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Igel

(35,885 posts)
9. Get permission.
Sun Mar 1, 2020, 07:44 PM
Mar 2020

Remember privacy is a constitutional right. Before you publish, you get the patient's signature. Otherwise you strip out as much information as possible and hope that there's no court case.

Plus the details aren't as important as the generalizations.

Imagine, "59 year old male, Asian, non-smoker, 5'9" and 180 lbs, presented with high fever. Developed viral pneumonia, treated per standard protocol."

Now you're looking at a 70-year-old woman with diabetes at 120 lbs, no fever. What, exactly, does the details tell you that the standard protocol doesn't.

"Affects primarily those over 60 with pre-existing conditions. Infects lower respiratory tract and intestinal tract. Might present with high fever, dry cough, or, less frequently, diarrhea. Often leads to lower respiratory tract infections, frequently viral, requiring additional intervention."

It's when the individual case *doesn't* follow standard protocol that it's a big deal. And then the health wonks look over the information and decide if the treatment was the cause of the improvement, slowed it, or improved it. Otherwise it's like two church people, one of whom swore that she got over the flu because all she drank for 2 days was cabbage juice, and the other who swore the same thing, but all he drank for two days was Miller. My response was that all I did for 2 days was whatever I wanted, because the worst of the symptoms last for 2 days in just about every case. If I'd killed a chicken and whirled it over my head while chanting "Adon olam", naked and doing squat thrusts it still would have taken 2 days.

If every detail was important, every year there'd be the massive tome, "Treating the Flu, winter 2019/20" running to 500k pages with a 1/4th page write-up for each of the millions of people who go to the doctor for the flu. And people who'd go to the doctor in 2020/21 with volume 293, jabbing their finger at the third paragraph on page 535 saying, "That's the treatment I want given what was posted on that one website!" Instead we have this massive cover-up, I guess.

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