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Comment Re:Controversial because? (Score 1) 284

My kids' school is upper-middle class.

School starts at 7:30 (30 minutes earlier than you represent). School ends at 2:45 (45 minutes later than you represent).

Before-school care begins at 6:30am. After-school care ends at 5:30pm.
That's 11 hours/day, times 178 instructional days/year = 1958 hours.

Add in 30 instructional days for summer school, is roughly 2288 hours/year away from home.

I can't imagine what it would be for a family holding down two minimum wage jobs at irregular hours. I suspect the time away from "home" would be even higher, since I've left out 11 weeks with no school activity, 17 if you don't have summer school.

Comment Re:There is no vaccine for the worst diseases (Score 1) 1051

My problem with your thought experiment is that $1 million is not "high reward".

Certainly not commensurate with "instantly murdered". In fact, I'm pretty sure I value my life at (much?) more than three orders of magnitude greater.

The things I *would* value as roughly equal to "instantly murdered" are all personal, and none of them involve cash.

Comment Re:Ancient technology, sensors still blow goats (Score 1) 119

1. The Dexcom G4 CGM (new this year) is remarkably accurate. We're rarely more than 10 points from a finger stick. Surprisingly, sometimes it asks us to calibrate with a finger stick, we enter the number, and it disagrees with what we just entered. We'll finger stick again, and find out it's right.

2. The *huge* advantage of a CGM that you're not acknowledging is that it gives you the derivative of your blood sugar, not just the value. You check your HbA1C for the integral, why wouldn't you use a CGM for the derivative?

3. Yes, it hurts. So does skateboarding.

Comment Re:Insta-death (Score 1) 119

My daughter had a near-experience with this. Typically, you enter two values into the pump: your current blood glucose level, and the number of carbs you are going to (or in the case of a child, have) eat(en). The pump uses a conversion formula to dose you for the carbs, either shorting the amount if your glucose is low, or increasing the amount if your glucose is high.

A school nurse new to the pump reversed the numbers. My daughter had eaten about 60g of carbs, and her blood glucose level was ~160, but the nurse entered blood glucose of 60, and 160g of carbs--something like 6 units of insulin. Little girl had to stuff chocolate and apple juice into her face all afternoon, which doesn't sound bad unless your blood sugar's on the floor and you're sick to your stomach. Never thought we'd have to beg a child to eat more chocolate.

One lesson (among many) I took from that is that drawing fluid into a syringe is intuitively obvious whether it's a common-sense amount or not (for one, her old syringes wouldn't even hold 6 units), whereas two numbers on a monochrome screen are not.

Comment Re:Really, Really, I call BS on your science... (Score 1) 858

Okay...I'll be the idiot who stands up for the science-deniers here. I'd prefer six vaccines delivered two weeks apart. I'm fully in favor of the vaccinations, though.

Against that you have to weight the trauma of six, rather than one injection...and I'm speaking of the parents' trauma, of course. Holy flying spaghetti monster you've never seen anything like a kid that knows a shot is coming.

Comment Re:Freedom of choice (Score 1) 858

What risk is there to your kids? Just saying...

Four ways:
1. All children have a period during which they're not vaccinated...between birth, and the actual time of vaccination. My daughter is not quite five, and she's still getting vaccinations.

2. Just because you got a vaccination doesn't mean it took...for some people, the vaccine has no effect.

3. Some people are immuno-compromised. With or without a vaccine, they have no resistance.

4. Some people simply can't take the vaccine, whether they want to or not.

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