¹ Sometimes they’re even worse than needless and are actively harmful, such as the overprescription of antibiotics.
To note, recently, doctors are refusing this care due to their concern over legal liability in states with harmful policy prioritizing flawed belief systems over healthcare.
https://www.propublica.org/series/life-of-the-mother
> When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, doctors warned that women would die, but lawmakers who passed state abortion bans didn’t listen. The worst consequences are now becoming clear.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42111924 (citations from a comment I wrote previously in a dead thread, linked for brevity vs wall of text)
Really bugs me that the people who championed the apparatus that enables the existence and implementation of such policy never consider their role.
It's like ascribing your 9th inning loss to a mediocre batter who got lucky when your own pitcher was dumb enough to send one straight down the middle.
I've never experienced the first part and the latter seems far less likely if you're doing a regular checkup / going in for a vaccine.
Either way the benefits of vaccines are obvious, proven, and I suspect the decision to not do it is something other than day of "I don't like my doctor".
Yet I’m sure you understand “it has never happened to me” isn’t synonymous with “it never happens”.
https://www.plannedparenthoodaction.org/issues/birth-control...
> and the latter seems far less likely if you're doing a regular checkup / going in for a vaccine.
Which most people don’t. Regardless, I’ve had doctors I know personally describe to me how certain colleagues are bad physicians who nevertheless make a ton of money for the hospital/clinic because they order a ton of unnecessary procedures. Yes, even when going for routine checks.
> Either way the benefits of vaccines are obvious
Which is true, but also has nothing to do with the conversation. No one in this thread has mentioned vaccines before you did just now. The article doesn’t mention it either. I’m not an anti vaxxer, nor have I assumed you were.
No, but it's a relevant data point that allows you to counterbalance possible sampling bias.
If everyone tells you people are poisoning halloween candy all the time, but no one within your direct experience encounters it, you should investigate possible sampling bias. Perhaps you are in a privileged context that avoids poison halloween candy, so the sampling bias is in your local environment. Or perhaps such stories easily go viral, so the sampling bias is in people's tendency to share sensational stories. Either way, you have something to watch for.
Relying on multiple weakly-correlated information channels is a good way to hedge yourself against dysfunction in any one of those channels.
I'm thinking the ones they describe are a lost cause and should be removed from the profession.