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> It's somewhat tedious that whenever an article claims a black man, or a woman, were first in something someone will leap in with "well, actually...", especial

> It's somewhat tedious that whenever an article claims a black man, or a woman, were first in something someone will leap in with "well, actually...", especially when their well actuallys are often wrong. I assure you it's equally tedious when an article expects me to believe (as the entire 5th article strongly implies) that something as obvious and common as an ambulance staffed with medical professionals didn't exist until 1966, and the whole world used police and fire trucks to transport the injured, when I can so easily find earlier examples. What am I to make of all the examples in the wiki article I linked? Do they not count, because they used doctors and not paramedics? Is that where my "well actually" is wrong? If so, the article sure does its best to hide that fact. And what was the rest of the world up to during this time? Were the Soviet union's eyes on Pittsburgh to learn how to handle medical emergencies? If so, they must have been watching very closely, because 8 years earlier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UAZ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UAZ: In 1958, UAZ began production of the UAZ-450 series of trucks and vans. The first model was the 450A ambulance; with room for two stretchers and four-wheel drive, it was arguably the best in the world for use in remote areas. An ambulance. The "best in the world", implying it was not the first ambulance. I'm sure there's plenty others, for example in Europe, they just don't have an article on 99percentinvisible.org

DanBC 6y ago
> that something as obvious and common as an ambulance They're not talking about ambulances. They're talking about paramedics. Here's the para: "The two men weren’t doctors, and they weren’t nurses. And their strange uniforms weren’t hospital issued. Moon was witnessing the birth of a new profession—one that would go on to change the face of emergency medicine. The two men were some of the world’s first paramedics, and, like Moon, they were Black." Here's the fifth para: > As a result, emergency services were not there to provide treatment at the scene or even necessarily on the way to the hospital… they were just about getting you to the hospital as quickly as possible. It also wasn’t clear whose responsibility it was to rush to the scene of an accident. Oftentimes firefighters were the ones to respond, and they were expected to deal with health treatment themselves. In other areas, the responsibility for transporting patients often fell to local funeral homes. In many major cities, this crucial task fell to another municipal service that probably had even less business responding to medical emergencies: The police. Here's the wikipedia page on early ambo services, and history of pre-hosptial care: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paramedic#Early_ambulance_services https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paramedic#Early_ambulance_serv... > What am I to make of all the examples in the wiki article I linked? Those examples are about patient conveyance, not pre-hospital care. Those doctors are not providing pre-hospital care, they're getting the patient to hospital as fast as possible and then giving a hand-over. > Do they not count, because they used doctors and not paramedics? When we're talking about the first paramedics we do count paramedics and we don't count medics, because medics are medics, they're not paramedics, which is why we call them "medic", not "paramedic".
- rbecker 6y ago
  In other words, the only thing Freedom House did that was different was training non-doctors, while before (and elsewhere) doctors were used. That the article heavily and falsely implies neither ambulances nor doctors were used (the 5th paragraph, that you quoted) is just a poor choice of words by the author, not deliberate deception, right?

DanBC 6y ago

> that something as obvious and common as an ambulance They're not talking about ambulances. They're talking about paramedics. Here's the para: "The two men weren’t doctors, and they weren’t nurses. And their strange uniforms weren’t hospital issued. Moon was witnessing the birth of a new profession—one that would go on to change the face of emergency medicine. The two men were some of the world’s first paramedics, and, like Moon, they were Black." Here's the fifth para: > As a result, emergency services were not there to provide treatment at the scene or even necessarily on the way to the hospital… they were just about getting you to the hospital as quickly as possible. It also wasn’t clear whose responsibility it was to rush to the scene of an accident. Oftentimes firefighters were the ones to respond, and they were expected to deal with health treatment themselves. In other areas, the responsibility for transporting patients often fell to local funeral homes. In many major cities, this crucial task fell to another municipal service that probably had even less business responding to medical emergencies: The police. Here's the wikipedia page on early ambo services, and history of pre-hosptial care: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paramedic#Early_ambulance_services https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paramedic#Early_ambulance_serv... > What am I to make of all the examples in the wiki article I linked? Those examples are about patient conveyance, not pre-hospital care. Those doctors are not providing pre-hospital care, they're getting the patient to hospital as fast as possible and then giving a hand-over. > Do they not count, because they used doctors and not paramedics? When we're talking about the first paramedics we do count paramedics and we don't count medics, because medics are medics, they're not paramedics, which is why we call them "medic", not "paramedic".

rbecker 6y ago
In other words, the only thing Freedom House did that was different was training non-doctors, while before (and elsewhere) doctors were used. That the article heavily and falsely implies neither ambulances nor doctors were used (the 5th paragraph, that you quoted) is just a poor choice of words by the author, not deliberate deception, right?