No mention of how many kids go to this school and how big is its catchment. I don't buy the:
"Lupiano eventually arrived at a single linking factor between himself, his wife and his sister: they each attended Colonia High School in Woodbridge in the 1990s"
In addition to the school, he and his sister share their parents genes. He and his wife lived in the same neighbourhood so they shared many other things too.
As the article says, the odds are estimated to be 1 in a billion for both his wife and Lupiano to have the same rare form of cancer in the same place. Now let's talk about the odds of 100+ people all having rare forms of cancer. Maybe that is why it is news worthy!
I don’t think 2skep is doubting the odds. It sounds like they doubt that the high school is the >only< common link between the cases.
If you take a group of 100 who attended the same high school they are also more likely to have drunk water from the same source, to have frequented the same entertainment venues, chilled in the same park and got their cars fixed at the same mechanic. Just because the all live nearby.
It is possible that they carefully investigated every one of these things and the high school is the only one which is common for all cases. But it is worth keeping an open mind. (At least asking what makes them so sure it is the high school.)
The article specifically calls out that amongst the people who reached out to him, "are former CHS teachers and staff members who didn’t live in Colonia, they just worked in the school."
Which is why I suspect that they think its the high school.
Now I don't know if after 30 years they'll be able to find a lot of evidence of the source, but I'm no expert.
I understand where you are going with this, however, if they all drank from the same water supply, wouldn't parents also be susceptible? Anything else would be the same thing where the parents would also have been subjected to the whatever. The school is the one place where the kids went and spent significant time that the parents did not.
Odds are not that low. In the 55 years since opening this high school would have had at least 20,000 unique people associated with it.
Expected number of cancer cases would probably be several thousand.
Claims of primary brain cancer derived from social media are probably not too accurate. A proper study is going to discard most as being confused with other cancers. So now you aren't looking at an unimaginable rate.
I read that as the only factor all three share. n=3 would of course be kinda weak for this but apparently n>3 by a lot, so ...
This sort of thing seems to be not that rare, I know of a few other ... toxic schools, including my (German) secondary school. A few years after I graduated, they roped off a building after repair workers discovered that the building was chock full of asbestos, with the stuff present in air samples as well. Officially no one knew it was there at all, and the building was built at a time when asbestos toxicity was already widely known (not yet outlawed though).
> Lupiano said many of those who reached out to him about their brain cancer cases "are former CHS teachers and staff members who didn’t live in Colonia, they just worked in the school."
People on the flight were vaccinate OR tested negative. Not both. Don't yet know if the cases were in the tested negative group or in the vaccinated group.
Can I please ask you to consider the problems with the chart you have shared? The vertical axis is percent increase not actual increase. It is helpful to have that context before you load your argument on it.
1) That point is written very clearly just below the graph by the author.
2) It doesn't fundamentally change the argument. The rate of increase in the number of administrators has significantly outpaced the increase in physician numbers as costs have increased.
Quality of life matters in most of these marginal cases. If they are going to give you the Konno procedure (scrape extra tissue out of a thickened ventricle), there's tons of things that can go wrong OTHER than death. Death is assured, either way, for everyone.
It depends what the outcome is without the surgery. If I'm dead without it, I want them to operate regardless. If there's only a chance of death, or the surgery is aiming to improve quality of life (rather than prevent [imminent] death), it's more of a judgement call.
Actually, I never understood this. Is demand and supply matched and this is just the lag in the system (ie 6-8 weeks remains 6-8 weeks forever) or demand is greater than supply and this number will grow.
If it is the former then there doesn't seem to be a cost advantage for the wait. A temporary increase in supply could bring this waiting time to zero with just the cost of 6-8 weeks worth of x-rays outsourced. And then you have a steady state system with zero waiting.
x-rays are generally pretty quick in the UK in my personal experience - I'm not sure the 6-8 weeks is representative. x ray technology is widespread and the procedure usually very simple and non-invasive. It's the more exotic scans that take longer to wait for as there are not as many machines, and if you need a gadolinium contrast for example that requires someone to pump the stuff into you during the procedure thus skilled staff requirement, thus bottleneck. I suspect the temporary increase in supply you mention is not realistic for the NHS budget and there simply may not be the skilled staff available to step up resourcing, and there's a fair chance that some of the people requiring the x-ray will recover during the wait! This last point is I think one of the tactics the NHS has been forced to rely on due to lack of budget. It's sad really. Not to grind a political axe but I suspect the NHS's status as provider of healthcare to all migrants free of charge hasn't helped, and may even have been a factor behind Brexit. I have a manageable condition for which I'm seen in a hospital in London every 6 months or so, and every time I vist it's apparent that most of the people at the clinic do not appear to have been born in Britain. I'm guessing this based on their physical appearance, the clothes they wear, and the fact that often they do not appear to have English as their first language. It doesn't seem fair to me that people that have probably paid little into the system are getting some of the finest care in the world out of it (at this particular clinic I mean. It's a world class research centre) free of charge. How am I supposed to feel about this when I have paid in for decades and have to wait months to be seen for things?
I'm hoping the pressure on the NHS budget will eventually force a change to something like the Dutch system, where insurance is compulsory but reasonably priced at the bottom end and everyone is ensured at least a minimum level of treatment, but has scope to buy a better level of treatment within the same system. If that were the case I wouldn't feel so bad about migrants bringing over their grandad for a heart bypass, or pregnant foreign women turning up at British hospitals in labour (there are documented examples).
In terms of efficiency, you're right. However because people get fed up of waiting and having to put up with their health issues and pay to go private instead, this reduces demand and the cost to the NHS. Think of it as a softer way of rationing access to some kinds of NHS healthcare to only those who don't have the money to pay for private care instead.
I think as a non-US person, I think it may also be time to pay attention to executive powers in the US political system. It is one thing to have a system that will only rarely elect a nutjob but not having any safeguards once a nutjob is elected is too dangerous at a systems level.
I think the article is making a valid point and your response is not the classic opposition but a more thoughtful sounding version of the taboo. :-)
Study of a average 5% statistical difference of a population would considered a valid scientific endeavour in many places yet a lot of people would only raise this criticism when applied to study of gender/race differences.
"Lupiano eventually arrived at a single linking factor between himself, his wife and his sister: they each attended Colonia High School in Woodbridge in the 1990s"
In addition to the school, he and his sister share their parents genes. He and his wife lived in the same neighbourhood so they shared many other things too.