Deaths from falling out of bed in the US

As candy and chocolate sales have grown, bed-fall deaths have risen, adding confectionery to the extensive list of consumer products that correlate with elderly Americans falling off their mattresses. The coefficient is 0.990 across seventeen years, and at this point, one suspects that bed-fall deaths would correlate with the length of the Amazon River if someone measured both annually. The candy is unwrapped, the body is found, and the chart makes no distinction between treat and tragedy.

Candy sales grew from about 28 billion to over 42 billion dollars. Bed-fall deaths rose with the aging population. Same seventeen years, same monotonic shapes, same mathematical result. The candy is consumed primarily by children and young adults; the bed falls happen primarily to people over 75. The demographics barely overlap. The coefficient, as always, does not care about demographics.

Seventeen years of candy and bed falls is another reminder that bed-fall deaths are the universal correlator. If it grew between 2005 and 2021, it correlates with bed falls. The candy, the craft beer, the organic food, the student debt—all achieve r > 0.99 with the same geriatric statistic. The sweet tooth grows, the body falls, and the dataset has a type.