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Could you please not post generic tangents like this? It's specifically against the site guidelines because it reliably leads to lower-quality, less on-topic, more generic discussion—all of which, unfortunately and predictably, we got below.

Worse, shallow-indignant comments like this tend to get upvoted to the top, where they accrue mass and sit astride the entire thread, crowding out the interesting comments. That's where I found this one when I marked it offtopic (which downweights it). Doing that had a big effect - now there is a diverse assortment of interesting, informative comments for people to read when they first see the thread.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

And it keeps happening again and again. The cost to society of prolonged lead usage can't be properly attributed to the damaging parties since they've all long since ceased to be solvent - ditto with the next wave and the wave after that. There is a real problem with insisting that regulations be lifted to allow business development and then ending up with tax payers suffering the long term externalities, we've seen it with global warming (and we're still not properly attributing any costs there) along with fracking and other environmental disasters. In my former state of Vermont a nuclear plant (Vermont Yankee[1]) tried their damnedest to avoid paying for contamination cleanup.

This is a scenario we see play out time and time again.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermont_Yankee_Nuclear_Power_P...

Relatedly, I have been working on a project[1] to encourage municipalities to implement stricter land use requirements on gas stations because responsible party searches so rarely pay out. Here is a funny (depressing?) quote from an Oregon DEQ report I read recently:

"The site has a complex history, but the primary owner/operators have been Ron and Nancy Huddleston. The Huddlestons owned and operated the facility from the 1960s through 1979, when they sold the site to Tony and Michel Tocco. In 1987, the Toccos sold or gave the property and business to their son in-law, who after some difficulties running the store, returned it to the Toccos. The Toccos gave it back to the Huddlestons in 1988, who ran the store again until 1993. Finally, in 1993, the Huddlestons sold the store to Dewey Best (now deceased); Mr. Best operated the store until 1995, when he sold it to Harley Frisby, and operations continued under Kim and JeffBomark (Mr. Frisby's daughter and son-in-law). Mr. Frisby sold his interest in 1996 to the Bomarks, who declared bankruptcy in 1998. In May 1999, the bankruptcy court returned the property to the Huddlestons. Based on an ability-to-pay analysis of the Huddlestons, DEQ determined in March 2003 that they are unable to fund required investigation and cleanup activities. DEQ will continue to investigate other parties connected with the property to determine whether they may be responsible for cleanup costs."

[1] https://postpump.org

Not only are the companies insolvent, at this point half the perpetrators are probably dead. Just stall long enough and you'll never have to deal with the problems you created.

And then lead poisoned voters with poor cognitive skills are more easily manipulated into voting against their own interests or their poverty is used to polarize the rest of the electorate and achieve the same outcome.

COVID-19 survivors also have reduced cognitive abilities, equivalent to about 7 points on IQ scale, which isn't great for countries that have been hit with many infections.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5...

> COVID-19 survivors also have reduced cognitive abilities, equivalent to about 7 points on IQ scale

Ostensibly true for those on ventilators. However, IQ is normed to those who are the same age as you. So if being on a ventilator also takes a couple decades off your life expectancy, then there isn't necessarily any difference, at least if you think of yourself as being a couple decades older.

No, they don't. This is a completely false statement.

Is it particularly surprising? The UK Bio Bank study showed a loss of grey matter: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.11.21258690v...

This study was great because they had data from before COVID that was just part of the Bio Bank, so they were able to review participants already in the bio bank based COVID status. 394 COVID patients and 388 controls. Based on a small sample size of only 15 that were hospitalized, it also appears to increase grey matter loss based on severity, although sample size is not large enough to say so conclusively.

Pre-print, not peer reviewed. Biased sample, not conclusive. No long term studies done, etc. Also says nothing about IQ. Show me the clinical trials that measure IQ prior to Covid over a broad sample and then measure IQ 3 months, 6 months, 12 months after recovery, etc.

You’ll have your perfect data in around 5 years. In the mean time, there is significant evidence that suggests COVID impacts the brain. You can ignore it or argue against it all you want, but it is there.

That sample size isn't enough to say anything without some other controls in place.

I dunno, I heard that people who had recovered from COVID-19, including those no longer reporting symptoms, exhibited significant cognitive deficits versus controls when controlling for age, gender, education level, income, racial-ethnic group, pre-existing medical disorders, tiredness, depression and anxiety.

Completely false in that survivors all have 0 or positive impacts on cognitive abilities?

or that survivors have a range of cognitive impacts, none or only some of which could be the equivalent of 7 iq points?

Did you read the article referenced? If not, then I don't see how you have no basis for saying this is completely false. If you did read it, then can you explain how you square your bald assertion with the facts presented in the article. Notice that it's published in a Lancet associated journal. They have pretty high standards and I can't see any conflict of interest on the part of the writers.

OP has cited the Lancet.

> OP has cited the Lancet.

In an exceptionally misleading way:

> > COVID-19 survivors also have reduced cognitive abilities, equivalent to about 7 points on IQ scale,

Failing to mention that one key thing:

* He uses "COVID-19 survivors" -- which it sounds like that's everyone who's infected-- to refer to patients who were on a ventilator.

Further, despite attempts at case control, I really doubt the comparison population is well matched to those who actually ended up on a vent.

It's unsurprising there's a decent sized effect for those who are hospitalized in intensive care: this is known in general. And it may be a bit overstated here because of confounds.

The paper says

> but also for non-hospitalised cases who had biological confirmation of COVID-19 infection (N = 326)

I think it applies to everyone?

See figure 2. A standard deviation of IQ is about 15 IQ points. Only the ventilator patients have an effect anywhere near the claimed magnitude.

Average across the COVID patients weighted by prevalence of outcomes (to match the overall population's COVID experiences) is more like 0.5-1.0 IQ points. And some or all of this effect may be generated by confounds.

Figure 2 shows a pretty clear correlation between severity of respiratory illness and cognitive deficits. If it were really confounded or a random effect, you wouldn't see 100% correlation like this. I do agree their N could be higher for all groups, but that's really hard, and again the correlation is 100%.

I'm not saying there's not a real effect here. Hell, if there wasn't, that would be unexpected: just about any sickness is correlated with measuring lower cognitively for a time afterwards, and being hospitalized and being on a vent are more so, independent of COVID-19.

I'm just saying that:

* The claim that there's a 7 IQ point drop from being a COVID-19 survivor is completely bogus, unless you're only a survivor after being on an ventilator.

* The effect size and causative relationship are dubious, because the controls and matching on this study are imperfect. There's plenty of opportunity for significant confound. E.g. if dumb people were more likely to not take precautions against getting COVID, it would look like getting COVID was associated with lower cognitive performance in this study.

Oh, yeah I see what you're saying now. Yeah it's too much to say getting COVID-19 chops 7 points off your IQ.

Makes sense

Poorly. The paper in question does not even purport to support this conclusion, when stated in such matter-of-fact terms.

It's a very interesting study, with laudable measures taken to overcome confounding factors. But I imagine the authors cringe when someone flogs it around as "COVID-19 reduces your IQ by 7!!!!!"

Yes, they do. The statement is basically verbatim from the article. They study findings are robust (n~=80000, pvals<1e-5).

I suggest you actually read the paper.

* Only the patients on a ventilator showed an effect anywhere near "7 IQ points" --- which was not a metric measured by the paper, but if we're going by about 1/2SD-- (n=44, not 80000).

* The P values are impressive, still, but that doesn't mean that the control population chosen to be "like' the ventilator patients is really equivalent.

* We already know that being in critical care or on a vent is bad for cognitive performance afterwards. Indeed, we know that being sick in any way is bad for cognitive performance for some time afterwards.

To be "basically verbatim," there would need to be a sentence making the same assertion with different wording.

It's true that the paper appears to show cognitive differences lasting months among some subsets of people with previous COVID-19 infections in the UK. It is not true that the paper asserts that being a "COVID-19 survivor" reduces IQ by 7.

This is not only not "basically verbatim", but not among the assertions made by this paper.

Exactly which voting bloc do you think is composed of lead poisoning victims?

Both.

Smart voters wouldn't allow executive orders, forever wars, bank bailouts, hackable voting machines, winner takes all voting, the destruction of environmental regulations, subsidies to fossil fuel, unwinnable cold wars, outsourcing of all manufacturing, stagnant wages despite record productivity, record inequality, pandemic profiteering, opioid crises with obvious correlations, the smearing of heroes like Assange, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc.

Logically it would be the ones living in rural areas with old homes that haven't actually had all their lead removed, yet.

The fact that most rural areas are also conservative is neither here nor there.

I think it's pretty clear that severe cognitive impairment would be required to think Trump was a good or effective president.

Can we please at least skirt around the political claims, here? It's not like disprovably-false things haven't ever been claimed en masse by leftwingers

I have a different take. Americans dislike government intervention because they don't trust the government due to corruption and being so easily manipulated by corporate interests. Fix that instead of granting government more power to wield its corruption.

In other countries, when the government is corrupt, people get outraged and call for reform. In America, when the government is corrupt, people say "Well it's the government, what did you expect?"

America is like this because corrupt corporations spread the meme that the government is always corrupt, lest those pesky people demand that the government actually do something to those corporations.

With all of the arguments about government, elected officials have managed to divert attention from the two reforms that matter most: campaign finance and term limits.

Disastrous rulings like Citizens United, which further codified direct avenues to further government capture should still have people in the streets.

These two reforms would absolutely overhaul our system, greatly diminish corruption, and restore democracy. But, you rarely even hear them discussed.

Any popular movement to address corruption would immediately be decreed a "dangerous conspiracy theory" and demonized by the mainstream media. Any politician would be excluded from mainstream debates. And even if they could get into office, they would be totally unable to do anything, because the rest of the system would be against them.

I know this sounds like more of "well it's the government, what did you expect?" But my point is that the American government is rotten to its core and it's going to take _a lot_ to undo it. In other countries there is sometimes violent revolution, but we consider that unspeakable here.

Compared to most of the world, America's government system is still very competent and accountable. Think about highways, OSHA, FAA, NASA, etc. I'd certainly not call it "rotten to the core." Other countries' citizens rage not because they have it better than America - they rage because (usually) they have it worse!

But calling it fundamentally corrupt serves as self-fulfilling prophecy, because once citizens internalize the concept that the government is corrupt and nothing can be done (short of an armed revolution), then of course nothing can be done - because even in the most pessimistic scenario America will still take a generation before an armed revolution would look palatable. It sets up the false dichotomy between "uprooting the society and everyone's lives in it" vs. "doing nothing and saying that nothing can be done."

> Compared to most of the world, America's government system is still very competent and accountable.

Compared to third world countries. I'd argue most people complaining how broken US government system is are citizens of developed countries, most of which score better than US.

With the number of firearms scattered around the USA, ripe for the taking (according to the media) - I'm surprised the proverbial nut hasn't been tightened enough for the bolt to shear - yet.

(I am not condoning or encouraging violence in any way with this comment)

The causality is the other way around. Because Americans distrust their government it is easily hobbled. It's open to corruption because it's too weak, not to strong.

The US has an usual degree of openness when it comes to the political process. Directly elected representatives, local politics, everything is broadcasted to the public, everything's open to money, and so forth. This kind of openness enables lobbying, it creates the opportunity to influence elected officials, which is considered a feature because it looks superficially 'democratic', but in reality just aids oligarchic interest groups.

The way to fix it is literally give more power to the US government, in particular the executive and regulatory bodies and shield them from outside influence, so they can do their job.

This debate also has an analog on the other side of the political spectrum, namely policing. The US police is not unusually violent because it's too strong but too weak, because there is too much symmetry between force wielded by citizens and force wielded by authority.

That is a lazy take. Americans are the government. By claiming that the government is corrupt, the implication is that you and your fellow Americans are corrupt. The solution has to be getting involved in governance, from local to state to even federal levels depending on your abilities.

Which is unfortunate because there is still a salvageable amount of cohesion and trust in US society (free and fair elections, mostly good people with good intentions not explicitly seeking bribes, etc). At least, on a global stage, we are still in a relatively good spot.

“your fellow Americans are corrupt”

Yes! They are. And lead is the main culprit. Tv and sugar didn’t help.

And yours is a naive take. Money wins elections in America, and regular people who would benefit from such regulations do not have enough compared to the industries fighting against it.

It’s first principles reasoning: the only motivation for politicians to become politicians is gaining advantages they can’t obtain in the private sector. And since administration jobs don’t pay that well, corruption it is.

I honestly don't think any of that optimism is remotely warranted.

And Americans are certainly very, very disconnected from the actual political sausage factory, thanks to corrupt media and corrupt law - why would you give them a pass here?

I'm shocked that so many Americans are so blind to so much rot. You can smell it in the air.

Even the Democrats are seemingly fine with executive orders, the Patriot Act, black sites, extrajudicial killings of American and other friendly nations citizens, smearing and torturing whistleblowers like Assange and Donziger.

"On a global stage", America is seen as the number one threat to democracy and world peace, and has consistently been seen as such since Afghanistan. It's wild that Americans don't ever seem to grasp how they are seen abroad.

How do you fix corruption without giving government the power to fight corruption?

I dont think so. It this would be true, the same Americans would be for interventions that go against corporate interests.

Do you have evidence they are not? Because in my (albeit small) circle there is not a single person I know that does not want to restrict money flowing to politicians and/or their campaigns from corporations (even indirectly through paid for advertisements and the like). Everyone wants to crack down on this, but legislators have no incentive to do so.

What you are missing is the government didn't regulate anything meaningful in the end. The government threatened to regulate something and that had it's desired effect, lobbyists were hired, dinners were had and campaigns were contributed to. Now having extracted it's protection money, it goes on to protect the organization that paid them with weak regulation to placate voters. This is the system working exactly as the regulators planned.

Wait. Are you saying there's no lead regulation in the US?

Read the OP above, regulations were going to essentially end the lead paint industry, those were scaled back to the point of having little effect. It wasn't until later, when the lead paint companies no longer had money for lobbyists, that we saw meaningful regulation around it. Things like this are just shakedowns that happen in public, if they really wanted to pass regulations they wouldn't do the public "Sure would be a shame if someone regulated you out of business" song and dance at the start.

> "Sure would be a shame if someone regulated you out of business" song and dance at the start.

From the article:

> "Baltimore's health department called for the removal of lead from paint, ..."

> "When New York City's health department proposed a warning label saying that the product was poisonous to children ..."

What song and dance are you talking about? The only thing I see are agencies doing the job they're supposed to do which is protecting the public while these greedy pig fuckers sabotage them.

See the words used "called", "proposed" not "enacted". The science and public health issues around this apparently changed once the lead paint companies made donations to the right campaigns and the regulators ensured that the lead paint firms had plenty of time to do that by loudly telegraphing their moves.

If the mob wants to burn your store down, they'll just burn it down. They won't loudly pontificate on the issue unless they want you to try and stop them.

The simple fact that they wanted paint sold to the public containing lead to be banned or labelled as poison to protect people. There is no way you can think this was an extortion move unless you ate too many paint chips yourself or are a greedy asshole who doesn't give a shit about others (likely caused by the former).

> The simple fact that they wanted paint sold to the public containing lead to be banned or labelled as poison to protect people.

The simple fact is they had the authority to do that, if they so wished. They decided not to for some reason. Why?

Why did you edit your original comment?

The interesting thing is that 'the industry' or a specific company doing obviously evil things is nothing but people. Somr researchers and spin doctors found the arguments. Some marketing expert(s) compiled that text. Another put it in a layout. Another signed off. Another contracted the print. Another printed. None of them took action to stop it - else we wouldn't see it today.

The evil underlying modern American legal and ethical systems is the weird understanding of a company as a concrete thing. This means none of the people that took the steps above ever faced (or even feared) liability.

But isn’t it the government that ultimately prevented the proposed regulations? Why am I supposed to ignore that?

The level damage that lobbying has caused and continues to cause in the US is absolutely crazy - you could say poisonous.

How can this status quo possibly ever be changed though, when the only people who could do so are the ones that benefit from it the most (corrupt politicians)?

Where these quotes are from?

FWIW, the parent article's question is "why despite of lead being banned for 30+ years we're still getting cases of lead poisoning among children"

Just a random article on the history, I felt there was a weird vibe of "well kids are being made ill by this lead that's everywhere for unknown reasons" as if it was some natural and unavoidable tragedy, rather than a century long conspiracy in plain sight, driven by greed that got us here. Paint manufacturers were talking publicly about it in 1904.

There's an American amazed at how good the US response to this threat is vs the UK, possibly overlooking that the UK government and industry basically banned it 15 years earlier than the US, massively reducing the scope of the problem.

The Doctor that in America is held as being responsible for proving there was an issue only starting looking into it years after that change in the UK had happened, decades after attempts at legislation started.

I feel there's an important point there that's worth thinking about.

> weird dislike of government intervention

History is the best reason not to trust the government, because it has been behind unbelievably evil things; and politicians have promised to solve every problem you can think of 10x over, enacted legislation to do so, and lo-and-behold they all still exist.

> History is the best reason not to trust the government, because it has been behind unbelievably evil things;

Government, being effectively the primary means that people have to organize themselves, is a force multiplier for human impact; it's intellectually dishonest to blame it for the unbelievably evil things people have made it do without crediting it for the unbelievably good things.

I didn't argue the government deserves no credit. Enforcing basic rule of law is essential for life to be anything but miserable. I argued giving it power to "intervene" has a proven track record of (at worst) causing evil things to happen, and (at best) not solving what it has sought to solve.

>I argued giving it power to "intervene" has a proven track record of...

This argument seems kind of weird or hypocritical to me. Government is nothing other than a group of people. Same with corporations. Of course, when someone intervenes against what you want or against your morals, you're going to dislike it or may even deem it evil. As after all, that's your opinion. Problem is not everyone in society has the same opinion on matters, hence why politics is a thing.

Perhaps if you think the government (people) shouldn't have power to "intervene", you (a person), or another group you approve of (yet again people) also shouldn't have power to "intervene" either? Not that you were arguing this, but... hopefully I've demonstrated my point.

> Perhaps if you think the government (people) shouldn't have power to "intervene", you (a person), or another group you approve of (yet again people) also shouldn't have power to "intervene" either?

People shouldn't have the ability to intervene with my life choices or property. Government guarantees that others don't do that, but uses its monopoly power to intervene itself. To some extent, I would prefer if it were individuals trying to intervene, because individuals are far less powerful than the government. For example, the government can forcibly search me before I board a plane, but if the government weren't doing that, and only some airlines were playing security theatre, I could simply choose an airline that decided not to waste my time.

To the topic of this article, it is largely due to government that we aren't still putting lead in our gasoline, paint and water pipes; most of the issue now is in the deteriorating housing stock that our (free-market-driven) development pattern (money goes into sprawl, leaving older, decaying housing stock in the hands of people who can't afford remediation, ditto at a local tax base level) hasn't updated.

> You know how many Americans have a weird dislike of government intervention.

We have plenty of government intervention, but as you've pointed out these regulations are created by lobbyists for their special interests

> You know how many Americans have a weird dislike of government intervention. These are the guys that paid to make that happen.

> Americans

> Weird dislike

Sounds like European coping.

> These are the guys that paid to make that happen

A GAN's smooshed rendition of the closing line of every documentary. This style is distinctly le redditour.

What exactly is your background?

Regardless, nobody paid to make Americans dislike government, and if you crack open a history book you'll find that governments did that themselves. I'd recommend you start with the reasons for the bill of rights.

That said we should ban the lead

The government at the time of the Bill of Rights was voted for by, and therefore represented the interests of, about 6% of the population:

> Generally, states limited this right to property-owning or tax-paying white males (about 6% of the population).[1] However, some states allowed also Black males to vote, and New Jersey also included unmarried and widowed women, regardless of color. Since married women were not allowed to own property, they could not meet the property qualifications.[2]

Like the Magna Carta, and other historical staging-posts towards modern democracy, it was a step in the right direction, but somewhat ridiculous to hold it up as a reason to mistrust government generally.

I never argued that the bill of rights is a reason to mistrust the government. I am arguing that the bill of rights is evidence that Americans have had some unspecified reason to mistrust the government embedded in their culture since founding, well before the lead paint guys started buying power.

> The government at the time of the Bill of Rights was voted for by, and therefore represented the interests of, about 6% of the population

where that population is

> property-owning or tax-paying white males

So are you arguing that mostly white males dislike government intervention? If not, what subpopulation are you arguing it is that dislikes intervention?