Tempest in a teapot

[unixronin]

The health blog on the New York Times has a column about the deadly danger to small children posed swallowing by various types of button-cell batteries.  This terrible danger happens THOUSANDS OF TIMES PER YEAR!!!  Well ... OK, maybe a few hundred ... no?  Ten to a dozen?

Well, OK, ALMOST ten.  ...Over the past six years.

Three hundred and forty million people, more or less, in the United States.  And in any given year, one or two of them swallow a button-cell battery and die as a result.

So, let's see ... how does that compare to other common risks?  No, wait: let's compare to RARE risks.  Oh, yes, here we go:  You are fifty times more likely to be struck and killed by lightning in any given year than you are to die from swallowing a button-cell battery.

But wait, not everyone who swallows a battery dies.  What about all the children that don't die, but still suffer serious injuries?

Well, the article says that's about a hundred people per year in the US at present, up from about fifteen per year in 1985. Out of three hundred and forty million.  That's, um ... gee. 130 times less than the number of people aged fifteen and under injured on those deadly, death-trap contrivances, bicycles, each year.  (About 13,000 in 2009.)  Hell, it's almost the number of 15-and-unders killed on bicycles in 2009 (93).

Well, we all knew bicycles were dangerous.  How about something nice and safe like the school playground?

ZOMG!!!  About two hundred thousand playground injuries per year among the 14-and-under set, about 90,000 of them severe (fractures, concussions, internal injuries, amputations etc).

Well, OK ... how about food?  Food's nice and safe, isn't it?

Well ... since you mention it ... actually, not so much.  WebMD says between 66 and 77 children under 10 die each year after choking on foods, and 10,000 children under age 15 are treated in emergency departments. Three quarters of those are children under 3 years old.  Even more deaths and choking injuries result from "swallowing balloons and small toys".

But Ms. Parker-Pope thinks we have an imminent crisis that desperately needs attention, because one to two people per year are dying from ingesting button cell batteries and maybe a hundred are being seriously injured.  We need to secure all battery compartments, everywhere, right away.

Or then again, Ms. Parker-Pope, maybe we could all start paying attention again to what our kids are getting into.  And maybe you could find something productive to do with the time on your hands, of which you appear to have rather too much if you have time to get all in a tizzy about a hazard so rare that, frankly, it's lost in the statistical noise.

Sometimes I swear we're actively breeding people for stupidity.

Comments

[mrakg.livejournal.com]

Two issues:

1) I agree with your assessment of Mrs. Parker-Pope. She's obviously hoping to make the Litigation Lottery pay off big.

2) Now for a grumble: OK, aside from putting on some Speedos, taking a deep breath, diving down to the well, and crushing the pipe shut with his mighty bare hands, what was The President supposed to _do_? It's become readily apparent that the White House's biggest error in this was believing BP & Halliburton.

Remember - the US Government has absolutely nothing (aside from the much-discussed nuke) that can deal with this. I despised Bush and Clinton, but wouldn't have been gleefully jumping up and down to blame them, had it happened on their watches.

[polaris93.livejournal.com]

Dubya would have figured out what kind of team should have been put together to deal with this within a very few days after consulting with the Army Corps of Engineers, the Seabees, geologists, and people from other disciplines having to do with the situation, and then would have sicced them on the situation, to do the jobs they do best. But Obama didn't move on this decisively for weeks, and when he finally did, he was still trailing along behind BP, who themselves had dragged their heels for way too long before tackling this situation the way they should have right at the beginning. Even now, BP has steadfastly refused to employ people who actually have good track-records when it comes to cleaning up great oil spills like this. It has been more concerned with damage-control on its PR image than fixing the damned leak, and as the days have gone by the harm done to the living Gulf of Mexico has gotten greater and greater. This is unconscionable. And all Obama does is spout noises that sound good and mean nothing. Dubya's a businessman, and acts like it. Businessmen are trained to solve problems by identifying who the best ones for the job are and putting them together to do that job. Obama is trained for -- what? The results are as you see.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

And all Obama does is spout noises that sound good and mean nothing.

Frankly, that's his specialty. And even for that, he's dependent on his teleprompter.

[polaris93.livejournal.com]

It's pretty bad when your teleprompter is a blithering idiot. ;-)

[mrakg.livejournal.com]

The Seebees have already gone on record to state that they have nothing...yet.

Ditto, ACE. [Who, despite their negative cachet here in Atlanta, are damn good]

As for delay: Yes, there was. It's unconscionable, and a large chunk of it is directly attributable to bad information from BP/Halliburton.

Dubya never impressed me as a businessman, but that's another issue.

[polaris93.livejournal.com]

Look, the whole thing has become obscenely academic: by the end of this summer, the oil will have drifted out into the Atlantic and maybe also into the Caribbean, wrecking ecosystem after ecosystem, fishery after fishery, as it goes, triggering an ecological disaster on a scale humanity has never seen before. The result of that will impact the global economy so terribly that it could trigger all-out nuclear war as nation after nation tries to grab rapidly dwindling resources to feed their own people, and the hell with everyone else. Next to that, everything pales into insignificance. Yet ditherers like the lady who's all upset over those batteries still clutter up the landscape, doing nothing useful, distracting us all from doing whatever constructive can be done about the things that really do matter.

[mrakg.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. Probably, by the end of the summer, the public will only be aware of the next American Idol [is that still on] or somesuch other bread & circus crap.

[polaris93.livejournal.com]

That depends how great the rise in prices of good is in this country by then. Which will take place, only the degree of the rise being uncertain. Though the oil will only do immediate harm to marine life in the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic, and, probably, the Caribbean, it will also severely impact the livelihoods of countless people in that area, and in trying to compensate for lessened availability of sea food, people will have to use more and more of other products. As demand for food products increases, the prices of them will rise. Add that to the inflation we're already seeing, and we could be in bad trouble by then. And that's when hoi polloi will begin to notice how the situation has evolved, and what it means for them.

[luxobscura.livejournal.com]

hysterical much? Nuclear war? C'mon... deep breaths.

[polaris93.livejournal.com]

Read any history? Or Malthus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Robert_Malthus)? When people are starving, or even think they're about to be starving, they'll do whatever they can to feed themselves and their children -- especially their children. And what's happening right now in the Gulf of Mexico -- and, soon, the Atlantic and the Caribbean -- will have an impact on the global economy large enough to dwarf the Great Depression of the 1930s. The Gulf of Mexico is so large that its destruction -- and it is in the process of being destroyed right now, as one ecosystem within it after another collapses and takes more down with it -- will trigger an ecological chain reaction that will spread throughout the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. If you doubt me, go ask a professional ecologist. Or just start looking up websites of biological scientists who are desperately seeking ways to stem the worst of what's going on and about to happen in that region. People all around the Gulf of Mexico are losing their livelihoods because of it. Come Autumn, they and their children will be going hungry, perhaps lose their homes and all else they own, because of the ongoing collapse of an already shaky economy in the region. If Obama somehow manages to take every asset BP owns and convert it to cash and give that cash to everyone living and working along the Gulf of Mexico, it won't be a tenth, a hundredth, of what will be needed to give them back what they have lost and will lose. And then there are the losses of species unique to the Gulf of Mexico, species whose habitats consist of tiny little volumes of ocean that are their sole home, that exist nowhere else on Earth, and the ecosystems they are part of. Those can't be replaced, not with all the money in the world. They are irreplaceable treasures whose loss no amount of money can make up for (for more on which, see, e.g., http://polaris93.livejournal.com/2248904.html, http://polaris93.livejournal.com/2040665.html, http://polaris93.livejournal.com/2036447.html). All that is in the process of being lost, and the economic, ecological, and other impacts on the world will be anything but negligible. If you think that isn't true, check out the websites of those biologists and ecologists, especially those whose fields include marine biology and marine ecology. If you think that won't have a deadly impact on the human world, you have to be dreaming. Hysteria? Hysteria is generally a determined refusal to face reality. All right, here's reality. Refuse to look at it as you will, it will catch up with you -- and everyone else in the world -- within 12 months, and probably within the next 6 months.

[jilara.livejournal.com]

The problem is that the government DOESN'T have a crack team of oilwell specialists on tap, unless you count Halliburton, and well, that's enough said, right there.

Of course, one could point to how well Dubya did with Katrina, and the folks he appointed who didn't have the foggiest CLUE as to what they were supposed to do with a disaster of unprecedented scale. And still don't.

I think we're unrealistic in expecting our government to be able to play Johnny-Fix-It, when it doesn't even play international police particularly effectively. The old comedy phrase of "We're from the government, we're here to help," is funny for a reason.

(Why yes, I do belong to a Third Party and don't think much of what the gov's been doing lately, like for the past few decades. The last President who got my retrospective approval rating was Gerald Ford, and that's an interesting statement.)

[polaris93.livejournal.com]

The government does have a crack team of geologists available. It's the office of the US Geological Survey (http://www.usgs.gov/), and they know where to get petrologists and others who are experts in the fields related to this crisis.

Now, as for Dubya, I hope someday you get snowballed by all the things he got snowballed by during his administration. People literally blame him for everything (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_Derangement_Syndrome) from the Big Bang to the Big Rip (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Rip), including the breakup of Al and Tipper Gore's marriage (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/01/al-gore-tipper-gore-separ_n_596199.html), and it's getting very, very old. That man put himself between everyone in this country and Islamist terrorists, trying to keep us all safe, for eight long, hellish years, and all he got was endless shit for it from people who would have screamed their heads off about it if they had been knowingly abandoned to that danger. And of course you will sneer that we were in no danger, it was all just the result of a government conspiracy to murder almost 3,000 Americans on 9/11 in order to etc. etc. blah. Do you really believe that? When you face your Judge on Judgement Day, whenever that may be, how will you answer the question of whether you really believe it? I realize it's fun to join fads, because it's a way to bond socially with others. But some fads are just plain dead wrong, and conspiracy-theory fads and fads for attacking public figures just because everyone else thinks it's fun to do fall right into that category.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Let's not start a flame war here, please. And that starts with not tossing bricks and accusations at people whose motivations you don't know. I can vouch for the fact that jilara is not a "troofer". But, like it or not, it is inarguable fact that the administration's handling of Katrina was a rolling clusterfuck, and the people put in charge of it were utterly and completely incompetent.

It's also true, whether you like it or not, that every infringement upon our liberties put in place since 9/11 was put in place by the Bush administration.

No, the Democrat Party is not our friend. But neither is the Republican Party. Neither one of them is acting on behalf of America as a whole (particularly since the neoconservatives pulled off what amounts to a coup d'etat in the Republican party during the Clinton administration). It's two-valued "your party is bad, my party is good" thinking that's had us stuck in this two-party mess for the past century.

[polaris93.livejournal.com]

If we are lucky and avoid World War III until at least 2013, in the meantime a great many current incumbents from both major parties will get thrown out of office and replaced by third-party candidates . . . assuming that the third/fourth/fifth/etc.-party candidates who do get voted in aren't members of modern-day equivalents of the National Socialists, or the Communist party. The one and only good thing about the disaster now unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico is that, added to everything else that has happened in the last decade or so, it has people fed to the teeth with government. Period. Cross your fingers -- we may get something we can live with out of this. Maybe. Please. Pretty please with sugar on top.

-- Back in late 2001 I said that no matter what, because of 9/11 we Americans were going to lose at least some of our freedom, the degree of that loss depending on a number of factors which boiled down to whether Americans or non-Americans were the determinators of just which of our freedoms would go. Because, I said, Americans generally have a better feeling for just how far they can go before other Americans start looking around for a rope to do some cleaning out of high office with, hence they probably wouldn't go as far in the direction of destroying our freedoms as non-Americans, i.e., invaders, would. The reason is that effective security measures would take away some of our freedoms, or what many have come to consider to be true freedoms, whether they are or not, in order to secure the nation as effectively as possible from outside attack and/or attack from within. Invaders, on the other hand, would take away the freedoms of American citizens in order to control and use us. (I am including Islamists under the heading of possible "invaders" whether they are in fact non-citizens or actually American citizens.) Frankly, I'd rather lose some freedom to a government comprising Americans than I would to, say, Islamists or others who either aren't Americans or don't consider themselves to be actual Americans or both. So the question is, how much of what we have lost since 9/11 has been lost to the need for tightened security, and how much to the freed and lust for power of some elected officials? And who has been responsible for that? Did we need tightened national security after 9/11? Yes, and we still do. But after 2008 the security measures put in place by the Bush administration began to slip rather rapidly, as witness that damned 13-story Islamic studies center and mosque they're planning to build just yards from Ground Zero in NYC. That terrifies me. What has happened to us?

[jilara.livejournal.com]

Interesting point. Most of my friends at the USGS are retired, now, but it might be interesting to get their perspective on it. (I liked their response to the disaster film on the Yellowstone supervolcano---they loved it, because it was realistic: "If it happens, we're all going to die.")

Sorry, but I've read about the FEMA messup on Katrina in some detail, and part of the problem was that a lot of the people Dubya appointed to manage it had no prior experience in emergency management. They knew how to deal with security problems, but not much of anything else. So they treated New Orleans like a security problem, which was a completely inappropriate response. And the fallout is still rattling through. No conspiracy, just bad choices.

In terms of 9/11, the immediate Bush response to that was good and totally appropriate. I actually applauded his handling of it, since it was a swift response to a totally unprecedented terrorist action. Would have been nice if a lot of other actions were as good.

So don't be so quick to assume what I think. Maybe you should actually read what I'm writing, rather than leaping to conclusions and lashing out. However, I suspect that you're just doing what I am---screaming in the back of your head over an unprecedented disaster on a global scale, and the fact it's like watching a slow-motion play-by-play of global eco-collapse. I know that I feel physically sick every time I think about it.

Fun to attack public figures? Hmm, like Obama? Or maybe accusing someone in LJ of certain beliefs without any evidence? Sorry, that was uncalled-for. But the bottom line is that we like to have someone in authority to blame for what we perceive as "letting it happen." Which isn't always the appropriate party. Scapegoating becomes popular, too.

The general rule is search for the guilty, punishment of the innocent, and reward of the non-participants. It's human nature at large, or I wouldn't be able to quote that slogan.

As I say, I think we put too much faith in the government, overall.

[polaris93.livejournal.com]

Interesting point. Most of my friends at the USGS are retired, now, but it might be interesting to get their perspective on it. (I liked their response to the disaster film on the Yellowstone supervolcano---they loved it, because it was realistic: "If it happens, we're all going to die.")

I would love to see their take on the ongoing crisis in the Gulf of Mexico, though it's likely to consist largely of words spelled with four letters (or longer and worse ones). ;-)

Sorry, but I've read about the FEMA messup on Katrina in some detail, and part of the problem was that a lot of the people Dubya appointed to manage it had no prior experience in emergency management. They knew how to deal with security problems, but not much of anything else. So they treated New Orleans like a security problem, which was a completely inappropriate response. And the fallout is still rattling through. No conspiracy, just bad choices. In terms of 9/11, the immediate Bush response to that was good and totally appropriate. I actually applauded his handling of it, since it was a swift response to a totally unprecedented terrorist action. Would have been nice if a lot of other actions were as good.

Okay, I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for Dubya, for reasons that are not political in nature, and are impossible to describe, so I won't try here or elsewhere. I realize this will probably get me killed by a giant pack of bloggers of all political persuasions, but hey, any day is a good day to die. I've been swimming upstream literally since I was conceived -- see, e.g., http://polaris93.livejournal.com/1714735.html, http://polaris93.livejournal.com/1715175.html, http://polaris93.livejournal.com/1715455.html, http://polaris93.livejournal.com/1715673.html for details. At any rate, this is where I will differ with just about everybody about Dubya, and that isn't going to change, no matter what.

So don't be so quick to assume what I think. Maybe you should actually read what I'm writing, rather than leaping to conclusions and lashing out. However, I suspect that you're just doing what I am---screaming in the back of your head over an unprecedented disaster on a global scale, and the fact it's like watching a slow-motion play-by-play of global eco-collapse. I know that I feel physically sick every time I think about it.

That's true.

Fun to attack public figures? Hmm, like Obama? Or maybe accusing someone in LJ of certain beliefs without any evidence?

I never attack anyone for fun. Human beings are great big nasty animals that can make a real dent in you if they want to, and if you attack them, they'll want to. I took some combat-arts training which ground in that attacking anyone or anything for fun is a bad idea. So when I say something that could be construed as an attack, I mean it, and am saying on the basis of the best information I have at the time.

Sorry, that was uncalled-for. But the bottom line is that we like to have someone in authority to blame for what we perceive as "letting it happen." Which isn't always the appropriate party. Scapegoating becomes popular, too.

I'd be satisfied with someone in charge who has his/her act together and moves on terrible things in an appropriate way. Right now, whoever's in charge doesn't have his act together, and is moving at the rate of cold molasses. And because of it we're all in terrible trouble. Surely the Democrats could have mustered somebody better than that guy to run against Dubya. Why didn't they?

As I say, I think we put too much faith in the government, overall.

Yes, we do. But when it comes to disasters on this kind of scale, ones that come to pass because somebody wasn't paying attention to either to pphysical reality or building codes (or the equivalent), because of the way we've all set things up, the government has to get involved if the problem is to be solved. Or even nibbled away at.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I do actually wonder what would happen if Woods Hole were to pull out one of their deep-submersibles like, say, an Alvin, which can operate in water depths FAR exceeding this well, and go manually activate the blowout preventer. Or if it doesn't work, I'm sure it shouldn't take more than a few days for a competent company to build a one-shot explosive-powered device to clamp off even the high-strength deep-well pipe. I want to know why we've heard nothing of any such attempt.

[mrakg.livejournal.com]

Woods Hole is not part of the US Government. It's a private institution.

That being said, the question of why no one has contacted them is a good one.

I'm actually surprised they haven't initiated contact, themselves.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Woods Hole is not part of the US Government. It's a private institution.

Wasn't trying to suggest that it was.

[mrakg.livejournal.com]

OK. The context was unclear.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Well, my point was, the administration could have said, "OK, we need deep submergence vessels to try to activate that blowout preventer manually. Now, who has the best deep-submersibles? Ah, yes. Could you help us out here...?"

[lebo-superman.livejournal.com]

It's very possible that they have, and were turned away. I saw a report somewhere else about two guys in the US who were working in the Middle East 10-15 years ago when there was a big spill, that they successfully controlled and cleaned up by siphoning the spill onto empty oil cargo ships, taking it to land and putting in special holding tanks until it could be cleaned for processing. They tried contacting the Coast Guard, PB, and even the DOD (I think) trying to volunteer their experience to help - and everyone told them, basically, "Thanks, but no thanks."

I think Obama has manipulated this to CREATE a disaster that will make the American sheeple SCREAM for him to invoke the disaster/emergency powers granted to his office right after 9/11. He wants public acclamation for him declaring Martial Law on the whole country, at which time he can dispense with pesky things like Habeus Corpus, the 2nd Amendment, and the need to compete for re-election in November 2012. He's operating on the same playbook used by one of his idols - Adolf Hitler.

[polaris93.livejournal.com]

If so, he's gone way too far. The results of this will ultimately be far bigger and far more unmanageable than any one man or government could ever hope to control or use. It may be that he is indeed stupid enough to have tried such a stunt. If so, I do believe the unintended consequences of it will eat him, his party, liberals in general, and a whole lot of innocent bystanders up like candy. Otherwise, and more likely, he is probably suffering from paralysis of will as far as making useful decisions about this goes. He can memorize and recite a speech someone else wrote, and he can give the orders to put into practice projects and ideas other, more competent people come up with. But beyond that he is utterly out of his depth. Which is even worse than if he had pulled this deliberately, because in that case, he'd have been at least partly rational and definitely competent, and such bastards can be reasoned with, at least at gunpoint. But a man who can only recite others' speechs and initial what someone else comes up with? Never count on him for anything in a crisis!

[ithildae.livejournal.com]

He just needs health care to not be an issue this November.

[jilara.livejournal.com]

Funny, I've never heard Obama mention any admiration for the 3rd Reich or its authority figures.

On the other hand, the current governor of my state has commented that Adolf was a very effective leader. That's what we get for electing The Terminator, who ran on slogans from Hollywood scriptwriters. And I voted for him, sigh. At least I voted based on Arnold's experience as a successful businessman, not his campaign rhetoric.

Never attribute to malice or conspiracy what can be adequately explained by stupidity.