et cetera

I take my title from a Nature article reporting that, contrary to various folk tales you might hear from time to time, people cannot in general postpone their deaths until important events have passed. See:

Donn C. Young and Erinn M. Hade, “Holidays, Birthdays, and Postponement of Cancer Death”, in Journal of the American Medical Association, Vol. 292, No. 24, December 22/29, 2004, pp. 3012-3016.

In fact, “more people die abruptly of a heart attack on Christmas than on any other day”:

David P. Phillips; Jason R. Jarvinen; Ian S. Abramson; Rosalie R. Phillips, “Cardiac Mortality Is Higher Around Christmas and New Year’s Than at Any Other Time: The Holidays as a Risk Factor for Death”, in Circulation, Vol. 110, pp. 3781-3788. [URL]

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