From the link provided, only 5 people die.

> "It has been estimated that 7,000–8,000 people per year receive venomous bites in the United States, and about 5 of those people die."

For a more accurate comparison, you would compare this with the number of injuries and deaths from firearms.

> "In 2013, there were 73,505 nonfatal firearm injuries (23.2 injuries per 100,000 U.S. citizens), and 33,636 deaths due to "injury by firearms" (10.6 deaths per 100,000 U.S. citizens)."

Preferably these would be broken down to separate handgun injuries to be a closer comparison to the stat you provided, but the point stands to illustrate that the comparison you provided muddies more than enlightens.

To bring up statistics like this just muddies the issue, particularly with a hot-button topic like firearm violence. There's a lot more goes into a nuanced discussion than throwing out stats like this.

> From the link provided, only 5 people die.

How many would have died if they weren't treated? Like, to a first approximation, nobody dies of measles any more, but you're not going to see me saying that that means that we don't need to vaccinate against it.

It's a legitimate question, but again, it's only useful if you're going to make the same comparison with handguns: how many more people would have died without medical attention? Are we comparing the lethality of the injury? The incidence of occurrence? The effectiveness of medical care? These are meaningful and important questions.

The numbers alone, without a meaningful comparison with what they mean in their relative context only clouds the picture.

That's fair. It's certainly the case that none of the numbers people have been providing are useful because you can't disentangle causes well enough to use them to support any particular position.

" From the link provided, only 5 people die."

Only? Hospitals are increasingly not stocking anti-venom because it expires and it's expensive to replace.

"For a more accurate comparison, you would compare this with the number of injuries and deaths from firearms."

I was explicit in using the term handguns and deaths to avoid ambiguity.

"a hot-button topic like firearm violence."

I did it on purpose. Not many bad events occurring at 6000/320e6 are ever universally present in and shape our American psyche like handgun deaths.

"There's a lot more goes into a nuanced discussion than throwing out stats like this."

Specifically, snake bites aren't rare. Neither are handgun homicides. Or maybe they are both rare. They're both a two in a hundred thousand event.

That's 2-3 orders of magnitude fewer than appendectomies, and an order of magnitude fewer than handgun injuries. 7000 rattlesnake bites is 0.002% of the population.

Sure and appendectomies are very expensive. But why do you dismiss the OPs concern for the outrageous cost of anti-venom?

Perhaps because the cost of something as rare, expensive to produce and perishable as anti-venom is sort of justified, whereas a relatively routine operation like and appendectomy is not?

Ok, that's fine. But it still stands that snake bites cost 150K and that's a lot of money!