Swimming pool drowning deaths in the US

Americans took up exercise and drowned more in exact proportion, which is the kind of summary that suggests everyone should probably have stayed on the couch. The home, it turns out, is not as safe as advertised. Neither are Pelotons.

Both surged in 2020 for the same lockdown reason. Exercise equipment ER visits rose as Americans stuck at home bought treadmills, Pelotons, and weights and then tripped, strained, and crashed on them at record rates, while swimming-pool drowning deaths climbed as distracted WFH parents left backyard pools lightly supervised all summer. Two different categories of home-injury, same locked-down spring.

So the correlation is a small meditation on the hazards of forced domestic self-improvement. The home gym had a learning curve. The pool had no curve at all.