3 ms·

I am not ignoring that effect. I am dismissing it with two arguments. The first is that this extremely unlikely to ever be your largest exposure to a pathogen.

by ouid 4y ago

I am not ignoring that effect. I am dismissing it with two arguments. The first is that this extremely unlikely to ever be your largest exposure to a pathogen. The reason that it is important in a hospital is because they essentially autoclave these room to try to eradicate C Diff. The second reason is that even if it is your largest exposure to that pathogen, and that is enough to make you ill, it is almost certain that a dose of half of that size will also be sufficient to make you ill. It is notable that there are no studies to the effect of "do people who close their toilet lids at home get sick less often". The scientific journalism of this "effect" is always about the quantity of germs, or conflating home and hospital settings, where again, the objective is literally zero C diff. It riles up the germophobes.

TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
> It is notable that there are no studies to the effect of "do people who close their toilet lids at home get sick less often". There are also no studies proving that people who jump out of an airplane with a parachute live longer than a control. I guess we should not trust our instinct in this case. Using UV light to see the plume of a flush https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Tg7i66GGMI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Tg7i66GGMI Search youtube for many other demonstrations.
- ouid 4y ago
  I think you think that the only kind of study that confirm this hypothesis is some kind of RCT, where we give one group a placebo toilet flush, and the other I try to get infect with norovirus. The point of "https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k5094 https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k5094" which is more or less making the same tongue in cheek argument as you, is that there are limitations to what can be counted through an RCT. I am, however, not talking about an RCT. I am talking about the conspicuous lack of observational study of the clinical phenomenonology of toilet plume, rather than some secondary observation about scary germs. Epidemiologists must find ways to study illness without actually making people ill, but they still, for the most part, manage. Moreover, observational study is not, in any way, lacking, about what happens when you jump out of a plane with a parachute. It's not merely common sense, it has been observed to happen. Moreover, this is reflected pretty fucking well in the literature https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1478603/pdf/brjsmed00041-0015.pdf https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1478603/pdf/brj....
  - TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
    I am simply amazed that you cannot see adverse risk in certain activities without a study - observational, RCT, or otherwise - confirming it. I wonder how people 500 years ago lived with risk without the proliferation of studies that we have today. Maybe risk simply did not exist back then since no studies confirmed it?
    - ouid 4y ago
      >you cannot see adverse risk in certain activities without a study - observational, RCT, or otherwise - confirming it. This is pretty far from my claim. I didn't say that I don't believe things without clinical evidence. I said that there is a conspicuous lack of clinical evidence for something which otherwise has so many claims surrounding it. Even a simple questionnaire would be publishable, if it showed an effect. Do you close your toilet lid? Have you had an illness in which you experienced vomiting or diarrhea in the last 6 months? How many people do you live with? I think perhaps you assume that "you are with the experts" on this one. That most researchers consider the evidence presented in this article to be good evidence that there is a health benefit to closing the toilet lid of your toilet. I can assure you that most researchers do not consider this to be good evidence, exactly because it has no clinical endpoint. It might as well say "in mice". Perhaps you believe that there is some common sense reason to think that toilet plume is a bad thing, but common sense largely fails to come to correct conclusions about germs. Which is the case that I have been making in this thread.

by ouid 4y ago

TedDoesntTalk 4y ago

> It is notable that there are no studies to the effect of "do people who close their toilet lids at home get sick less often". There are also no studies proving that people who jump out of an airplane with a parachute live longer than a control. I guess we should not trust our instinct in this case. Using UV light to see the plume of a flush https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Tg7i66GGMI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Tg7i66GGMI Search youtube for many other demonstrations.

ouid 4y ago
I think you think that the only kind of study that confirm this hypothesis is some kind of RCT, where we give one group a placebo toilet flush, and the other I try to get infect with norovirus. The point of "https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k5094 https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k5094" which is more or less making the same tongue in cheek argument as you, is that there are limitations to what can be counted through an RCT. I am, however, not talking about an RCT. I am talking about the conspicuous lack of observational study of the clinical phenomenonology of toilet plume, rather than some secondary observation about scary germs. Epidemiologists must find ways to study illness without actually making people ill, but they still, for the most part, manage. Moreover, observational study is not, in any way, lacking, about what happens when you jump out of a plane with a parachute. It's not merely common sense, it has been observed to happen. Moreover, this is reflected pretty fucking well in the literature https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1478603/pdf/brjsmed00041-0015.pdf https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1478603/pdf/brj....
- TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
  I am simply amazed that you cannot see adverse risk in certain activities without a study - observational, RCT, or otherwise - confirming it. I wonder how people 500 years ago lived with risk without the proliferation of studies that we have today. Maybe risk simply did not exist back then since no studies confirmed it?
  - ouid 4y ago
    >you cannot see adverse risk in certain activities without a study - observational, RCT, or otherwise - confirming it. This is pretty far from my claim. I didn't say that I don't believe things without clinical evidence. I said that there is a conspicuous lack of clinical evidence for something which otherwise has so many claims surrounding it. Even a simple questionnaire would be publishable, if it showed an effect. Do you close your toilet lid? Have you had an illness in which you experienced vomiting or diarrhea in the last 6 months? How many people do you live with? I think perhaps you assume that "you are with the experts" on this one. That most researchers consider the evidence presented in this article to be good evidence that there is a health benefit to closing the toilet lid of your toilet. I can assure you that most researchers do not consider this to be good evidence, exactly because it has no clinical endpoint. It might as well say "in mice". Perhaps you believe that there is some common sense reason to think that toilet plume is a bad thing, but common sense largely fails to come to correct conclusions about germs. Which is the case that I have been making in this thread.