We all love to be ranked, and while being first can be something to brag about, it feels pretty bad to have your home ranked the world’s 12th most “deadly travel destination” by an unknown insurance company with a poor understanding of how to read data.
Thailand was given a depressing score of -209.24, aka a “D-,” in the parlance of U.S. insurance firm The Swiftest, which not only relied on old data sources but failed to interpret them correctly.
Not to say that Thailand has a crap safety record in some areas – its road fatalities remain among the world’s worst and worthy of the “F” assigned in the ranking.
However, to claim that poor hygiene and communicable diseases warrant failing grades is risible and contradicted by the very data that it cites. For example, the 2016 World Bank data it relies on shows Thailand had a very low mortality associated with sanitation and hygiene.
The index also gave Thailand failing grades for risk of natural disasters and fatal injuries. In one bright spot, it gave Thailand an “A” for likelihood of being fatally poisoned.
The categories included in the list were: fatalities from homicide, fatalities from traffic accidents, fatalities from poisoning, fatalities from poor hygienic conditions, fatalities from communicable diseases, fatalities from injuries, and natural disaster risk index.
According to the chart, all 50 nations received grades from A+ to F.
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