Masks today, helmets tomorrow?

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reohn2
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Re: Masks today, helmets tomorrow?

Post by reohn2 »

Tangled Metal wrote:What would happen if the doctors treating boxers asked if they were wearing a helmet? A sport where damage to your brain is part of the appeal to its fans doesn't get the same calls for helmet wearing that cycling does. It's this inconsistency in people's attitudes to sports that is also stupid. If doctors took more time trying to change sports that don't help they're own participants instead of ones that take a more responsible approach there would be probably be less harm caused in sport. Things like ending the heading of a football, stricter concussion rules in contact sports, etc. Then again I can't imagine boxing surviving a no head shots rule somehow but that's the only safe way for boxing I'd have thought.

Sorry, off topic.

Boxing along with it's derivatives,I find to be the most barbaric of 'sports'.it's the only 'sport' where you set out by the rules to incapacitate your opponent.But there's a lot of money to be made from it so it'll persist no matter damaged it's 'players' become,and there's been more than a few at pro level
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Mike Sales
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Re: Masks today, helmets tomorrow?

Post by Mike Sales »

PH wrote:
Mike Sales wrote:seems basic common sense to me.
If you see more danger in a situation you change your behaviour to keep the danger at a level acceptable to you.

How does that apply to masks?
It's generally understood that any benefit they provide is in the reduced likelihood of an infected person person spreading that to others. Isn't that the opposite to the helmet wearer who thinks they're protecting themselves?


I quite agree.
The seat belt wearer protects themself at the expense of those who suffer their increased risk taking. See my earlier post.
It's the same the whole world over
It's the poor what gets the blame
It's the rich what gets the pleasure
Isn't it a blooming shame?
Jdsk
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Re: Masks today, helmets tomorrow?

Post by Jdsk »

Tangled Metal wrote:What would happen if the doctors treating boxers asked if they were wearing a helmet? A sport where damage to your brain is part of the appeal to its fans doesn't get the same calls for helmet wearing that cycling does.

From doctors? Are you aware of the enormous opposition to boxing from many doctors and the campaigning to stop it? For example the World Medical Association's position:
https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-statement-on-boxing/
which includes:
"The WMA believes that boxing is qualitatively different from other sports because of the injuries it causes and that it should be banned."
"Until a full ban is achieved the WMA urges that the following measures be implemented... Personal protective equipment recommendations (such as size and weight of gloves, head gear and gum shields) should take into consideration medical recommendations."

Jonathan
Jdsk
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Re: Masks today, helmets tomorrow?

Post by Jdsk »

Mike Sales wrote:The seat belt wearer protects themself at the expense of those who suffer their increased risk taking.

That knock-on effect is highly controversial. If we favour an evidence-based approach it's much better to acknowledge that controversy rather than stating it as a bald fact. Then we can work out how to resolve the controversy rather than sitting in comfortable camps.

Jonathan

PS: Moving to an evidence-based approach in transport policy is strongly in the interests of more people cycling more.
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pjclinch
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Re: Masks today, helmets tomorrow?

Post by pjclinch »

Jdsk wrote:
Mike Sales wrote:The seat belt wearer protects themself at the expense of those who suffer their increased risk taking.

That knock-on effect is highly controversial. If we favour an evidence-based approach it's much better to acknowledge that controversy rather than stating it as a bald fact. Then we can work out how to resolve the controversy rather than sitting in comfortable camps.


Cyclist and pedestrian casualties rise in the wake of seat belt laws is what the evidence says, but not what people think it says. See, for example, John Adams' "Risk", chapter 7, Robert Davis' "Death on the Streets, chapter 4.

To resolve the controversy you need more than mere evidence. You need a way to get through to people that what they're sure they know isn't the same thing as reality. Given the number of people who think that e.g. where planets are in relation to stars on any given day significantly affects their life this is clearly going to be an uphill task. As Adams acknowledges, that seatbelts are a Clear Win with no real downsides is now so ingrained there's nothing much that can be done about it:
The vehemence with which they argued their case was rooted in a sincere belief in the efficacy of seat belt legislation. This belief is now so
widespread, profoundly held, and insistently repeated that it is difficult to imagine any way in which it might be altered. The contrary view is routinely filtered out.


Pete.
Often seen riding a bike around Dundee...
Jdsk
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Re: Masks today, helmets tomorrow?

Post by Jdsk »

pjclinch wrote:Cyclist and pedestrian casualties rise in the wake of seat belt laws is what the evidence says, but not what people think it says. See, for example, John Adams' "Risk", chapter 7, Robert Davis' "Death on the Streets, chapter 4.

How would you describe the strength of that evidence? Are there any controlled studies?

Thanks

Jonathan
Mike Sales
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Re: Masks today, helmets tomorrow?

Post by Mike Sales »

Regarding evidence based policy making, the episode of the Isles Report is interesting.

Adams writes:

However within the Department of Transport, the promoters of the seat belt bill, my study had raised concerns. The Department commissioned a critique of my report by J E Isles. His report examined evidence from eight European countries (a subset of the 18 examined in my report) that had passed seat belt laws. He concluded that a law making the wearing of seat belts compulsory “has not led to a detectable change in road death rates”. For promoters of the bill this was an inconvenient truth. The Isles report was dated April 1981, more than three months before the parliamentary debate that led to the passage of the legislation. But it was suppressed. It was not published, and was not allowed to inform that debate. The Isles Report did not see the light of day until its existence was disclosed by New Scientist in an article published on 7 February 1985 – more than three years too late.

In the 1981 Parliamentary debate opponents of the law described my report variously as “bogus”, “riddled with inaccuracies”, “eccentric”, “preposterous”, “spurious”, and “wrong”. One supporter of the law (Austin Mitchell MP) described my report as “the only one that the hon. and learned Gentleman [Ivan Lawrence MP] can dredge up.” The Secretary of State for Transport in his contribution to the debate described my risk compensation hypothesis as “dubious and not proven”, but made no mention of his own department’s study whose conclusions supported mine. And my principal champion (Ivan Lawrence) described my findings as “astonishing and unexpected”. Such, at the time was the response to explanations of road accident statistics that invoked the risk compensation hypothesis.


http://www.john-adams.co.uk/2007/01/04/seat-belt-legislation-and-the-isles-report/

Robert Davis, on page 80 of Death on the Streets quotes the Isles Report.

claims for seat belt law effects were exaggerated, and that the likely effects in Britain would be either minimal or negative benefits for car users and an increase in deaths and injuries for people outside cars


The study (of the effects after the law had been passed) to which I have already referred, bore out the finding that a seat belt law would cost the lives of vulnerable road users.
This study was published in Significance, the journal of The Royal Statistical Society and was written by three seat belt proponents who were also members of the Parliamentary Advisory Committee on Traffic Safety.

They say “the clear reduction in death and injury to car occupants is appreciably offset by extra deaths among pedestrians and cyclists.”
.

http://www.john-adams.co.uk/2013/03/24/the-biggest-lie/

The idea that people's behaviour is unaffected by how safe they feel seems, to say the least, counterintuitive.

Two professors of statistics, Durbin and Harvey, were asked by the DoT to look at the question.

They concluded:-

The large estimated increases of pedestrian and cyclist fatalities suggest the possibilty of some change in driving behaviour by some drivers of cars and light goods vehicles after the introduction of the seat belt law.


It is, of course, impossible to examine the mental processes of all these drivers, but the evidence from their driving is clear.
It's the same the whole world over
It's the poor what gets the blame
It's the rich what gets the pleasure
Isn't it a blooming shame?
Jdsk
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Re: Masks today, helmets tomorrow?

Post by Jdsk »

Mike Sales wrote:This study was published in Significance, the journal of The Royal Statistical Society and was written by three seat belt proponents who were also members of the Parliamentary Advisory Committee on Traffic Safety.

Thanks.

Have you got the reference for that, please?

Jonathan
Mike Sales
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Re: Masks today, helmets tomorrow?

Post by Mike Sales »

Jdsk wrote:
Mike Sales wrote:This study was published in Significance, the journal of The Royal Statistical Society and was written by three seat belt proponents who were also members of the Parliamentary Advisory Committee on Traffic Safety.

Thanks.

Have you got the reference for that, please?

Jonathan


Adams says that it was from a
June 2008 article in Significance by Richard Allsop, Oliver Carsten, Andrew Evans, and Robert Gifford
It's the same the whole world over
It's the poor what gets the blame
It's the rich what gets the pleasure
Isn't it a blooming shame?
Jdsk
Posts: 24478
Joined: 5 Mar 2019, 5:42pm

Re: Masks today, helmets tomorrow?

Post by Jdsk »

Mike Sales wrote:Two professors of statistics, Durbin and Harvey, were asked by the DoT to look at the question.

They concluded:-

The large estimated increases of pedestrian and cyclist fatalities suggest the possibilty of some change in driving behaviour by some drivers of cars and light goods vehicles after the introduction of the seat belt law.

Is that a reference to Harvey and Durbin
"The Effects of Seat Belt Legislation on British Road Casualties: A Case Study in Structural Time Series Modelling"
Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series A (General), 1986, Vol. 149, No. 3 (1986)
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2981553?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents
?

Thanks

Jonathan
Last edited by Jdsk on 16 Jul 2020, 1:40pm, edited 1 time in total.
Jdsk
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Re: Masks today, helmets tomorrow?

Post by Jdsk »

Mike Sales wrote:
Jdsk wrote:
Mike Sales wrote:This study was published in Significance, the journal of The Royal Statistical Society and was written by three seat belt proponents who were also members of the Parliamentary Advisory Committee on Traffic Safety.

Thanks.

Have you got the reference for that, please?

Jonathan


Adams says that it was from a
June 2008 article in Significance by Richard Allsop, Oliver Carsten, Andrew Evans, and Robert Gifford

Thanks.

I'll assume that's:
Richard Allsop, Oliver Carsten, Andrew Evans, Robert Gifford
"Seat belt laws: why we should keep them"
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1740-9713.2008.00295.x

Jonathan
Mike Sales
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Re: Masks today, helmets tomorrow?

Post by Mike Sales »

Jdsk wrote:
I'll assume that's:
Richard Allsop, Oliver Carsten, Andrew Evans, Robert Gifford
"Seat belt laws: why we should keep them"
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1740-9713.2008.00295.x

Jonathan


To me, a public health intervention which costs the lives of some road users in order to save others, is immoral.
Especially when I am one of the vulnerable and it is those who make the roads more dangerous who are being protected from the effects of their own rashness.
Would a drug which saved some patients but killed others be authorised?
It's the same the whole world over
It's the poor what gets the blame
It's the rich what gets the pleasure
Isn't it a blooming shame?
Jdsk
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Joined: 5 Mar 2019, 5:42pm

Re: Masks today, helmets tomorrow?

Post by Jdsk »

Mike Sales wrote:Would a drug which saved some patients but killed others be authorised?

Yes. Many prescribed drugs cause harm to and kill patients. That was one of the drivers towards evidence-based medicine.

Jonathan

PS: But am I now reading the right papers that you cited?
Mike Sales
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Re: Masks today, helmets tomorrow?

Post by Mike Sales »

Jdsk wrote:
Mike Sales wrote:Would a drug which saved some patients but killed others be authorised?

Yes. Many prescribed drugs cause harm to and kill patients. That was one of the drivers towards evidence-based medicine.

Jonathan


The patients killed were not those being treated?
It's the same the whole world over
It's the poor what gets the blame
It's the rich what gets the pleasure
Isn't it a blooming shame?
Jdsk
Posts: 24478
Joined: 5 Mar 2019, 5:42pm

Re: Masks today, helmets tomorrow?

Post by Jdsk »

I don't understand the question. Doctors prescribe drugs to patients and some of those drugs cause harm to and some cause the death of those patients.

An evidence-based approach allows that to be quantified and the right balances struck.

Jonathan
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