US utility patents granted

Americans choked to death and patented inventions at exactly the same growing rate, which suggests a country obsessed with progress while distracted at lunch. The patent office has been busy. The Heimlich, less so.

Both climbed steadily for completely unrelated reasons. Choking deaths follow the long aging of the US population — older Americans aspirate food more easily — while utility patent grants have grown as the patent office processes more applications from tech and pharma. One curve is demographic; the other is bureaucratic. Both compounded through the same decades.

So the correlation is age and innovation rising on parallel rails. Neither has anything to do with the other. The country invented things; some of it choked.