Well, I was very surprised to discover that shaking appears to be a highly common and widespread form of child abuse in the world [1]. It may affect 2-3% of all babies in the US and other developed countries, and the rate may be 10x or more higher in other countries.
I think it's reasonable to say that billions of babies may have been shaken in the past, yet the vast majority (of the order of 99.9% or even much more? [2]) are not diagnosed with shaken baby syndrome, since this diagnosis has an incidence of ~1/3,000 among children < 12 months in developed countries. In the countries where the incidence of shaking appears to be >50%, it is striking to note that the SBS diagnosis actually does not exist, i.e. doctors are not trained to diagnose it.
On the other hand, actual cases of severe inflicted head injuries probably affect < 1/10,000 children < 12 months, and I think most of them involve external evidence of trauma. Those that do not probably involve extreme forms of shaking far beyond what most of the billions of "shaken babies" sustain.
In other words, I've come to the likely conclusion that the intersection of babies who are effectively shaken, and babies who are labelled with "shaken baby syndrome", is an abysmal proportion of the first set, and a small proportion of the second.
[2] Excerpt from the paper above: "the ratio of children hospitalized or dying from inflicted neurotrauma compared to the numbers of reported shaken children may be estimated at 1 to 152."
Well, I was very surprised to discover that shaking appears to be a highly common and widespread form of child abuse in the world [1]. It may affect 2-3% of all babies in the US and other developed countries, and the rate may be 10x or more higher in other countries.
I think it's reasonable to say that billions of babies may have been shaken in the past, yet the vast majority (of the order of 99.9% or even much more? [2]) are not diagnosed with shaken baby syndrome, since this diagnosis has an incidence of ~1/3,000 among children < 12 months in developed countries. In the countries where the incidence of shaking appears to be >50%, it is striking to note that the SBS diagnosis actually does not exist, i.e. doctors are not trained to diagnose it.
On the other hand, actual cases of severe inflicted head injuries probably affect < 1/10,000 children < 12 months, and I think most of them involve external evidence of trauma. Those that do not probably involve extreme forms of shaking far beyond what most of the billions of "shaken babies" sustain.
In other words, I've come to the likely conclusion that the intersection of babies who are effectively shaken, and babies who are labelled with "shaken baby syndrome", is an abysmal proportion of the first set, and a small proportion of the second.
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S074937970...
[2] Excerpt from the paper above: "the ratio of children hospitalized or dying from inflicted neurotrauma compared to the numbers of reported shaken children may be estimated at 1 to 152."