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Comment by mjburgess | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure what you think this shows.

If we had an organization responsible and capable of preventing MRSA deaths, and was failing to do so, they'd be in prison at 8 million deaths.

The issue here isn't how many deaths, it's whether boeing has a duty and capability to prevent them; whether it has failed to do so; and whether this failure has caused a systematic problem with its recent planes that could lead to more deaths.

On all accounts it seems: yes, they've gutted product quality and it has lead to severe accidents.

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I'm simply pointing out the relative frequency of these incidents, that's all.

> If we had an organization responsible and capable of preventing MRSA deaths

MRSA is known for spreading in hospital settings. Hospitals are supposed to prevent this from happening, but it is hard.

> Hospitals are supposed to prevent this from happening, but it is hard.

Physician here. Hospitals do work to prevent the spread, and it is hard—so much so that it's nearly inevitable. MRSA is a naturally occurring part of the respiratory tract and skin. How do you stop that? Also important to note that those who do acquire and die from MRSA infections tend to be relatively ill to begin with. Usually those patients are admitted to the hospital for some other serious issue and then develop a MRSA infection either from their own body or the hospital. While you can mitigate the latter, you can't do anything about the former.

…but, like drowning, plane crashes aren’t infectious.

There might be something to your analogy if a crash in Boise caused everyone in town to come down with a plane to the head, but that’s not how that works so it’s kind of apples to oranges.

I agree, preventing the spread of illness in a hospital sounds challenging.

You know what isn’t very hard, is making sure nuts are on bolts instead of in the trash.

I agree! And if Boeing can't manage to do that, they probably can't manage to surreptitiously assassinate people. Infectious disease is more than common enough on its own to explain this.

Trapped by my own logic. Totally fair and also grounded in the article rather than slinging mud at Boing. Well put.

> relative frequency of these incidents

Is about the same as frequency with which Putin kills his political opponents. [1]. So either frequency is not a very good way of judging criminal culpability and morality, or Putin is a great guy.

https://www.newsweek.com/putin-critics-dead-full-list-navaln...

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