Comment by roel_v | Hacker News Reader

Comment by roel_v | Hacker News Reader

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I don't quite see it that way. More often than not, it's

1. Person suffers a loss or misfortune.

2. Person makes widely inaccurate extrapolations on the actual danger, without seeing the broad implications or consequences by scaring people into woefully uninformed behavior, under the guise of 'but look! it happened to me! It'll happen to you!'.

Case in point from the media last week: ticks and Lyme disease. Some woman on the news on a personal crusade against Lyme because she contracted it when she was 13 and it caused major issues in her 20's. Sucks for her, of course, and some sort of public awareness about checking for ticks when you've been out in nature is good; but her message was hysterical. Our local equivalent of the CDC basically says 'we have basic awareness campaigns, but we don't want to scare people from going outside, because the benefits outweigh the risks'. And then you have one person who has her 15 minutes of fame, spreading massive misinformation about risks to a general population that isn't capable of understanding the concept a normal distribution curve, let alone make an assessment on an epidemiological risk.

Happens too often. And the media is more than happy to boost the hysterics.

Case in point: Child commits suicide. Parents seize on admission that he smoked salvia in his diary. Parents become convinced Salvia Killed Their Son, launch crusade to criminalize use of salvia. All available scientific evidence points to child being depressed and salvia not being capable of causing depression or thoughts of suicide. No one cares because parents are loud and convinced and passionate. State passes law banning salvia; names it after dead child.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brett%27s_law

That's exactly what happened to vaccines.

Yeah, this is the way I see it too.

I saw a campaign once from a parent who's child was injured at a park trying to get monkey bars banned claiming they were deadly. Life's full of small risks and tradeoffs, you have to just accept the small ones for the greater good.

Sometimes bad stuff happens, and that sucks, but it doesn't always mean something is wrong or needs to change.

The greater good

There are definitely people out there who will exaggerate the dangers. What's worse, many times their actions will lead to some piece of legislation, which will now govern the lives of millions of people; so now you pay the price of being over regulated even though the risks associated with some activity x are quite low, and there's no reason to complicate the system.

But I believe more often than not people will remain passive in the face of a misfortune, and will simply carry on with their lives. And this what prompted me to want to recognize people – such as the lady in the article – because through little tweaks like theirs our society becomes safer, better.

Except that the tick danger is not exaggerated. If you frequent the woods (and I mean, go inside them, not just staying on the paths), then you will get ticks (clothing doesn't make a difference unless you go in a space suit). And if you keep doing that for years, you will rack up a dozen - or rather, dozens - of ticks, and chances for tick-borne diseases are surprisingly high.

This depends on so many things - your comment is precisely hysterical.

It depends on where you live, whether or not you check yourself after you leave the woods, what kinds of ticks they are, whether the disease is being carried, and what kind of disease it is.

I grew up in the woods. I've had lots of ticks crawl all over me. I've only been bitten a time or two. And the ticks I've encountered don't carry Lyme's disease.

And that is NOT to say that my experience is everyone's experience and that there is no danger. But your comment is absolutely exaggerated.

My statements are true for most of central Europe. They are also true for large parts of the US. Solid data backs this up. This is not an emotional argument, tick prevalence is a well-researched field with lots of data.

The data says it's likely you'll get ticks, but not that you'll suffer severe consequences if you do minimal care. Every bushcrafter and scout knows to check for ticks. The prevalence of life-long Lyme disease with debilitation consequences is very small. I know that you're not even claiming otherwise, but the way you're making your argument is scare mongering and misleading to those who know nothing about ticks and tick-borne diseases.

Yes, you'll get ticks. And you need to check for them, remove them the right way, and if you get red rings you need to go to your GP and get antibiotics. But out of the millions of tick bites that happen, tiny percentages cause anything more than a few days of fever (even that is already rare!) and debilitating, life-long consequences have a probability of happening in the same league as, say, getting bitten by a shark, or being shot at by Russian cruise missiles while you're on your way to your holiday destination.

While if the gruesome story of how 'a tick I got just from being outside' is front page news for a few days, many people will think 'o I better keep my children inside'. And the aggregate effects of that (while not as spectacular, or even reducible to this news item), are worse than whatever it is they're trying to prevent.

How often do you see 'person has something horrible happen to them, studies the field for 10 years, becomes expert and launches a well-balanced education or prevention campaign'? I've never heard it. What I do hear and see is 'person with median intelligence has something happen to them, goes on myopic crusade using mostly pathos in the form of graphic descriptions of their physical tribulations as a crutch for their own emotional healing'. Nothing wrong with people of median intelligence (or less), but it is wrong when they use things that happened to them by accident as a means of presenting a distorted vision of reality to others.

>without seeing the broad implications or consequences by scaring people into woefully uninformed behavior

Wash your hands and dry them before fitting contacts..

Sure, but no need to scare people into doing that with worst-case scenario stories of loosing eyes. From a public health advocacy point of view, that's counter productive. There are huge amounts of research on this, which of course the uninformed (but well-meaning!) crusaders are generally totally oblivious about.

A 1% chance feels like 100% when it happens to you.

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