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Comment by maxerickson | Hacker News Reader

The idea that people should look at a map of hospitals in an emergency is pretty much what the article is about. It's a worry that people will do something stupid if information is available.

If you don't know dead cold where the trauma center is, you should be calling 911 (or equivalent), not trying to decide where to drive.

If you are in the middle of nowhere, you don't need to drive to the closest trauma center to improve the situation, drive to the nearest larger town/city. There will be a way of landing a helicopter there.

And so on.

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Just to play devils advocate, without knowing the exact details of the OP's product: you provide an electronic map, much like a subway map, of trauma centers with minimum necessary details, like only through streets and clearly labeled names which makes it effortless to plan, at a glance, the shortest route. Great. If they take what looks like the shortest route and hit road construction or traffic, they won't hesitate to analyze the situation on the spot and reroute if they believe it the better bet.

But now you add some helpful little details--a colored route from A to B with a label, "5 minutes drive time". Now they reach the obstruction. Will they immediately assess the situation as they see it, or will they believe that "5 minutes" already accounts for the time necessary to pass the obstruction, thus hesitating under the false belief that the electronic map is using hidden information?

EDIT: Note that this situation describes the error in the CDC's mask decision as discussed in the article. What the CDC should have said at the time was that it wasn't going to mandate masks because it lacked confidence in its information regarding mask advocacy and efficacy. Instead what the CDC did was affirmatively tell people not to wear masks. If gave people too much detail and implied that it knew more than it really did. We can argue over whether the CDC should have known that masks were beneficial, but I think most can agree that they should have been more careful about giving false confidence either way. People aren't stupid, but they are easily misled, and once misled they'll continue rationalizing the direction they're headed. That describes not only how people responded to the CDC guidance but to the CDC itself--its false confidence in the poor 1960s-era aerosol experiments that claimed more than it actually proved.

Misleading information is poisonous. First rule: "do no harm". That's paramount over the responsibility to affirmatively help people.

Withholding information that is largely accurate but not perfect is not harmless.

Say someone is moving to a new city and wants housing that is close to high level medical care. It's useful if they are able to access information about where it is located.

part of the problem is that in med-speak things are often classified as "does good" "does nothing" "does bad" and by default new or untested things are never in "does good"

I mean, until a few years ago there was no scientific evidence that parachutes helped with surviving jumping off a plane

I'm still not convinced[1].

1. https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k5094

If you don't know dead cold where the trauma center is, you should be calling 911 (or equivalent), not trying to decide where to drive.

Given the cost of an ambulance, most people I know will drive themselves to the ER for anything where they're still barely walking.

What this article assumes is that people in control and in research 1-2 years ago "knew everything about covid" or knew what we know now. They didn't.

What we should assume is that 99% of people in general are morons and not specialists - just like you and me are not specialists and belong to the same 99% and can't comprehend these things and because they can't understand these things, they are also failing in explaining that to public. Explanation takes understanding and thinking. Government officials(including in health) does not do thinking - they only act according to instructions.

We more or less know right now what is going on and IMO it is still debatable if mandatory masks are long-term solution. What general public has forgotten is that eyes are as good open doors for covid infection(and so far only distancing, good sunny weather and relaxed unstressed healthy people has prevented spread of virus or they have getting through covid sickness without noticing it - without symptoms), not to mention that masks does not offer 100% protection, but more like 80%, not to mention that people are 100% unprotected when they have to eat or drink or if they are entering without spacesuit in highly infectious rooms. So, in short - it is easier to tell people to wear masks - but it would take a lot of explaining all iffs, where covid infection can be passed from one to another, so correct information would be that masks can reduce covid infections, but not prevent it fully.

Besides the main problem here is that covid is not deadly virus for healthy people, but it affects mainly people who are already living their last days. It just is mind bogling, that people in general have no idea how many people are dying every year and that that number is too big for what medical services were meant for.

As for seatbelts - some of the deaths in car crashes could be avoidable if seatbelts were not worn, as passenger might have been ejected out of car and could have a chance of surviving impact(if it is not a wall or other car, but grass or bush) after landing, instead of burning alive inside of crashed car. So, everything depends on situation and timing to receive that help where it is possible to help.

surgical masks only provide about 60% protection and cloth masks about 12%. The benefit is too low to throw our freedom away.

Those maps are there for the fire department, so they can check all rooms when they sweep a building. They're not stupid to use them for that purpose. Exit signs are for aiding egress. Personally, I use those maps to find the bathroom.

you are supposed to look at them before the emergency to know where you should go in case you need it

There will be a way of landing a helicopter there.

This isn't a huge issue in the countryside - this is one of the uses of medical helicopters, honestly. You are probably better off getting folks at the scene to help stablize you and allowing the helicopter to come there. That is, unless you were told to go somewhere else.

(I've nearly lost a tree for a medical helicopter when I lived by a overly dangerous curve: They decided to close the road and land there instead. They also help in rugged terrain).

I pretty sure that you've misunderstood the comment.

The problem wasn't about _being able to land_, when in the middle of nowhere.

If you're "in the middle of nowhere", how are going to get a helicopter to you? What are you going to tell them with no address etc.?

By going towards a town, they'll know where to fly to, so they can pick you up.

A sub-10 mile ambulance trip can easily cost $1000 US if it's not covered by insurance. If you're already barely eeking out a living working paycheck to paycheck, that might be a bit too much to manage.

America does not have much compassion in healthcare, the fear of medical debt may outweigh the fear of death.

Absolutely agree. Knowing where a hospital is is a very useful information. Not everything requires emergency transport, does it? Not even in countries where emergency transport is covered by public health insurance. Knowing exactly what level of care, trauma and other, these hospitals are providing aren't really helpful in an emergency.

As a tangent, what really annoys me lately is Google Maps. For some very stupid reason Maps is not coming up with a destination of Covid test or vaccination centers, instead Maps is redirecting you to general search to get the latest news on Covid. There you can look up the address and manually navigate there. And even then it happened to me once the Maps refused to accept that destination. No idea what the reasoning behind that would be.

Probably CDC asked Google to not show testing centers for the same reason that “people might misuse this information”.

Germany in that case, I simply have a hard time imagining how you could mis-use a test center address.

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