Interpretation of: Patients received treatment within the first 2 days of hospitalisation
Patients were hospitalised on 1 January 2020.
Patients received treatment within the first 2 days of hospitalisation.
Does it mean that patients received treatment on one of the two days: 1 January 2020 or 2 January 2020?
Solution 1:
I believe there is no certain answer to this question. The meaning resides with the author (or speaker). The main confusion arises from the two relevant meanings of day: a calendar day; and a period of 24 hours. This ambiguity may only be resolved by definition.
The patient was admitted at time X.
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Day as a (complete) calendar day. Two complete days following the day of admission (Jan 1). Hence treatment was before the end of Jan 3.
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Day as exactly 24 hours. Treatment within 48 hours of the time of admission. Hence treatment was before time X on Jan 3.
I note that option 2 has a minor difficulty similar to the main question. To what precision are hour and the time X related? Is hour to be understood as an hour, or 60 minutes, or 3600 seconds? There is scope for legal quibble here but it adds little to this present discussion.
I discount a third option where 2 days = a period of time that may be reasonably rounded to 2 days rather than 3 days. Hence treatment was before time X + O.5 days on January 3. If the patient was admitted after noon on Jan 1, this would mean treatment before a time in the morning of Jan 4. Most people would see this argument as misleading sophistry.