Swimming pool drowning deaths in the US

It appears that between 2005 and 2021, Americans made a collective decision to stop drowning in swimming pools at almost exactly the same rate they decided to start mainlining taurine and guarana, which is the kind of inverse relationship that makes you wonder whether the universe is playing a joke on statisticians or whether statisticians are playing a joke on themselves. The correlation is so tight that you might reasonably conclude that energy drinks are simply a more efficient method of pool safety, which they are not.

What's probably happening here is that both metrics track the same underlying shift: the gradual aging of the American population, which swims less and drinks more stimulants to compensate for its creeping mortality. Population has grown steadily over these 17 years, yes, but the swimming population has shifted demographically—fewer children in pools relative to adults, fewer hot summers driving pool visits, and meanwhile the energy drink market exploded because late capitalism discovered that people would pay four dollars to feel briefly competent. The per-capita drowning rate likely dropped because of better supervision technology and water safety awareness, while energy drink sales per capita rose roughly from 8 ounces per person per year to about 22 ounces, which is to say Americans learned to aerate their bloodstreams instead of their lungs.

This is what happens when you measure anything over time with enough precision: you will find something else also changing, and your brain will insist they are connected, which they almost certainly are not, except through the great ambient shift of a culture getting older and more caffeinated. We see patterns because we are pattern-seeking creatures in a pattern-soaked universe, which is either deeply wise or deeply foolish. Possibly both. The pools got safer. The energy drinks got everywhere. Draw no conclusions.