In an article that opens with “here is a list of things I know and books I read, and here’s how I poisoned myself anyway.”
The death rate for Mushroom Poisoning in the US was apparently something like 2.9 per year since year 2000.
He's really just discounting the 99.something% who survive for effect because two died in the hospital he was at. If that is even true.
For this mushroom, it's certainly worse than that. It seems likely to me somebody quoted him the "without medical attention" survival rate.
> "Mushroom poisoning is more common in Europe than in America.[71] Up to the mid-20th century, the mortality rate was around 60–70%, but this has been greatly reduced with advances in medical care. A review of death cap poisoning throughout Europe from 1971 to 1980 found the overall mortality rate to be 22.4% (51.3% in children under ten and 16.5% in those older than ten).[72] This has fallen further in more recent surveys to around 10–15%.[73]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanita_phalloides#Similarity_...
The people dying was the outlier
But they do find time in the article to pass some judgment on "busy" "city" folks and their presumed inability to endure silence. Even though that's a different kind of "judgment" than the kind demonstrated above, I find it somehow hard to be receptive to it... 8)
"Destroying angels are sometimes mistaken for edible mushrooms such as young puffballs, button mushrooms, and meadow mushrooms."
It's more like confusing a grapefruit with a kitten or something.
And it is the same sort of decision tree people go through when nothing is wrong.
How many times have you heard a friend say "my heart behaves strangely sometimes".
Sometimes I have heartburn, or sweat more that expected and I wonder...
The thing with bad decisions is, most of the time, they work out OK, until they don't. This gives people a false sense of confidence, which makes a eventual downfall more surprising to them.
Every drunk driver who causes an accident has driven drunk hundreds of times before without causing one. They think they drive better drunk than most people do sober. They get away with it many many times, until one time they don't.
The same rule applies to the lab technical who doesn't wear proper PPE, the researcher who doesn't double-check their Excel formulae before sending the paper for publication, etc.
"I mistook them for inky caps [...] even though I spotted an Amanita nearby [...] I should have been more suspicious as mushrooms do grow in colonies."
"I couldn’t find my Mushroom book, was in a hurry, so I trusted my judgment, fried them up in olive oil, and ate them as a side dish."
"I should have recognized then that they weren’t inky caps, because inky caps exude a black substance when you fry them."
"At that point, I got concerned. I covered it up by saying, “I’m OK, I know what I’m doing and I don’t feel sick.”"
That's... a lot of interesting decisions, for something potentially so deadly. Had I known this person afterwards, I think I might have politely declined any dinner invitations.