of murder, but mostly they are ruled as manslaughter or excessive use of force. If Police really wanted to kill a lot of people of any race they could, they are armed and good shots. The miniscule numbers of this actually happening are statistically insignificant.

Do Doctors ever kill on purpose? Unfortunately they do.

Ohio doctor charged with 25 counts of murdering patients with fatal doses of fentanyl.
His trial has been delayed because of covid, so we will see what a jury says about this.
That's just one Doctor who killed more than 50% of what Police did last year.

How many Doctors go to jail every year for malpractice or murder? Do they avoid prosecution because their insurance pays out large sums?

To err is human for some but not all?

Sorry, but those medical mistake numbers are totally bogus. They are counting any death during a hospitalization that also had a "mistake" involved. Here's how it goes: The doctor ordered a patient to get Tylenol at 6 PM. The nurse needs to administer that dose between 5:30 and 6:30. It is given at 6:31-----MISTAKE!!!! The patient dies of his underlying malignancy 2 weeks later----guess what, it is counted in their bogus "death by mistake" tally. A classic case of post hoc ergo propter hoc (after this because of this, the sine qua non of faulty cause/effect reasoning). A pharmacist sends up an IV bag with 10 mg of solumedrol instead of the 20 ordered, the patient dies of an unrelated cardiac event a week later---same thing, death by MISTAKE!!!. Very few of these "mistakes" have anything to do with a patient death, and very few of those mistakes are made by the doctor. Now anyone who wants to argue, feel free, but be forewarned that I chaired the quality assurance committee of my hospital for 10 years, was chief of staff for 4 years and sat on the board of directors. These were the numbers and events that we were required to submit to the state health department, so the bean counters could make a big deal out of nothing, and then the media made an even bigger deal out of it.