Sandy Hook, 10 years later, in one harrowing graph.
Sometimes, statistics are painful.
There are not too many events that leave such an impression that you remember where you were when you learned about it.
The day of the Sandy Hook shooting in Newtown CT is one I remember. It was ten years ago this last week. I was an intern doing a month in the Surgical Intensive Care Unit (SICU) at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens. We were rounding on patients, many of whom had been shot or stabbed but who by luck or by skill (of the surgeons), they were probably going to pull through. I was so tired, I could barely keep my eyes open on rounds.
On that day, I was so tired and also just plain sick to my stomach. I knew what gunshots do to bodies. Thinking of those beautiful children being slaughtered by the same kind of explosive force that killed adults who never made it out of the ER, and maimed the ones who survived and were now on my ICU service…it was too much.
A part of my soul died that day. I thought, “If this does not change things, nothing will.”
As many of you know, I study all-cause mortality trends. Ignoring the specific cause of death helps us understand when situations are really out of the ordinary. Of course, we often know what’s behind big surges.
Below is a graph of all-cause mortality in children ages 1-10 in Fairfield, Connecticut, where Newtown is located. It’s similar to one I made for Uvalde, Texas. The fact that there is a non-zero number of these graphs is absolutely devastating. We shouldn’t accept this.
In every month from 1999-2022, there are so few deaths in this age group that the CDC suppresses the data—that is, there are routinely fewer than 10 deaths among children in that age group, and so the CDC does not give specific numbers on a monthly basis. WE do know that on average, however, there are 1-2 deaths per month among kids ages 1-10 in Fairfield, CT (the average being 1.3 per month). In December of 2012, there were 22 deaths in this age group. We know that 20 of them died by homicide in that sad school, in that community that will never be the same.
Yes, death is a part of life. But as this graph shows, that is simply not the case for children—unless we allow it to be.
This event should have been the turning point in gun regulation in this country. I was listening to an NPR story about this on the way to work - couldn't stop myself from crying. I just don't understand...