With modern health and safety laws, hardly anyone goes high enough on a ladder for it to be fatal if you fall.
Cherry pickers are the real reason behind the population explosion, and consequently, climate change.

I got on a ladder when I was heavier than the maximum weight allowance.

fell from the 3rd step.


confirmed correct with https://www.americanladderinstitute.org/page/Manufacturers

oh... National Ladder Safety month coming soon

Drug resistant microbes kill about 35,000 people per year in USA. Sounds like 35,000 ladder deaths seems like a fair number.

It's hard to tell now who's being serious and who isn't. I hope you were just joking by stopping your highlighting before the red part so the lazy among us would agree that it "confirms" the 35,000 annual fatalities number. Over 34,000 of that number is annual OSHA ladder citations (and a relatively minuscule 300 annual fatalities). From another page on that site:
That's about one in a million people.

Yeah, I was avoiding posting the actual number as it was amusing to see that there were still a few people who thought that 35,000 made sense - enough sense that they didn't even bother to look it up to find out otherwise. Ah well, I guess now we'll see if there's still a couple more who won't bother to read posts.

Not sure if snowie was serious or not. For his sake, hopefully not.

Facts and appeals to reasonableness haven't stopped anyone from posting nonsense before (see Postle and GTO threads, for example), so I assume we're safe in expecting more entertaining posts here.

The CoronaVirus has surpassed SARS - a Very Worrisome Development

In b4 someone says, "I'm running so bad, I caught the coronavirus at the WSOP".

Las Vegas is open for business, and the Rio Hotel and Casino is ground zero for what is hoped to be the largest, most prestigious WSOP of all time. Tournament director, Randall “The Walking Dude” Flagg and top floor supervisors, Lloyd Henried and Whitney Horgan hope to make all would-be poker champions feel like family.

To kick-off the 2020 WSOP, a repeat of 2019’s super successful event, the Big50. This record setting event will give new meaning to the term “Poker Flu.” A hoped for field of 30,000+ feverish rounders will germinate a top prize of over a million dollars.

The bigger buy-in, and poker’s crown jewel, Main Event should see poker superstars like, Phil “The Unabomber” Laak, Chris “Jesus” Ferguson, and Mike “The Mouth” Matusow stacking chips like snot in a congested chest. But all the best pros will have to watch out for the poker savant known only as, “The Trashcan Man.” Trash, the originator of the A-Bomb Poker Theory, comes off a record 2019, winning 10 events and over $30,000,000. Maybe, just maybe, a newcomer will have the antibodies to clean up “The Trashcan Man.”

Whether it’s a small buy-in event or a high-roller mega-tournament, the 2020 WSOP will be wall-to-wall contagious poker fever. Make your plans to attend soon. Players from Jersey, to Texas, to Boulder, Colorado will fly, drive and walk to get a glimpse of “The Walking Dude” putting together the poker tournament to end all poker tournaments.

The Triton Super High Roller Series 2020 events in Jeju, Korea have been postponed. There are typically lots of Chinese participants and attendees at this series.

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/2...-22-a-1761604/

Time to get some more ladders.

most of my extended family has died from ladder falls (which isn't unusual).

I did look it up and saw a number of 100 or something as first result. But, that was just some random untrusted website. I trust the info I get off this website, it would be a slippery slope to start accusing people of posting false facts online.

Why worry about coronavirus when he flu we've already got here has infected as many as 26 million people in the United States in just four months, killing up to 25,000 so far (per NYT)?

Ignignok, You just answered your own question

With things like falling off ladders, car accidents, and the common flu, the probability that the yearly number of people that die from it say, doubles, is extremely small (basically zero). For the novel coronavirus, it might wipe out a non-trivial portion of the population (tail risk). Even if something is very unlikely, if it would cause ruin, then it makes sense to take a lot of precautionary measures against it.

Here is a good read from Nassim Taleb et al, and his other tweets are also really good:

https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1221486205847646208

because registered 2018 wouldn't get any attention from something that we know and expect to happen every year

Didn't Nassim Taleb post here before?

Only a reassuring post by him in this thread can convince me, PokerNews, and the WSOP organizers that the WSOP is a go as scheduled in 2020.

Well, now I'm really confused. How did you go from that to "35,000 ladder deaths seems like a fair number"? I mean, it's not that important, it's just odd to post an explanation that doesn't seem to make any sense.

How so? I don't see much of a slope. If someone posts something false, they should be called out on it. If I posted something as ridiculous as alberthofmann did, I'd want to know about it so I wouldn't keep thinking my numbers were correct. Wouldn't you?

I was skeptical about this thread, but think there is a more subtle underlying reason for this possibility. Regardless of what the WSOP sponsors might like to do or not to postpone anything, travel itself may be off by a lot this summer

I flew into Heathrow yesterday. Immigration/customs were practically deserted of travelers. While that may have been a coincidence pr Brexit-related, I have no idea ..... but it was literally a walk thru immigration and customs.

Interesting. I am heading to ICE in a couple of hours, the largest gambling trade show in the world.

If accurate, this Reuters report is huge news .... but no one is shutting down Las Vegas by government fiat as China can do.