In 2022 (the last year for which final numbers are available as of this writing), the leading causes (in order) were heart disease (703,000), cancer (608,000), followed by accidents, COVID-19, stroke, lower respiratory diseases, Alzheimer’s, diabetes (at 101,000), and then the 98,000 number would rank only ninth.
Those are pretty general categories too. There’s a lot of cancers and a lot of different sorts of heart disease. Not to mention an almost uncountable number of ways to die in an accident.
There are also a lot of different kinds of medical errors…
True. I’m not sure if any category is really especially useful as a statistic. Am I more likely to die slipping in the bathtub than I am of eye cancer? That’s quite likely even if neither kill me because I’m guessing a lot more people die slipping in the bathtub than of a rare form of cancer.
