Violence Is a Contagious Disease

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

5 points·nanomonkey··4 comments

Human behavior is contagious, and that often enough leads to disease-y outcomes. If we were more proactive about behaviour as a means to prevention the world would be a much different place. However, prevention isn't as profitable as a fully realized disease.

> prevention isn't as profitable as a fully realized disease

There is actually a market force to make prevention more profitable: insurance companies. If they could save 90% of their costs by preventing issues instead of paying for treatment, wouldn't you think they'd do it?

Unfortunately it turns out that "prevention is worth a pound of cure" is not actually true[1], which is why insurance companies don't do it.

The only exception I can think of would be certain auto insurance companies, which give you discounts for defensive-driving classes or even driving less.

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/29/upshot/preventive-health-...

The level of insurance that would lead to the company actually stepping in and pushing policy change isn't normally carried by the folks that are hardest hit by violence. Not to mention that quality of care needed to reverse the harm done from violent crimes and trauma are often time consuming, costly and difficult to negotiate when in such a state. We really need a whole class of health professionals that are proactive in searching out victims of violent crimes and walking them through the experience and the options that they have to overcome the mental stress.

This definitely puts a new light on our current practices for countering violence, prisons seem to be the exact opposite of what one would want to do in this situation.

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