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Comment by dbaupp | Hacker News Reader

I don't think it is actually likely to save lives, because spiders very rarely kill. As far as I can tell, there's been one death from a spider bite in Australia in 40 years: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/12/young-man-dies-a... .

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That’s probably because it’s fairly widely known (in Australia) that if you’re bitten by a red-back or funnel-web spider that you seek medical attention, as you would for a venomous snake. A quickly treated bite is almost never fatal.

The app helps people make the decision as to whether its a harmless spider or something that requires urgent medical attention.

I think if you are bit you should seek medical attention regardless of what an app says.

Ah, unless you live in the United States - then it becomes a question of whether it's worth it.

Generally, a redback is fairly unpleasant, but doesn't require a trip to the hospital (for a healthy adult), so its unlikely to be fatal in most cases anyway (thankfully!).

Funnel-webs are terrifying.

A redback bite generally requires medical attention; though not triple-0 level urgency, it shouldn't be a wait-and-see-how-you-feel treatment.

Unless you're a kid, and then even the antidote is terrifying.

Yeah, definitely: I'm only trying to highlight that this sort of app wouldn't actually do much in practice because (Australian) society already deals with such bites well. If everyone in Australia had the app and used it all the time, it still would have (maybe) prevented at most one death in the last 40 years.

In fact, since the numbers are so small, widespread useful of such an app seems like it may actually increase the number of deaths: instead of people seeing an unidentified spider and intense pain and getting treatment, people may get a false classification and so endure the pain without prompt-enough treatment ("the app says it's just a [something other than a funnelweb], I'll be fine!").

But what if you are in between a trek or in woods? Are there generic anti-venom kits available that you can carry?

Not generally, and unfortunately in recent times there have been shortages in antivenoms, and many smaller hospitals haven't been carrying them.

If you’re going bush walking, you’d usually take a snake bite bandage. If you’re otherwise healthy and have other people with you, you’ve got a few hours to get yourself to a hospital or ambulance.

You'd be crazy not to get a second opinion at a hospital though right? "The app said I didn't need to see a doctor" sounds like dangerous territory.

Not saying a doctor is perfect, though I find they're often better than they get credit for.

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