(Disturbing) THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
What's happens when you get really sick?
A. You get worse and worse, then - better and better till well.
B. You get worse and worse, then - you die.
That's a very Binary set of possibilities, right?
Now, prepare to become fascinated!
We don't know if we will be the person who gets better anyway or if we will die. This compels so many of us to seek treatment...just in case we are B instead of A.
Now slow down with me here for a minute.
If we are B instead of A, no matter what treatment we follow or refuse to follow...WE DIE.
If we are A instead of B, no matter what treatment we follow or refuse to follow ---WE GET BETTER.
Alcoholics who quit Cold Turkey have a recovery rate of 13%
Alcoholics who go through A.A. (Alcoholics Anonymous) have a recovery rate of 13% as well.
We can only insert opinions into our conclusions based on how persuadable we are or how obstinate.
Science is measurable and testable, right?
But MEDICINE is not the same as SCIENCE because it is statistical and follows models based on sampling of groups and the extrapolation to a much larger population is SELDOM ACCURATE.
**(How can I state that? Insurance companies pressure hospitals, doctors, and clinicians toward or away from certain ways of framing an illness with $$ rewards and penalties.)
Individuals are (duh) individual in how each personally reacts to treatments which
(see A. above) my be entirely redundant.
If you are in the A category - IT DOESN'T MATTER what treatment (unless it is intrusive in a bad way) you receive.
An A category person will attribute recovery to (X treatment) and the statistics will be corrupted in conclusion as to effectiveness.
Each of us when afraid, is more vulnerable to persuasion.
Quack medicine exists in that space.
Quack science exits in that space.
Quack politics exists in that space.
"Faith Healers" are sought (for the A person) when they go from bad to worse.
Insert the "healing" into the natural cycle of better and better and - Presto! - the Faith Healer gets the credit.
WE CAN'T EVER KNOW what 'might' have happened had we NOT done
(X treatment). Statistically it seems true (or not) but individually, there is no certainty.
SPONTANEOUS REMISSION in cancer, for example is said to be recovery without treatment "for no apparent reason."
That's an argument from ignorance, isn't it?
If you don't - then you've wasted your time reading this :)
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** Under the head of
"Absence of Evidence isn't the same thing as Evidence of Absence)
Q: Are hospitals inflating the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths so they can be paid more?
A: Recent legislation pays hospitals higher Medicare rates for COVID-19 patients and treatment, but there is no evidence of fraudulent reporting.
Right now Medicare has determined that if you have a COVID-19 admission to the hospital, you’ll get paid $13,000. If that COVID-19 patient goes on a ventilator, you get $39,000, three times as much. Nobody can tell me after 35 years in the world of medicine that sometimes those kinds of things impact on what we do.
NOTE: "Medicare says it does not make standard, one-size-fits-all payments to hospitals for patients admitted with COVID-19 diagnoses and placed on ventilators. The $13,000 and $39,000 figures appear to be based on generic industry estimates for admitting and treating patients with similar conditions."
From their lips to God's ears.
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Re: Medicine and statistical analysis
Laboratory mice used for testing the effect of drugs on humans (it has been 'discovered' and affirmed) have been inbred into a population of abnormally long-lived (telomeres) mice inadvertently.
we have been over-approving drugs that cause chronic cell damage (because the mice are able to heal from it and so the effects are missed) while under-approving drugs that might have cancer-causing agents (because mice already have a high base-rate of cancer).
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0531556502000128
