The third full week of May is....

Dog bite prevention week.  Do you have your plans yet?  I was thinking of biting people in honor of dogs, everyone knows the most dangerous breed of dog, human.  (Though puppies never bite.)

Seriously you can't make this up.  I got to the CDC website because I was looking at articles about insuring dogs (I am sure I will post about this in the future because I don't know where I should come down on the issue, so I will be looking into that).  I have to ask why does the CDC have a page on dog bites.  I didn't know you could catch one by not washing your hands (well maybe you can if you have a meat smell on your hands...).  I also think it is hilarious that the postal service supports National Dog Bite week.  Do dogs really chase mailmen?  That is so 1940.  Wait what is mail?  I know what email is.  If it like an 8-track or a newspaper?

What I do like towards the bottom of the page is that there is a discussion about the breed specific policies about dog bites.  The website is very level-handed about this in saying that this is the only information that is available is for fatalities so there are no statistics on bites/breed in general.  I also like the discussion about intelligent policies towards different breeds.  (On a side note, whose  job is it to write these documents?)

I do really appreciate page 5 of the document when it talks about breed bans.  I would love to have a Rottweiler some day but there is a lot of prejudice against them.  Well page 5 does a pretty good job of laying out the lack of evidence on breed specific dangers and specifically said that these bans are ineffective.  However I fear most local politicians are too 'busy' to read something like this before infringing on my rights.  However the existence of this document from the CDC seems to open a very good challenge to those laws.  However if someone just sat down and thought about it everything in this document is obvious, maybe that is what America lacks most days common sense.  (Though there is an evolutionary reason for stereotyping and probability estimates which I am sure I will discuss eventually.)

Other interesting things from the website is that Georgia has a plan to educate people about dog bites.  You know like, don't let a dog bite you.  Anyway, I was curious so I looked into the program and can't find anything about the program (like how much it cost the state).  Seems like garbage spending to me.  Anyway.

I was entertained that the CDC had a dog bite page and actually had a great document explaining that there is no correlation between dog bites and breed.