Unsafe at any level!


  • ♿ (Parody)

    The CDC slips up and gives away the game:
    @NYT said:

    Dr. Portier said that no lead level was considered safe in young children and that sometimes the effects could be so subtle as to be unnoticeable. Actual lead poisoning, he said, is defined as blood levels above 45 micrograms per deciliter of blood. At that level in young children, he said, “their life is at risk, they need to be seen clinically, and interventions absolutely need to be taken immediately.”

    Glad we're paying money to protect ourselves from effects that don't seem to exist. It's a good thing we have plenty of money to spend.



  •  It's no big thing. Your kids will look, smell and act pretty much like all the other kids. They'll just be dumber.

    But that's OK to some people. Mostly people that don't like to "waste" money.



  • @boomzilla said:

    The CDC slips up and gives away the game: @NYT said:
    Dr. Portier said that no lead level was considered safe in young children and that sometimes the effects could be so subtle as to be unnoticeable

    Glad we're paying money to protect ourselves from effects that don't seem to exist. It's a good thing we have plenty of money to spend.

     

    So, if you don't notice something, it doesn't exist? :P

    I read the rest of the article, the idea is to lower the lead-blood-level threshold for action to below the "Shit, this kid has lead poisoning" level, so that public health officials can take action before the kids actually get lead poisoning.

    @NYT said:

    “The idea would be that these are the most exposed children in the
    country, and we would then target their homes and their communities to
    try to find what those sources of lead are and remove them from the
    environment so the child won’t get higher blood levels, and so future
    children coming into the home and community won’t get those lead
    levels,” Dr. Portier said.

    Preempting lead poisoning in kids doesn't seem like a waste of money to me.



  • @aliquot said:

    So, if you don't notice something, it doesn't exist? :P

    So, if we don't notice something, we should presume it exists until we continue to not notice it for some arbitrary period of time?

    @aliquot said:

    I read the rest of the article, the idea is to lower the lead-blood-level threshold for action to below the "Shit, this kid has lead poisoning" level, so that public health officials can take action before the kids actually get lead poisoning.

    It was already way below that, according to the same article. The "oh shit" level was 45 lead per blood unit things, the old child poison level was 10 LPBUTs, now it's 5.

    @aliquot said:

    Preempting lead poisoning in kids doesn't seem like a waste of money to me.

    Or maybe since lead poisoning has become far less of an issue some sub-organization of the CDC is losing funding, so they lower the threshold so they can say that more kids are affected and justify their costs. That sounds like money wasting to me.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @aliquot said:

    So, if you don't notice something, it doesn't exist?

    Does what exist?

    @aliquot said:

    I read the rest of the article, the idea is to lower the lead-blood-level threshold for action to below the "Shit, this kid has lead poisoning" level, so that public health officials can take action before the kids actually get lead poisoning.

    I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, and assume you just didn't read closely enough instead of innumeracy, and will inform you that the current standard, 10 is well below the threshold for poisoning, which is 45. This is in decimal numbers, BTW, so the current regulatory threshold has a 350% buffer before the clinical problem of poisoning is reached.

    @aliquot said:

    Preempting lead poisoning in kids doesn't seem like a waste of money to me.

    So, at what level of lead does it become "poisoning?" It's nearly as much of a cliche in toxicology as correlation/causation is in statistics, but "the dose makes the poison." How much will it cost to reduce the lead from minuscule amounts to microscopic amounts? What are the benefits?

    The story says that since we're using less lead in stuff, most levels are coming down already. Do we really need to spend a lot more money to get a lot fewer benefits? With most environmental pollutants, that's where we are in the US. But I guess it's for the children, so we should turn our brains off and our checkbooks on.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @SteamBoat said:


    It's no big thing. Your kids will look, smell and act pretty much like all the other kids. They'll just be dumber.

    But that's OK to some people. Mostly people that don't like to "waste" money.

    Numbers aren't your strong point, are they?



  • @boomzilla said:

    @SteamBoat said:


    It's no big thing. Your kids will look, smell and act pretty much like all the other kids. They'll just be dumber.

    But that's OK to some people. Mostly people that don't like to "waste" money.

    Numbers aren't your strong point, are they?

    To be fair, he has 7 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood.



  • @aliquot said:

    Preempting lead poisoning in kids doesn't seem like a waste of money to me.

    Kids today need to toughen up. I ate lead all the time as a kid, and I ain't seen wot's the fuss.



  • @boomzilla said:

    The CDC slips up and gives away the game:
    @NYT said:
    Dr. Portier said that no lead level was considered safe in young children and that sometimes the effects could be so subtle as to be unnoticeable. Actual lead poisoning, he said, is defined as blood levels above 45 micrograms per deciliter of blood. At that level in young children, he said, “their life is at risk, they need to be seen clinically, and interventions absolutely need to be taken immediately.”

    Glad we're paying money to protect ourselves from effects that don't seem to exist. It's a good thing we have plenty of money to spend.

    Keep it quiet for the good of the Free World! Lead poisoning scare is a key tactic in the secret economical war against China. (Also, iPads)


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @lettucemode said:

    Or maybe since lead poisoning has become far less of an issue some sub-organization of the CDC is losing funding, so they lower the threshold so they can say that more kids are affected and justify their costs. That sounds like money wasting to me.
    This concept/phenomenon has a name (certainly over here.) It's called 'shroud waving.'



    There's something else I noticed in there...

    [...]federal health authorities have lowered the recommended limit for lead exposure in young children, which they say could add 200,000 children to those believed to have unsafe lead levels in their blood.
    Doctors have been doing this with weight. One of the reasons there's a lot more 'obesity' in the Western world these days, is they keep moving the definition of obesity.

    Ditto 'binge' drinking in the UK - there's 'more' of it because the definition of binge drinking has been lowered so far that 2 pints of strong (5-6%) larger is considered binging. This is despite the per-captia amount of alcohol being drunk has actually been decreasing for the past few years. That article also has an example of how they change the methodology (in 2006) to make the numbers look worse:



  • @SteamBoat said:

     It's no big thing. Your kids will look, smell and act pretty much like all the other kids. They'll just be dumber.

    But that's OK to some people. Mostly people that don't like to "waste" money.

     

     

    Dumb people or often happier, so this might not be a bad thing.

     



  • @lettucemode said:

    @aliquot said:
    So, if you don't notice something, it doesn't exist? :P

    So, if we don't notice something, we should presume it exists until we continue to not notice it for some arbitrary period of time?

    Okay, here's some food for thought: So, you have this small child which is subject to some kind of chemical right from the start of its short life. The effect of this chemical? Makes the kid dumber by, say, 10 IQ points.
    Now, since the kid has always been this way - you simply don't notice it. The effect is there, however.

    Just one example for an effect you don't notice - simply because it has always been this way and you don't have a proper baseline to compare it to.



  • @Rhywden said:

    @lettucemode said:
    @aliquot said:
    So, if you don't notice something, it doesn't exist? :P

    So, if we don't notice something, we should presume it exists until we continue to not notice it for some arbitrary period of time?

    Okay, here's some food for thought: So, you have this small child which is subject to some kind of chemical right from the start of its short life. The effect of this chemical? Makes the kid dumber by, say, 10 IQ points.
    Now, since the kid has always been this way - you simply don't notice it. The effect is there, however.

    Just one example for an effect you don't notice - simply because it has always been this way and you don't have a proper baseline to compare it to.

    That would still be measurable. For example, some regions surely have more lead than others, and some are probably lead-free. Comparison of IQ scores could tell us if the areas with relatively high lead were causing more defects. As far as I know, this regulation isn't based on anything like that. I took the quote to mean that there is literally no measurable difference in outcome between being exposed to 5 kajiggers of lead and 10.

    I think the conclusion that such small traces of lead are knocking 10 IQ points off kids is ludicrous. Kids in the US today are probably exposed to less lead than kids at any other point in history.



  • The article doesn't seem to say anything about there being some amount of money hanging in the balance based on this issue. It looks like business as usual -- CDC does research and makes recommendations based on that research.
    Besides, it's not like the CDC is in any danger of running out of legit diseases they could use to justify their funding. AIDS is still a thing for example.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @morbiuswilters said:

    I think the conclusion that such small traces of lead are knocking 10 IQ points off kids is ludicrous. Kids in the US today are probably exposed to less lead than kids at any other point in history.

    And test scores keep getting worse. BRING BACK THE LEAD!

    People can rationalize about this all they want, but it's simply a bureaucracy justifying its continued existence and expansion. In politics, we hear a lot about how the tax code is messing stuff up. That's not wrong, but I think it's dwarfed by crap like this. It's not just the money that's spent directly on the enforcement, but all of the time and energy that gets wasted trying to comply. Multiply this by a billion and you're probably getting close to the true cost of the modern regulatory behemoth.

    You may now lecture me about my imaginary opinions that we shouldn't have clean air and water or whatever your pet nonsense issue is. I got a call the other day about some petition for "clean air." I'm not sure what it was about. The guy on the phone couldn't tell me. "I'm just at a call center." I grew up in LA in the '70s and '80s, so I'm familiar with unclean air. That's not a problem I've seen anywhere in the US in the last 15 years. But the budgets must go on. The worst nonsense is "carbon pollution," (AKA carbon dioxide) of course, which I suspect is what that petition was really about.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Zolcos said:

    The article doesn't seem to say anything about there being some amount of money hanging in the balance based on this issue. It looks like business as usual -- CDC does research and makes recommendations based on that research.
    Besides, it's not like the CDC is in any danger of running out of legit diseases they could use to justify their funding. AIDS is still a thing for example.

    FTFA:

    But enforcement, he said, would be up to other federal agencies, as well as states and municipalities.

    ...

    He said the lead level considered acceptable would be revisited every four years and reduced as levels in the population fell.

    But the CDC still spends money on lead prevention. It's probably impossible to eliminate detectable levels of lead, until we figure out a way to keep kids from, I dunno, eating dirt. Setting up a system to keep lowering levels is just another self licking ice cream cone.



  • @PJH said:

    Ditto 'binge' drinking in the UK - there's 'more' of it because the definition of binge drinking has been lowered so far that 2 pints of strong (5-6%) larger is considered binging. This is despite the per-captia amount of alcohol being drunk has actually been decreasing for the past few years. That article also has an example of how they change the methodology (in 2006) to make the numbers look worse:

    Read the article more closely.  Even though overall drinking is down, they're saying that *problem* drinking, as measured by alcohol-related hospital visits, is up, and that despite various factors that cause moderate drinkers to drink less, the problem drinkers aren't improving.  (You can get really bad results when you mix statistics of two distinct groups into a single aggregate and try to draw conclusions from it.)

    It appears that the major factors leading to the downturn in non-problem drinking are twofold: the economy (less money to buy stuff means less money to buy booze) and a shifting social image of drinking (the same effect as we've seen in the US with smoking, ever since the Big Tobacco lawsuits.)  And they're predicting that when the economy improves, one of those two factors is going to evaporate



  • @boomzilla said:

    The worst nonsense is "carbon pollution," (AKA carbon dioxide) of course, which I suspect is what that petition was really about.

    Personally, I'm in favor of eliminating carbon entirely from the atmosphere.

    But then again, I hate plants.. like, a lot.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @morbiuswilters said:

    But then again, I hate plants.. like, a lot.

    I'm not a vegetarian, but I can imagine that if plants were all that I had to eat, I'd hate them, too.



  • @Mason Wheeler said:

    It appears that the major factors leading to the downturn in non-problem drinking are twofold: the economy (less money to buy stuff means less money to buy booze)

    Don't believe it. Alcohol consumption rises in recessions and drops in boom times.



  • @boomzilla said:

    @morbiuswilters said:
    But then again, I hate plants.. like, a lot.

    I'm not a vegetarian, but I can imagine that if plants were all that I had to eat, I'd hate them, too.

    Maybe I only eat plants because I want to inflict massive suffering on their kind?



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @Mason Wheeler said:
    It appears that the major factors leading to the downturn in non-problem drinking are twofold: the economy (less money to buy stuff means less money to buy booze)

    Don't believe it. Alcohol consumption rises in recessions and drops in boom times.

     

    "Drowning your sorrows theory"?  I could see that.  But they're making the opposite claim in this article.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @Rhywden said:
    @lettucemode said:
    @aliquot said:
    So, if you don't notice something, it doesn't exist? :P

    So, if we don't notice something, we should presume it exists until we continue to not notice it for some arbitrary period of time?

    Okay, here's some food for thought: So, you have this small child which is subject to some kind of chemical right from the start of its short life. The effect of this chemical? Makes the kid dumber by, say, 10 IQ points.
    Now, since the kid has always been this way - you simply don't notice it. The effect is there, however.

    Just one example for an effect you don't notice - simply because it has always been this way and you don't have a proper baseline to compare it to.

    That would still be measurable. For example, some regions surely have more lead than others, and some are probably lead-free. Comparison of IQ scores could tell us if the areas with relatively high lead were causing more defects. As far as I know, this regulation isn't based on anything like that. I took the quote to mean that there is literally no measurable difference in outcome between being exposed to 5 kajiggers of lead and 10.

    I think the conclusion that such small traces of lead are knocking 10 IQ points off kids is ludicrous. Kids in the US today are probably exposed to less lead than kids at any other point in history.

    Way to miss the point I was making. The guy was talking about "noticable", as in: "You, as an individual, might not notice lead exposure without special equipment to measure an effect". So I gave you an example of how one does not notice exposure.

    And, logically, you promptly and probably deliberately misunderstand the guy. He was not talking about "immeasurable". Different term.

    Another example: You can influence people's decision making in an unnoticable way (unnoticable for the person, that is) by exposing them to strong magnetic fields. That's the kind of "unnoticable" he was talking about.

    And maybe another hint: I was giving you a generic example. Where exactly did I say that a) the example I gave was about lead and b) that the numbers I was giving were real-life numbers? Again, if you still have not grasped it: It was intended as a generic example for an effect you (as a person) don't notice.



  • @Mason Wheeler said:

    @morbiuswilters said:

    @Mason Wheeler said:
    It appears that the major factors leading to the downturn in non-problem drinking are twofold: the economy (less money to buy stuff means less money to buy booze)

    Don't believe it. Alcohol consumption rises in recessions and drops in boom times.

     

    "Drowning your sorrows theory"?  I could see that.  But they're making the opposite claim in this article.

    It's not even a theory, it's just a fact. Try searching for alcohol sales in recession on Google and see what comes up.

    It's possible this may not apply in the UK (most of the times I've heard it it's been in the context of the US) but I doubt it.



  • @Rhywden said:

    And, logically, you promptly and probably deliberately misunderstand the guy. He was not talking about "immeasurable". Different term.

    I'm aware it's a different term. My point is that if this is a real danger it is quantifiable. The point is, he's not quantifying shit, he's just claiming it's bad but possibly unnoticeable.

    @Rhywden said:

    And maybe another hint: I was giving you a generic example. Where exactly did I say that a) the example I gave was about lead and b) that the numbers I was giving were real-life numbers? Again, if you still have not grasped it: It was intended as a generic example for an effect you (as a person) don't notice.

    I didn't mean that you had said anything definitive about lead. Once again, my point is that something like a drop of 10 IQ points is a real hazard, but there's certainly no proof anything like that is happening. So how many IQ points is it? (I should also point out that the way you phrased your hypothetical certainly could lead people to think you were talking about lead, but I understood it to just be a hypothetical.)



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @Rhywden said:
    And, logically, you promptly and probably deliberately misunderstand the guy. He was not talking about "immeasurable". Different term.

    I'm aware it's a different term. My point is that if this is a real danger it is quantifiable. The point is, he's not quantifying shit, he's just claiming it's bad but possibly unnoticeable.

    Yeah, quantifiable. If you've got a nationwide lead problem, then yes. If it's only your house at the end of the street - then, no.
    And did you ever watch House M.D.? What hoops he sometimes has to go through to arrive at a diagnosis? That's also a problem: Unless you've got a really high dosage, lead poisoning won't really manifest as such. It'll impair your immune system instead, for example. So you'll get sick more often. And "getting sick more often" is something that has a metric shitton of different possible causes...

    @Rhywden said:
    And maybe another hint: I was giving you a generic example. Where exactly did I say that a) the example I gave was about lead and b) that the numbers I was giving were real-life numbers? Again, if you still have not grasped it: It was intended as a generic example for an effect you (as a person) don't notice.

    I didn't mean that you had said anything definitive about lead. Once again, my point is that something like a drop of 10 IQ points is a real hazard, but there's certainly no proof anything like that is happening. So how many IQ points is it? (I should also point out that the way you phrased your hypothetical certainly could lead people to think you were talking about lead, but I understood it to just be a hypothetical.)

    Are you serious? You just told me that you understood that my example was hypothetical - and yet you're asking for hard numbers for my hypothetical problem?



  • @Rhywden said:

    And did you ever watch House M.D.? What hoops he sometimes has to go through to arrive at a diagnosis?

    That's a fictional show, you do realize?

    @Rhywden said:

    Are you serious? You just told me that you understood that my example was hypothetical - and yet you're asking for hard numbers for my hypothetical problem?

    I'm not talking about your hypothetical problem--are you really this bad at reading? I am asking "What are the benefits of lowering lead from 10 kajiggers to 5, and what are the costs?" Neither you, nor anybody else, has been able to quantify any of that. So they don't have an argument, they have an ideological stance based on feelings.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @Rhywden said:
    And did you ever watch House M.D.? What hoops he sometimes has to go through to arrive at a diagnosis?

    That's a fictional show, you do realize?

    @Rhywden said:

    Are you serious? You just told me that you understood that my example was hypothetical - and yet you're asking for hard numbers for my hypothetical problem?

    I'm not talking about your hypothetical problem--are you really this bad at reading? I am asking "What are the benefits of lowering lead from 10 kajiggers to 5, and what are the costs?" Neither you, nor anybody else, has been able to quantify any of that. So they don't have an argument, they have an ideological stance based on feelings.

    I don't know if you are extremely confused or just acting in bad faith but you are definitely in the top 5 worst debaters I've ever seen. The few points you bring are buried under a rephrasing (usually different from one version to the other) of what you already said and under repeated accusations that other people can't read or are stupid. For some reason you also insist on stating the obvious (such as the fact that House M.D is a fictional show), as if this was not abundantly clear to everyone.

    Why don't you try, just for one week, to refrain from saying things like: "I'm not talking about", "What I said", "I mean", "My point was", as well as things like: "you can't read", "you are an ignorant", "you are stupid". Of course that will bring down the volume of your contribution to this forum significantly but it will also have an impact on the signal-to-noise ratio. Might be worth it.





  • Somehow my DailyWTF thread got filled with posts from Boring Sociology Topics Discussion Board.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Somehow my DailyWTF thread got filled with posts from Boring Sociology Topics Discussion Board.

    That's what you get for putting interspecies er0tica in your signature.



  • @Speakerphone Dude said:

    @blakeyrat said:
    Somehow my DailyWTF thread got filled with posts from Boring Sociology Topics Discussion Board.

    That's what you get for putting interspecies er0tica in your signature.

    That's not why I did it! Er... I mean... I don't know what you're talking about.



  • @Speakerphone Dude said:

    For some reason you also insist on stating the obvious (such as the fact that House M.D is a fictional show), as if this was not abundantly clear to everyone.

    Um, I stated it because supporting your argument with plots from House makes you sound retarded. "It's difficult to determine the impact of lead on public health because, like, have you even seen House?" That's straight-up stupid talk.

    So, as usual, your contribution to the debate is without a dick hair's value whatsoever. Heckuva job, Speaky.



  •  This is TRWTF: "Dr. Portier said that no lead level was considered safe in young children".  Absolutely no lead in the bloodstream?  Roll out the bubble!  We're implementing hemoglobin zero tolerance policies!



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    So, as usual, your contribution to the debate is without a dick hair's value whatsoever.

    You have hair on your dick? I don't think this is normal. Unless you *think* you have hair on your dick because it is hidden in your pubes, in which case you should either do a trim job or order those pills they advertise in spam emails.

    Also after seeing your signature, I wonder if the broken image is some kind of joke, or if you just tried to put a link to bring traffic to your uncle's company website in Romania.



  • @Speakerphone Dude said:

    Might be worth it.
     

     Not a chance. Morbs's jingoist bullshit is the best thing going on this forum.

     



  • @Speakerphone Dude said:

    You have hair on your dick?

    Actually, I've got no hair there.

    @Speakerphone Dude said:

    Unless you think you have hair on your dick because it is hidden in your pubes, in which case you should either do a trim job or order those pills they advertise in spam emails.

    I thought only children used vulgar insults? Or were you wrong about that, too?

    @Speakerphone Dude said:

    Also after seeing your signature, I wonder if the broken image is some kind of joke, or if you just tried to put a link to bring traffic to your uncle's company website in Romania.

    It used to be a legit image, then everyone copied it, then I moved my dedicated server but never got around to moving the files off of it.. I should do that, but I've been too busy orchestrating my move to Paradise, so it's been a low priority. And I kind of like the way the broken image looks.



  • @oheso said:

    @Speakerphone Dude said:

    Might be worth it.
     

     Not a chance. Morbs's jingoist bullshit is the best thing going on this forum.

    You shut your goddamn rice-eating mouth.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    You shut your goddamn rice-eating mouth.
     

    See what I mean?

     



  • @oheso said:

    @morbiuswilters said:

    You shut your goddamn rice-eating mouth.
     

    See what I mean?

     

    It would be almost cute if it was not coming from a 28 year old who speaks like an awkward teenager with a Tourette syndrome and pretends to be immensely rich but somehow can't afford a 50$ video game because his mother refuse to increase the weekly stipend. This person pretends to be American but now that we know that he maintains the website of his uncle in Romania and that he does not know what are blue and red states, the cat is out of the bag.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Mason Wheeler said:

    Read the article more closely.  Even though overall drinking is down, they're saying that problem drinking, as measured by alcohol-related hospital visits, is up,
    .. which is more bollocks. Guess how they 'measure' alcohol-related hospital visits? Go on - guess.



    Drink and disease: how figures can confuse

    Alcohol-related admissions are calculated in such a way that if you are unlucky enough, say, to be involved in a fire and admitted to hospital for the treatment of your burns, it will count as 0.38 of an alcohol-related admission – unless you happen to be under 15, when it won’t count at all.

    If you drown, it counts as 0.34 of an alcohol-related admission – though most people unlucky enough to drown aren’t admitted to hospital. Getting chilled to the bone (accidental excessive cold) counts for 0.25 of an admission, intentional self-harm to 0.20 per cent of an admission.

    These fractions apply whether or not there was any evidence you had been drinking before these disasters befell you.

    [...]

    Note that no account is taken of the amount these people actually drink.


  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @Mason Wheeler said:

    @morbiuswilters said:

    @Mason Wheeler said:
    It appears that the major factors leading to the downturn in non-problem drinking are twofold: the economy (less money to buy stuff means less money to buy booze)

    Don't believe it. Alcohol consumption rises in recessions and drops in boom times.

     

    "Drowning your sorrows theory"?  I could see that.  But they're making the opposite claim in this article.

    It's not even a theory, it's just a fact. Try searching for alcohol sales in recession on Google and see what comes up.

    It's possible this may not apply in the UK (most of the times I've heard it it's been in the context of the US) but I doubt it.

    It's a bit more complex than that. The top 25 to 30 of annual alcohol consumption per capita is almost exclusively a European affair, and figures from like 2007 put Ireland very high up, whilst its economy was still booming at the time.
    Binge drinking appears on the increase, though, as witnessed by the increasing rate of minors being admitted to hospital because of alcohol poisoning (from what is dubbed "coma guzzling"). At least, it's the perception of ER doctors, but there are some figures to support it.

     


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @blakeyrat said:

    Somehow my DailyWTF thread got filled with posts from Boring Sociology Topics Discussion Board.

    I know that real life isn't as interesting as animated animals, but fortunately, we're not sorry for the inconvenience.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Somehow my DailyWTF thread got filled with posts from Boring Sociology Topics Discussion Board.

    Isn't the Internet awesome? You get to hear discussions from experts, people who have read at leat two Wikipedia articles solely about the subject and make witty banter, is like R rated C-SPAN, a dream come true!



  • @Severity One said:

    At least, it's the perception of ER doctors.

    First House, now ER.

    You guys''ll be citing Quincy next.



  • @lettucemode said:

    @aliquot said:
    So, if you don't notice something, it doesn't exist? :P

    So, if we don't notice something, we should presume it exists until we continue to not notice it for some arbitrary period of time?

    .

    A person has high blood pressure, does not notice it in any way....then one day drops dead of an easily preventable heart attack.... That approach may work for you (good luck!)


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @TheCPUWizard said:

    @lettucemode said:
    @aliquot said:
    So, if you don't notice something, it doesn't exist? :P

    So, if we don't notice something, we should presume it exists until we continue to not notice it for some arbitrary period of time?

    A person has high blood pressure, does not notice it in any way....then one day drops dead of an easily preventable heart attack.... That approach may work for you (good luck!)

    You're going with that? Really? I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're just acting like an idiot and don't believe this, but just for good measure (because I know that there are idiots reading this thread), you seem to be assuming that they're not going to measure the lead, as opposed to lowering the threshold for action. It's more like saying, "We used to think 120 systolic pressure was fine, but now that's bad. You should have 115 or lower. And then when we get enough people below 115, we'll switch to 110, because there's no safe level of blood pressure."



  • @PJH said:

    @Mason Wheeler said:
    Read the article more closely.  Even though overall drinking is down, they're saying that problem drinking, as measured by alcohol-related hospital visits, is up,
    .. which is more bollocks. Guess how they 'measure' alcohol-related hospital visits? Go on - guess.



    Drink and disease: how figures can confuse

    Alcohol-related admissions are calculated in such a way that if you are unlucky enough, say, to be involved in a fire and admitted to hospital for the treatment of your burns, it will count as 0.38 of an alcohol-related admission – unless you happen to be under 15, when it won’t count at all.

    If you drown, it counts as 0.34 of an alcohol-related admission – though most people unlucky enough to drown aren’t admitted to hospital. Getting chilled to the bone (accidental excessive cold) counts for 0.25 of an admission, intentional self-harm to 0.20 per cent of an admission.

    These fractions apply whether or not there was any evidence you had been drinking before these disasters befell you.

    [...]

    Note that no account is taken of the amount these people actually drink.

    Wow, that sounds really stupid.



  • @Severity One said:

    It's a bit more complex than that. The top 25 to 30 of annual alcohol consumption per capita is almost exclusively a European affair, and figures from like 2007 put Ireland very high up, whilst its economy was still booming at the time.
    Binge drinking appears on the increase, though, as witnessed by the increasing rate of minors being admitted to hospital because of alcohol poisoning (from what is dubbed "coma guzzling"). At least, it's the perception of ER doctors, but there are some figures to support it.

    Hmm.. well, in the First World it still does apply.



  • @boomzilla said:

    ...because there's no safe level of blood pressure.

    Sumbitch, the Goth cutters were right!


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