Minor Malorum Duorum

So.... I came across this article exploring the little-known horrors of sand hole death. And I had to read it, because the headline says this is more dangerous than shark attacks. A sand hole death is when someone falls in a hole in the sand on the beach, and is buried, and can't get out, and suffocates. No doubt it is a horrible way to go, and more than likely means you're going to the afterlife with that unholiest of all torments, sand in your crack.

The more I read, the more I feel like I'm having my leg pulled. It talks about two doctors making it their personal crusade to tell people just how dangerous holes in the beach sand really are. How dangerous, really, you ask? Well, it seems like many of the people who fell in holes died because their "rescuers" came running up to the hole, thereby pushing sand all over the person inside.

Overall, they counted 31 recreational sand hole deaths since 1985 in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.

That's (on average) one person in the world* dying of this every 8.5 months. For comparison purposes, estimate somewhere around 80 - 100 deaths from lightning strike annually, maybe 8 per month.

Somehow I have trouble getting behind this, as a crisis. I think the moral here is, if you must go to the beach, don't go with an idiot.

* Yes, I realize that 4 countries does not constitute the world, but I'm assuming these people were searching pretty thoroughly, because they've dedicated their professional lives to it. I conclude from this, that either other countries don't keep statistics about that (unlikely, as WHO and WHO funding is a statistic based lifeform, and therefore encourages statistic-keeping in general), or it only happens in places where people who don't know how sand works hang out at the beach.