Honestly, it takes an IDIOT to think 360,000 Americans die each year in swimming pools

[thesquanderer]

10. I had thought it was misplaced decimals, but it looks like it was something else...

Here's the quote:

250 people a year die from poverty...45,000 people a year die from automobile accidents, 480,000 from cigarettes, 360,000 a year from swimming pools

At first it looked like a pair of misplaced decimals. The 250 from poverty was supposed to be 250,000. The accidental downing figure is supposed to be about 3,600. Though yes, the first is more clearly a mis-speaking when you hear him say it. The second is more questionable. As it turns out, he has now released a statement saying he was in error by quoting worldwide rather than U.S. statistics there, and that seems borne out by this:

https://www.wlsl.org/WLSL/The_Event/Drowning_Data/WLSL/Drowning_Data.aspx

Though in both cases, I believe he's lumping all accidental drownings as swimming pool deaths, which is also wrong. (One can drown in a river/bay/ocean, or a bathtub.)

Regardless, of course, drowning is not contagious, so it was a dumb point to make in the first place.