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Comment by lottin | Hacker News Reader

Why do you blame tap water specifically? I've never heard anyone getting sick from drinking tap water in a developed country.

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It happens more often than you’d think. Here is one example from New Zealand, where many got sick, lots were hospitalised and some may have died. Colleagues describe the bedlam at local hospitals and the smell of the place as they were inundated with the afflicted.

Whether or not we are a first world country could be queried.

https://watersource.awa.asn.au/community/public-health/lesso...

It happens very rarely in New Zealand, and when it does it is national news (or international news as per your link).

Also our government response to such events is usually functional, with national changes to procedures and systems to try and avoid repeating mistakes.

The follow on to that saga found potential unsafe water supply to 750,000 New Zealanders. Years later the situation is reported to be little better.

This bit alarmed me: “In December 2017, a government-commissioned inquiry found that 20 percent of New Zealand’s drinking water was “not demonstrably safe,” meaning at least 759,000 people could be exposed to disease-causing contaminants. It found that there were about 35,000 cases of acute gastrointestinal illness contracted via reticulated drinking water each year.”

https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/99591173/state-of-ne...

https://m.scoop.co.nz/stories/GE2102/S00058/new-zealand-town...

Happens a lot, though probably mostly isolated cases. But sometimes it’s a big deal: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis

It is not scientific at all. Myself, my wife and my 2 year old all got sick with the same symptoms, and we did not eat the same food in the last few days. Drinking water seemed like the common denominator.

Looks like one of you got a bug and passed to the others

Sounds more like a stomach flu to me, which is often spread throughout a household via contaminated surfaces.

I'm here to second that drinking the local water in a new place will loosen you up even if it is clean.

You were all in the same space, though, right? It could have been something contagious.

Time to split the family up into a control and test group. For science.

Boil water alerts happen all the time.

And sometimes things really go wrong and people die. In 2000 in Ontario 6 people died and dozens were hospitalized.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walkerton_E._coli_outbreak

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