The tool seems to be dealing with reported outbreaks only. The total illnesses in the outbreak tool over that time period is at 370K, but the cdc reports 48M foodborne illness cases per year, so totally different scale
Ok, clearly I am drawing the wrong inference from this tool, but I think the point still remains valid. insofar as it matters whether your beef was ground, the statistics you should care about are outbreak statistics. The reason that ground beef is less safe than steak is that pathogens from thousands of cows are evenly distributed among the entire slurry. This would absolutely be captured in outbreak statistics.
After the relevant processing, the argument for cooking burgers to 160 is no different from the argument to cook your lettuce to 160.
