WADR this is simply bull$hit compounded by ignorance. Using the number of murders in any city as a proxy for the average risk a local (or tourist) takes is simply laughable in addition to bad statistics. Every city of size has certain areas with extremely high crime rates and other areas with extremely low rates. Most people I know tend to avoid the problem areas and for some strange reason these areas tend not to show up in guidebooks under "have to see".

Regarding the ME area, Egypt has a record of repeated attacks on tourist groups, both in the Sinai and in the country proper. That pattern has not repeated itself in other ME countries (yet). Clearly by now anyone should recognize that the resorts at Dahab, Sharm, Nueiba, etc., are not secured, and there is risk associated with these areas. That does not mean don't travel to Egypt or Sinai, but being oblivious or choosing to believe the risk doesn't exist seems a bit stupid.

You are correct, the US is far more dangerous if one goes by statistics.

Egypt gets about 8,000,000 tourists per year, right? Of those, the death rate from violence towards tourists is less than .01 per thousand visitors for each of the last 5 years for which there are complete numbers.

The US has a murder rate that is multiples greater: about .03-.04 per 1,000 people sometimes as high as .06 per 1,000 people, right? Now let's go to one of my favorite places in the world: Washington, D.C. It's a prime tourist destination in the US and often has a murder rate above .55 per 1,000 population. DC = much riskier.

The number of reported murders in all of Egypt in at least one year out of the last 4 was lower than number of reported murders in just Washington DC.

The greater risk in Egypt is the traffic, right? With some .12-.15 per 1,000 population dying as a result of accidents, right?

If I'm wrong, it should be easy to show the above to be substantially incorrect. If I'm right, watch for nitpicking. ;)

Again with this! Let's say a woman friend of mine is in Oakland on business. She asks me if it is safe for her to park a few blocks from the conference and walk from her car at night. She's read that Oakland has a relatively high violent crime rate (which is true).

I ask her what part of Oakland and she tells me. Now, if by chance she's going to be in a very safe part of Oakland, would I be callous and racist if I tell her not to worry because the violence she's referring to is concentrated far from where she will be?

I prefer sticking to facts about violence rather than relying upon anecdotes which may or may not be representative of facts on the ground. When looking at murder -- terrorism included -- Egypt is no less safe for tourists than Switzerland is for all. Actually Egypt is significantly safer for tourists than Switzerland is for all people, given that less than .004-.01 per thousand tourists are murdered in Egypt. In Switzerland, the murder rate is .01 per thousand population in Switzerland. And Switzerland is considered very safe by world standards.

I'm not sorry if the statistical facts get in the way of breaking the back of the Egyptian economy.

Why not make apples-to-apples comparisons? Instead of tourists in Egypt compared to Country X in toto, why not look at tourists in Egypt compared to tourists in Country X?

Do you really believe that more foreign citizens have been killed in Egypt each year for the last 5 years than are killed in the US each year during the last 5 years? I don't -- because the numbers would not support such a claim.

In regards to being murdered, it's far riskier to be a foreign citizen in the US than to be a foreign citizen in Egypt.

In 2004 -- the year with the Taba tragedy -- the number of reported murders in just the DC area was higher than the number of reported murders in ALL of Egypt. Was it any different in 2005? Only if the 2005 murder rate in ALL of Egypt went up way more than 10 percent. And even then ..... ;)

The roads in Egypt are far more likely to pose a risk to human life.

Americans have such a blind eye towards the bad things in their own country. Yet they are very quick to point out the slightest flaw in other countries. That is what is really wrong with this thread.

I read this today... http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/04/27/news/honk.php

"We have children getting killed by gang leaders and dope dealers," Daley said in an interview with The Chicago Sun-Times. "We have real issues here in this city. And we're dealing with foie gras? Let's get some priorities."

Kinda makes my point for me.

The problem with using simple averages is that, statistically, it is simply invalid. Your numbers assume standard/normal distribution of events, which is incorrect. I really couldn't care less about whether anyone goes or doesn't go to Egypt or anywhere else but your analysis is incorrect. It also completely ignores the distribution of "events" in the US - for example as a tourist in the US you are almost (statistically) completely exempt from a number of categories in the murder column such as family on family cases or workplace murders, etc. I have no idea what % of murder cases they comprise, but it's not a variable that can be ignored. There are numerous other variables that need to be taken into account when doing this type of comparison.

If you consider this to be nitpicking, more power to you.

Please see above.

Do you have a better model, supplying better, concrete real-world answers that can be tested such that they demonstrate, in effect, better predictive value? The numbers I've presented are rather accurate, and I'm talking on the basis of a far more blended analysis than that presented here. But if you've drilled down through data in this area too, then do share some real numbers -- numbers directly relating the risk of murders in Egypt to the risk of murders in the US -- that substantiate your point. It's always good to have a concrete alternative against which to test; and if you have more perfect information and better models, I'm sure there is a market for both. (I just haven't seen anyone presenting such here in any substantial form.)

The incidence of foreign citizens being killed in Egypt is nowhere near even .025 per thousand foreign citizen arrivals. Such incidence of foreign citizens killed per thousand foreign citizen arrivals is more than double in India. Such incidence of foreign citizens being killed in Israel and Israeli-controlled territories is higher than Egypt's too. Such incidence of foreign citizens being killed is higher in the UK too. And such incidence of foreign citizens being killed in the DC area is far higher than Egypt's as well. Not unexpected, Iraq trumps all the above-mentioned when it comes to estimated incidence of homicide of foreign citizens per 1000 foreign citizen arrivals, "green zone" or not. :eek:

Putting aside the issue of artificial segmentation of victims -- a segmentation that values certain human life more than others -- if the risk is so much higher in Egypt for foreign citizens, then wouldn't most foreign individuals in Egypt purchasing most types of insurance coverage pay a sizeable premium -- and an increasing one at that -- compared to other countries in the same general socio-economic range? Why is that not the general case for foreign individuals in the market for insurance? Because of SOEs in the market? Because of regulatory regime? Because of lower risk? Because of both lower risk and SOEs/regulatory regime? Or because of something entirely different?

An American foreign tourist visiting Egypt is more at risk from dying on the roads in Egypt or on the roads in the US than they are from dying because of a terrorist attack.

As I've said earlier, the risk from terrorist attacks is rising and is likely to continue to rise. However, that does not negate the fact that the risk of dying due to a traffic accident exceeds that of dying as a tourist in Egypt. Nor does this negate the fact that the risk of being killed in the US is higher than the risk of a tourist being killed in Egypt.

Let me reiterate - I couldn't care less if the risk of a tourist getting killed as a result of a terror attack is higher or lower in Egypt compared to the US or anywhere else.

However, if you're going to try and define that risk, either relative to other issues or to other locations, then use a meaningful model. To answer your question, I don't have the data to address the actual risk factor, and I have ZERO interest in searching it out on the web. What I can tell you is the model needs to be tailored to your risk assessment, and using Egypt as an example, you're better off separating Sinai from the rest of the country in terms of your variables (number of tourists, number of attacks, number of people killed, etc). Since you seem to have those numbers, run them and see what you get. If you insist on averaging, the anecdotal evidence seems to point to binomial distributions as opposed to normal ones.

OMNI had a thread this morning about crime statistics in NYC over the last 3 years (I think) with some interesting notes - quoting from memory roughly 50% of murder victims had a criminal record and a large % of murder victims were killed by family or friends (no correlation between the two, just large % in each case).

Regarding averages in general: GM in the early 90's was working with a small consulting firm on some market research issues and one of GM's marketing guys was going on about their average customer wanting this and saying that based on survey figures. The head of the consulting company, a woman, BTW, stands up and notes that the average GM customer has one tit and one ball, and how many customers like that have you seen lately?

The issue of insurance raises good points and here's what I have found about risk premiums over the last few years, both with personal and business (key man). Travel to certain countries, including Egypt, India, Indonesia, and Israel trigger significant increases in your premiuim due to the increased risk in those countries to both tourists and business people by terror attacks as defined by the insurance industry. Europe does not trigger this problem, nor does China, Japan, and a host of other countries I typically travel to. I am sure there are other places that I don't travel to that do trigger the same rider. None of these increased costs are triggered by the increased risk you associate with vehicle accidents.

In the absence of the presentation of a better model, supplying better, concrete real-world answers which can be tested such that they demonstrate, in effect, better predictive value: the model that exists is more meaningful than the model that does not.

That is, better some theory/model that can be tested than no theory/model at all. After all, how do you test the untestable? If we can't, then we don't have a scientifically-based theory/model at all. Even a "weak" theory is better than no theory at all; for the former can be tested and improved upon, the latter simply doesn't exist to be tested and worked upon.

The pricing for most insurance premiums -- including the ones mentioned -- are not based merely on the likelihood of an incident occurring, and certainly not on just the incidence/risk of terrorism. The pricing structure is heavily based on the payout (expected outcome) resulting from incidence (i.e., generally more than just one type of incident). The cost to resolve an incident (i.e., for mitigating payout amounts) and/or the payout (i.e., expected outcome) itself increases more with certain categories of incidents rather than other categories of incidents for reasons often completely independent of actual historical damages and actual risk of incidence. For example, if I lose a colleague to a car accident on a trip to Idaho, where he was driving himself, the likelihood that the employer (and/or the employer's insurance company) would have to pay out large sum X for this type of incident is lower than if a like event occurred while he was in Egypt driving himself. Why is this? For the same basic reason that people fear being killed by a stranger (despite the low risk of such) -- namely, irrationality, in that a belief that the "unknown" and "foreign" is necessarily more dangerous and thus deserving of more employer responsibility (and liability). Yes, the roads in Egypt are less safe and that comes into play, but then again the risk of dying in a road accident is much greater than that of dying in a terrorist attack.

This is to say that insurance premiums may be priced to both: 1) absorb the risk of things besides just the actual risk of one type of incident (i.e., terrorism); and 2) absorb the risk of secondary costs that may have little to do with actual damages from just the incident itself yet are expected to occur anyway due significantly to perception of being "exposed" to the "other"/"foreign" element. In other words, insurance premiums may not be a perfect proxy to measure risk of incidence, for the same kind of reasons you noted in prior posts and for reasons I noted too.

That means these guys have real numbers. How do we see the numbers? Or do they just have the premiums? Where are the numbers?

I thought Bellarus & old Yugo, greece, southern italy, and Turkey were dangerous. no premium?