Per capita bottled water consumption

As Americans have drunk more bottled water per capita, more of them have fallen fatally out of bed, adding bottled water to the ever-expanding catalog of things that correlate with bed-fall deaths. The coefficient is 0.990 across eight years, which means even hydration correlates with mattress-related mortality. The water hydrates, the bed betrays, and the chart adds another entry to the most over-correlated death statistic in American medicine.

Bottled water consumption grew from about 40 to over 47 gallons per capita between 2014 and 2021. Bed-fall deaths continued their steady climb with the aging population. Eight data points of two upward trends, same coefficient, same explanation: everything that grows in America correlates with bed-fall deaths because the aging population produces a perfectly smooth upward curve. The water is irrelevant. The demographics are inexorable.

Eight years of bottled water and bed falls is a reminder that bed-fall deaths are the universal correlator—the metric that achieves r > 0.99 with almost anything that has grown since 2005. The water flows, the body falls, and the coefficient is a monument to the mathematical certainty of demographic aging. Hydrate. Install a bed rail. Ignore the correlation.