11 ms·

My dad could still be alive, but he's not

• rectang 11mo ago
  This story reminds me of how the high schoolers on the Korean ferry MV Sewol obeyed the instructions to stay in their rooms.
  • davidw 11mo ago
    I don't have this one in my memory but... high schoolers? I'm not going to look that up.
    • neom 11mo ago
      There are a few docs out there on it, extremely extremely extremely insane/sad situation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_A8dq2fA5o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_A8dq2fA5o
      • gblargg 11mo ago
        Some haunting cellphone video from the students' view: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9U-TQrxBOxY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9U-TQrxBOxY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZuex_dnpBM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZuex_dnpBM (23-minutes of more raw video)
        • davidw 11mo ago
          Yeah that's a nope from me. Not going to click.
  • prmph 11mo ago
    Also the Grenfell tower fire
  • nrhrjrjrjtntbt 11mo ago
    Just read about it on Wikipedia. Straight up murder. This isn't "you shouldn't follow instructions" but more "dont get murdered". They 2x overloaded cargo, made it loose, captain abandons ship while staying in place order remains.
    • kingstnap 11mo ago
      Yeah this is really way out there. The crew and captian straight up murdered those passengers. There was literally no reason to tell the students to stay put there were even rescue boats available.
      • rectang 11mo ago
        For me the common element is in how people trusted authority when that authority issued instructions which seemed reasonable but turned out to be deadly. The character of the MV Sewol's captain isn't material.
    • deleted 11mo ago
      [deleted]
• hcknwscommenter 11mo ago
  Something similar happened to a friend of mine. In San Francisco. I just sort of assumed it was just bad luck. Bad things happen occasionally even in good systems. But maybe that assumption is wrong? Is this a thing? Are ambulances just unreliable?
  • deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
  • sitharus 11mo ago
    It Depends. It's going to depend on your location, how your health system works, and a bunch of luck. Even in the most well-resourced system if your high-priority call comes in just after a bunch of other high-priority calls you may not get an ambulance in time as everyone's already helping someone else. Also in our current economic system there's a whole bunch of pressures that mean we can't base our medical care availability on the worst case, so sometimes people don't get the care they need due to lack of staff. However I do think in a good system dispatchers would have visibility to know if an ambulance can be dispatched or retasked and how long it will take to get there. You can't make good recommendations without the information to do so.
  • zahlman 11mo ago
    FWIW, I also live in Toronto and been in an ambulance a fair few times (generally for false alarms that were still worth checking out); I can't recall it ever taking that long for an ambulance to arrive, even reporting less severe symptoms.
• chzblck 11mo ago
  I'm really sorry about your dad. I bet he's proud of you for writing and sharing this to help others.
• ugh123 11mo ago
  >my dad is dead, because his family members were too naive to know that the thing they were instructed to do by the state was a false thing. We're told a lot of things by "officials" not because it's correct, but because it holds the least legal liability for official parties involved, especially anything involving healthcare. These officials also sometimes include doctors, who work to protect themselves and the system first, and then patients.
  • vkou 11mo ago
    We're also told to do a lot of things by officials because it's correct most of the time, but with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, generally correct advice can turn out to be dead wrong for you. Sometimes doing what you're told is the right thing. Sometimes, not doing what you're told is the right thing. Sometimes, you're told to do the intuitive thing, and it's wrong. Sometimes, you're told to do the unintuitive thing, and it's wrong. It's hard to tell the difference between those situations, even when you're not stressed.
    • userbinator 11mo ago
      Perhaps 2020 hindsight, even.
      • vkou 11mo ago
        The 2020, in hindsight was largely correct. COVID was a highly infectious disease, it put a lot of people in the hospital, and a lot of people in the morgue. Social distancing and wearing masks slowed its spread, until an effective, safe vaccine was developed. Horse paste was not a cure for it, and after further investigation it turns out that it only had a positive effect on patients who, in addition to having COVID, also had worms. (To the surprise of absolutely everyone, it turned out that giving de-wormer to people with worms improved their health.) For some reason, chronic contrarians always to point at a few details that were gotten wrong during the fog of war, and shout from the rooftops that if only they were in charge, we'd all be living in castles made of candy and shitting rainbows. Joke's on us, though, those contrarians have since made a moron who doesn't believe in germs... The Secretary of Health.
• deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
• vondur 11mo ago
  This is horrible. What is going on in Toronto that ambulances take 30 minutes to respond?
  • ch2026 11mo ago
    I’d assume it’s there’s X ambulances and Y calls and occasionally Y>X. The bigger issue is the dispatcher not being aware of overloaded status nor conveying that information to the caller.
    • croes 11mo ago
      There are also things like accidents or traffic jams
  • starkparker 11mo ago
    https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/toronto-paramedic-staffing-plan-1.7558006 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/toronto-paramedic-sta... > Last year, Toronto paramedics reported that in 2023 there were 1,200 occasions where no ambulances were available to respond to an emergency call. That was up from only 29 occasions in 2019. > CUPE Local 416, the union representing 1,400 paramedics working in Toronto, has also reported high instances of burnout in recent years.
    • canucker2016 11mo ago
      There were several reports during the pandemic about lack of ambulance service in Toronto: - 2022 - https://www.blogto.com/city/2022/01/toronto-ran-out-ambulances-people-blaming-doug-ford/ https://www.blogto.com/city/2022/01/toronto-ran-out-ambulanc... - 2023 - https://www.blogto.com/city/2023/10/paramedics-raise-alarm-claiming-toronto-doesnt-have-enough-ambulances/ https://www.blogto.com/city/2023/10/paramedics-raise-alarm-c... from the 2025 Program Summary for Toronto Paramedic Services, https://www.toronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/8d5d-2025-Public-Book-PS-V1.pdf https://www.toronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/8d5d-2025-...: - Page 3 - Avg 90th Percentile response times have gone from 12 minutes in 2019 & 2020 to 14.5 mins in 2024 and almost 15 minutes as a 2025 target: (12.1, 12.1, 13.0, 14.2, 14.0, 14.5, 14.8) - staffing is up more than 50% in that time, while number of patient transports is up just 10% during that same timeframe - Page 4 - scary graphic - graph concerning Daily Hours with < 10% available ambulances - 2019-2020 - Daily Average - 0 hours, 43 minutes - 2021 - Daily Average - 2 hours, 29 minutes - 2022 - Daily Average - 5 hours, 57 minutes - 2023 - Daily Average - 4 hours, 33 minutes - 2024 - Daily Average - 4 hours, 9 minutes
• moralestapia 11mo ago
  >family members were too naive to know that the thing they were instructed to do by the state was a false thing Would be interesting to see everyone who jumped in here yesterday [1] to comment on this one as well. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45889297 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45889297
  • CamperBob2 11mo ago
    What terrifies me personally is that people with 2-digit IQs are apparently being employed in virology labs. That's the kind of realization that could undermine anyone's confidence in government.
    • Marsymars 11mo ago
      I don't know that there really exist any jobs where someone with a 99-IQ who's hard-working and dedicated to getting through the hiring process would never get hired. And really, if your critical virology lab procedures depend on having a double-digit IQ as a floor... you're probably hooped anyway the next time your 120-IQ employee is having a bad day where they slept poorly and are distracted by family problems.
  • komali2 11mo ago
    The problem with Canada and the USA is that there's no educated ideology primed to capture the inherent distrust people have of systems that used to work and now don't, such as government authority. People should absolutely question authority basically all of the time. Authority should be justifying its competence to tell you what you should be doing with every decision it hands down. But there's nobody on the other side of the AM radio hosts to say "yeah the flip flop on COVID masks was weird but it's probably not because billionaires are putting tracking devices in the masks and more because the CDC just didn't understand the issue correctly yet. Here's some studies on the effectiveness of mask wearing in slowing the spread of disease, seems smart to wear one just in case?" Instead you have neoliberal America, politicians on every side of the aisle saying "no matter who we are, at least always trust us," and the only vent from that is alt right and conspiracy theorist podcasters.
• unnamed76ri 11mo ago
  I’ve been reading Influence by Robert Cialdini and just finished a disturbing section about how we are wired to obey an authority figure even when it causes harm. In this instance, the 911 dispatcher was the authority figure. Sad story.
  • croes 11mo ago
    In such cases how do you in advance what causes harm? Waiting for the ambulance or driving yourself? People died also because they didn’t wait for an ambulance.
    • rogerrogerr 11mo ago
      (Not GP): Heart attacks and strokes are the two things where I will always load family members into the car and get to the hospital as quickly as practicable. Time is brain, and time is heart. I’d call 911 on the way and have them notify the hospital what’s going on. I figure that if I’m a 10 minute drive from the hospital, it’s highly unlikely that lights and sirens will get to me and then to the hospital quicker than I can do only the second leg. If they want to meet me halfway, fine - but if they aren’t there, I’m not waiting. Everything else? Sure, we can wait for the ambulance. I can control bleeding or whatever and you’ll live through some pain without lasting side effects. But if there isn’t blood going to an organ, we are gonna get that fixed ASAP.
  • gryfft 11mo ago
    See also the Milgram Experiment.
    • croes 11mo ago
      Doesn’t fit here because you don’t know if obeying or ignoring causes the harm.
      • gryfft 11mo ago
        The comment I replied to mentioned Cialdini's Influence: > just finished a disturbing section about how we are wired to obey an authority figure even when it causes harm. I mentioned the Milgram Experiment specifically in the context of this comment.
• croes 11mo ago
  > my dad is dead, because his family members were too naive to know that the thing they were instructed to do by the state was a false thing. Hindsight is 20/20. There are also cases where people died because they didn’t wait for the ambulance. So without proper statistics that‘s a dangerous conclusion.
• captainkrtek 11mo ago
  My condolences, very sorry for your loss. I work as an EMT (911) and resourcing is certainly a problem. In my small city, our response time is around 5 minutes, and if we need to upgrade to get paramedics, that’s maybe another 5-10. However, if we are out on a call, out of service, or the neighboring city is on a call, now the next closest unit is 15+ minutes away.. sometimes there can just be bad luck in that nearby units are already out on multiple calls that came in around the same time, making the next closest response much further. for a heart attack or unstable angina, the most an EMT will do (for our protocols) is recognize the likely heart attack, call for paramedics to perform an EKG to confirm the MI, administer 4 baby aspirin to be chewed and/or nitro (rx only), and monitor closely in case it becomes a cardiac arrest. If medics are far away we will probably head immediately to a hospital with a catheterization lab, or rendezvous with medics for them to takeover transport. The few goals though: - recognition (it could also be something equally bad/worse like an aortic aneurysm). - aspirin to break any clots, assist administering nitro if prescribed. - getting to a cath lab.
  • prmph 11mo ago
    Is it recommended to take or give aspirin ASAP before the EMTs arrive? If so, I wonder if the dad took it.
    • pugio 11mo ago
      Assuming no sensitivities/allergies, give 300mg chewed for faster absorption immediately. Normally (where I am) the dispatcher will tell you to do that on the phone.
      • deleted 11mo ago
        [deleted]
    • captainkrtek 11mo ago
      Yes you could (assuming no allergies or gi bleeds) and just inform the incoming EMTs
• jakebasile 11mo ago
  If the author sees this, I'm sorry for your loss. Losing family is hard, but losing them suddenly makes it harder. Losing them suddenly because of poor advice or (in)action of people who are supposed to help is yet more difficult. I know from experience. It does get easier to deal with, in time.
• mrcwinn 11mo ago
  There's another scenario where someone heads to the hospital and get stuck at a red light or behind and accident or you're speeding and kill someone. It's just hard to know sometimes which path to pick when you don't have a guaranteed outcome on either one. In any case, I'm sorry for your loss. My dad died too due to a heart attack, except he was alone.
  • gryfft 11mo ago
    This just doesn't seem like it takes probability into account. Getting someone to the hospital fast is almost always going to be better than waiting, and moving someone isn't usually inherently damaging if they don't have a spinal injury. In the context of a heart attack, it seems indisputable to me that it is better to drive if you have a safe and sober driver available.
    • bensonn 11mo ago
      It isn't all about getting somebody TO the hospital but getting them INTO the hospital/ED/ER. EMS in an ambulance who are alerting a hospital of an MI enroute will get their attention, a walk-in will have to wait unless there are obvious signs. Calling 911 will normally get LEO on scene that know CPR and can do radio communications. A lot of dispatchers are EMDs (emergency medical dispatchers) that can start helping immediately. You may have off duty EMTs nearby that are scanning the radio. Finding a fixed target it much easier than finding a moving target (white car headed towards hospital), you are on your own if you get stuck in traffic. Statistically, 911/EMS is the best outcome. I agree with another commenter, exceptions do exist.
• the_jeremy 11mo ago
  Thanks to this I looked where my nearest ER is and found that it's 7 minutes away, so I can't imagine calling an ambulance for my wife unless I was worried about her spine. (I don't think she can lift me so the reverse isn't true.)
• michaelhoney 11mo ago
  I'm sorry this happened to you/Jenn. I lost my brother to a heart attack aged 50, but he died immediately. In the end it was very quick, but he had warning signs for years. Look after yourselves, people.
  • riffraff 11mo ago
    Let me add one thing: high blood pressure is both very bad and sometimes has no clear tell signs, and cake people doing sedentary work like IT folks it's very common. Get tested regularly.
• hermannj314 11mo ago
  [flagged]
  • _wdfs 11mo ago
    And people wonder why Luigi Mangione had such wide appeal for so many people. It's not that what he chose to do was morally right (personally I dont condone it at all), more that he represented someone trying to do something about the disease you mention.
    • lisbbb 11mo ago
      We're really tired of billionaires.
    • wk_end 11mo ago
      Y'all are aware that this took place in Canada, right?
• pugio 11mo ago
  I can speak to this. I recently joined a community first responder association (I've always wanted to know what to do in case of a medical emergency) and was shocked to hear the members' horror stories of how long it can take an ambulance to arrive. Like the author, I grew up with the narrative "in trouble, call the ambulance, they'll scream through the streets to get to you in moments". That might still be true where I grew up, in the US, but that's certainly not a guarantee in Melbourne, where I now live. On joining the local volunteer organization, I went from thinking "oh this will be a useful bonus for the community" to "wow, we can literally be essential". Since our org is composed of people living within the community, average response time to ANY call is <5 minutes (lower for cardiac arrest, when people really move). Sometimes one of us is right next door. We can't do everything an ambulance paramedic can, but we can give aspirin, GTN, oxygen, CPR, and defibrillation. We can also usually navigate/bypass the usual triage system to get the ambulance priority upgraded to Code 1 (highest priority, lights + sirens, etc.) If for some reason the ambulance is far away (it backs up all the time), we can go in the patient's car with them to the hospital, with our gear, in case of further issues in transit. I tell everyone now to always call us first (since our dispatcher will also call the ambulance) but while I feel more confident in how I'd handle an emergency, I feel less safe overall, with the system's faults and failings more exposed, and the illusion of security stripped away. My condolences to the author. In terms of updating - consider whether The System is really working. If not, what can you do yourself (or within your larger network) to better prepare...
  • gobins 11mo ago
    Wow melbourne is getting that bad! Does your org have a name?
    • softgrow 11mo ago
      Sounds like Hatzolah Melbourne, https://hatzolah.org.au https://hatzolah.org.au since 1994 Since 1998, in Melbourne for anything that might need a defibrillator a fire engine is sent at the same time as the ambulance (EMR Emergency Medical Response Program). https://www.mja.com.au/journal/2002/177/6/cardiac-arrests-treated-ambulance-paramedics-and-fire-fighters https://www.mja.com.au/journal/2002/177/6/cardiac-arrests-tr... Medical Journal of Australia article. There is also GoodSAM https://www.ambulance.vic.gov.au/goodsam/ https://www.ambulance.vic.gov.au/goodsam/ for individual helpers
• weddpros 11mo ago
  My sincere condolences to the author. Wishing you strength and peace. I once saw a man have a heart attack on the beach, less than a 5 minutes drive from a fire-station and rescue team. A helicopter arrived after 45 minutes, and the man was deceased already. That was in Martinique, french Caribbean. There's a need for an app to let patients track the ambulance. It's been possible for 10+ years, as seen with Uber. It seems existing products have focused on tracking only for the purpose of managing a fleet, missing the focus on patients needs.
  • selcuka 11mo ago
    > There's a need for an app to let patients track the ambulance I don't want to blame anyone, but I'm pretty sure that kind of visibility is not desired.
    • weddpros 11mo ago
      Not desired by whom? I think transparency is desired by citizens/customers. Do you think there are (good) reasons why obscurity is preferred?
      • filleduchaos 11mo ago
        Personally I see plenty of problems with a real-time public broadcast of all the addresses a medical event has occurred at, the patients' location in transit, and the hospitals that received those patients. "Ambulance chaser" is a rather derogatory phrase for a reason.
        • weddpros 11mo ago
          I'm certainly not suggesting that. Read on. An emergency dispatcher could send a Text message back with a link to a private, case-limited, web page with an ETA + a map + the ambulance location in real time. See? no "real-time public broadcast of all the addresses a medical event has occurred at".
        • pas 11mo ago
• stinkbeetle 11mo ago
  > my dad is dead, because his family members were too naive to know that the thing they were instructed to do by the state was a false thing. The primary goal of the state is to ensure the power of the state is perpetuated. It's really the only goal of the state, anything it does good for its people is a side effect in its pursuit of maintaining power. The government doesn't care about you, doesn't care about your health, your children's education, your safety, your house, your job, anything else about you except in as far as they provide conditions for people sufficient to avoid large scale civil unrest and threat of government losing authority. If individuals get crushed in the machine, nobody gives a shit, least of all the government. This is the reason vigilantism is viewed so harshly by the state and tends to attract much more attention and harsher punishment than a crime that was not motivated by justice. Not because the outcome for a victim of vigilantism is any different, but because the act threatens to undermine the authority of the state in application of justice. The biggest perpetrators of atrocities and injustice, war, murder, theft, genocide, death and suffering through negligence and incompetence, has been the state and agents of the state. Everybody should be critical of everything the government, politicians, bureaucrats, "experts" tell you at all times. Consider they can and do lie and cover-up as easily as a person drinks water, consider motivations, and explore outcomes and alternatives and consider what is best for you, your family, your community, your society. Use your common sense, don't prejudice your ideas with what gets repeated about things. Develop plans accordingly, or at least spend a little time to think about these things. This is not "conspiratorial". The actual conspiracy theory would that those in government are conspiring to actually help the people foremost. Anybody who puts forward that kind of crazed unfounded conspiracy theory had better come up with air-tight evidence, otherwise they'd just be peddling far-something ultra-something disinformation.
  • roncesvalles 11mo ago
    >The primary goal of the state is to ensure the power of the state is perpetuated. Well, that makes sense considering failure of the state is a very, very bad situation.
    • stinkbeetle 11mo ago
      That's not why it makes sense. And it's not even true, the failure of Pol Pot's communist state was best for the greater good, the failure of the Nazi state was a good thing. The failure of the Islamic State was great too (not always necessarily true for everybody who have hitched their wagons or bet their fortune on the success of the state of course, but for most people). Whether the success or failure of the state is good or bad for people is irrelevant to the goal of the state, as I said. You can and do have states that are better or worse for the people, all share the goal of the perpetuation of the power of the state.
• moralestapia 11mo ago
  [flagged]
• beyondCritics 11mo ago
  It is terrible to lose a relative in young age. But at least 80% percent of all heart diseases are known to be fully avoidable. The risk factors are known for ages and as matter of fact every adult is fully responsible to care for his own health. The right thing to do, is to watch out for a healthy diet.
• samdoesnothing 11mo ago
  Such a tragedy, and I'm really not surprised it happened in Canada. Our healthcare system here is utter garbage and there isn't really any political will to do anything about it because "it's better than the Americans at least" (it's not). I don't buy that it's underfunded either, it's just sorely mismanaged and nobody wants to build or grow. Even a child could tell you if you increase the population of a country by 10% in ten years, you also need to grow its infrastructure by at least that amount - but our political class are idiots and haven't even considered it. After all it's not "green" to build more hospitals. And thus we get situations like this where there literally aren't enough ambulances to handle the load. I'm sorry if I'm ranting under a post about a father's passing, but tragedies like this are so avoidable that it practically sends me into a rage. This person should still be alive, she should still have her father. Fuck sakes.
  • canucker2016 11mo ago
    Not 10% population increase in ten years, it was 10% population increase in 3 years. (An increase in immigration rate of 4x over those three years compared to the previous 20 years - makes the USA's southern border influx look minor in comparison) And the population increase wasn't spread evenly across the country...
    • samdoesnothing 11mo ago
      jfc
    • canucker2016 11mo ago
      I was wrong about the size of the increase - after checking the numbers again, the increase seems to be about 80-100% increase in immigration since the pandemic started (an exception is the first year of the pandemic where it dropped below previous year levels).
  • dnlzro 11mo ago
    What makes you draw that connection between climate policy and a lack of new hospital/healthcare construction projects?
• Magi604 11mo ago
  This is a very tragic story and my heart goes out to the family. It's one I've seen a few times now and hear about on a very regular basis from my coworkers. I am a Canadian Paramedic (EMR soon to be PCP in a few months, roughly equivalent to EMT and AEMT respectively). Some things strike out at me: - Here in BC our calltakers can advise patients on some treatments. I'm sure if that were to happen here, they would have advised the family to administer some ASA (Aspirin) to the patient which would have bought valuable time until professional care could be reached. Even if it was found to be contraindicated, the fact it was not mentioned in the blog post stands out to me. - I'm not familiar with the geography of Toronto or its normal traffic patterns, but it's surprising that a single ambulance was not 30 minutes from the patient driving lights and sirens at that time of night (shortly after dinner). - Fire crews here in BC are dispatched to severe medical incidents (like heart attacks) and most of the time can even beat ambulance crews to a scene. They would have been able to provide CPR if needed, possibly even ASA or Nitro depending on their scope. So again it's surprising that there's no mention of them. Perhaps they aren't dispatched to medical calls in Toronto? - Lastly it's surprising that the calltaker had no visibility on where the dispatched crews were at. At the very least they could have radioed the crew to get an ETA. I guess I just take it for granted that over here we are tracked as soon as we sign in to our vehicle (it's a safety thing especially in some of our more rural/remote stations). If the ambulance was just about to reach the patient right before the family decided to go to the hospital on their own, things might have turned out differently. Also since I'm assuming that a large percentage of HN readers are older males who are at risk of a heart attack (due to factors like working desk jobs and not keeping up with fitness as much), read up on the signs and symptoms of a heart attack and keep a bottle of aspirin at the ready. Bodies are complicated and weird and you never know.
  • fsckboy 11mo ago
    >Fire crews here in BC are dispatched to severe medical incidents (like heart attacks) and most of the time can even beat ambulance crews to a scene according to the blog post, the father was talking (said "be careful" about a left hand turn) and apparently ambulatory (collapsed on his way into the hospital), so perhaps it wasn't yet considered a severe medical incident yet. in the post she was told by her mother that father was in the hospital and she could visit him in the morning. This was at 11:30pm, hours after the arrival at the hospital which was within an hour "after dinner" seems to me the father's condition was not known to be that severe, and well after the "late" arrival at the hospital he was thought to be in good condition. (tho always possible the hospital staff was not keeping the mother informed)
• deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
• markus_zhang 11mo ago
  I’m so sad to see this. For anyone who reads this, get a day, learn CPR, and buy that machine if your parents or whoever has history of heart issues. The machine doesn’t fix every kind of heart diseases but the trainer told me it decreases the possibility of death from a heart attack greatly. I recall that the possibility is lowered by 50% if you do CPR and 80% with the machine. It is not hard to use the machine as it has clear instructions. They probably expect you to still be able to read when in panic.
  • girishso 11mo ago
    Which machine? Defibrillator or EKG?
    • infinet 11mo ago
      GP likely means defibrillator. EKG along won't save life and it requires training to read EKG. An AED has a built-in smart EKG that can identify shockable fibrillation. There is also automatic CPR machine that can do chest compression. However manual CPR is still light years better than no CPR.
  • jopsen 11mo ago
    This was the first heart attack. Sometimes lightening strikes, you have bad luck. And there is no guarantee that getting to the hospital faster would changes the outcome. But taking the car is decidedly a decent option of the hospital is only 15 mins away.
  • manyturtles 11mo ago
    Alas the data doesn't agree: "Bystander-initiated CPR may increase [survival] odds to 10%" From: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/05/29/1177914622/a-natural-death-may-be-preferable-for-many-than-enduring-cpr https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/05/29/1177914... Referenced underlying study: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20123673/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20123673/ Absolutely worth training for and administering, but far from 100% success.
    • 11mo ago
• boxerab 11mo ago
  [flagged]
  • add-sub-mul-div 11mo ago
    Immigration is like the free square in Bingo. It can be the cause of any problem you want!
    • gwelner 11mo ago
      [dead]
    • hytrex 11mo ago
      [flagged]
    • Dettul 11mo ago
      In fairness it is actually causing a lot of problems in the West...
      • boxerab 11mo ago
        I would say this is one of the mortal dangers currently facing the West - more particularly, importing people who hate the West and would like to see it become like their failed origin states.
        • nozzlegear 11mo ago
          I would say that your contrived scenario is just a failure to assimilate immigrants, and, frankly, a skill issue. The US does not have this problem, and it's no coincidence that it's colloquially known as the "Great Melting Pot" of cultures.
          • boxerab 11mo ago
            Good lord, take a look at Dearborn, Michigan, then get back to me.
• twodave 11mo ago
  I feel this, but in reverse. My son could be dead, but he’s not. He was born on the floor of a trailer park apartment, not breathing. His birth mother’s partner called 911, who dispatched an ambulance. All rescue units for his zone were already busy. An ambulance returning from the nearby hospital to another zone heard the call over the radio and happened to be passing by. The hospital was expecting a DOA, but the paramedics (HEROES) managed to get him breathing again on the way. He’s 11 now, and he is the source of all kinds of trouble and joy. Our home would be very different without him.
  • mlrtime 11mo ago
    Amazing story, Thank you!
  • jredwards 11mo ago
    I cannot even imagine the horror and the relief. I imagine if I were those paramedics, getting a card or a picture from that kid would make my whole year.
  • jll29 11mo ago
    Ex-paramedic here. Happy to here your son is fine. But either you mistold the story, or the paramedics made a mistake: ambulances are not supposed to transport a dead person - the paramedics are first to resuscitate and stabilize the patient, and only then initiate transportation. (I understand you may not care, because the outcome of their action incidentally was one you like.)
    • IAmBroom 11mo ago
      You are assuming things twodave didn't say. He didn't say the baby wasn't breathing when they picked him up. He said the hospital was expecting a DOA - presumably because of the news along the way, before they resuscitated the baby.
    • twodave 11mo ago
      There is probably some nuance that I am just not aware of. As the adoptive parents it is difficult to get the full account, since we weren't present until a few hours later. From what I was told, he was born with the umbilical cord wrapped around his throat, and just kind of "fell out" while his birth mother was walking from the bathroom to the living room. I know that part is true, at least, because we saw the apartment floor the next day... I think probably the paramedics were able to detect some faint vitals upon arrival. Since the birth mother and her partner weren't super reliable or coherent, we weren't really able to piece it all together until we tracked down the two young men who helped save our son's life that night.
• hitensethiya 11mo ago
  Really sorry for you man! May his soul rest in peace.
• MarkusAllen 11mo ago
  test
• anonymousiam 11mo ago
  The post mentions Toronto, so I'm going to assume that the publicly funded Canadian health care system bears some responsibility for the sad outcome.
  • drgo 11mo ago
    Yes. If emergency services were run by a private company, like airlines for example, they will never ever be 30 minutes late!
    • pas 11mo ago
      that's not exactly fair, air travel is very well optimized for safety and costs, not for availability and latency (and cost in public systems)
• sklargh 11mo ago
  First, I want to offer my condolences to the author. I lost my father suddenly at a similar age—it's terrible. Sending positive energy. Former Firefighter-EMT here — I did this a long time ago in a rural setting). Now to the practical matter. I want to offer some frameworks for thinking about this in rural or exurban transport situations. This is not risk-free or even optimal, and can put you in worse position, but it's worth considering seriously if you suspect you may have a very long or delayed transport time to the hospital. Before anything else, ask yourself two things: Would this person possibly benefit from (A) an automatic external defibrillator (AED) or (B) Narcan[1]? Can the person safely get into a car and be driven to the hospital? If the answer to 1A or 1B is YES: Don't drive. Call 911, clearly state "cardiac arrest," or "overdose" give your exact location, and start effective CPR if required. A police officer with an AED will likely arrive quickly. Getting the location right is critical—this is life-saving information. If 1A/1B don't apply and you can answer YES to question 2: You have some thinking to do. I suggest doing it now, in advance, whenever you move—think through how you'd handle massive bleeding, heart attack, or stroke symptoms. It's worth briefly considering emergency scenarios and the risks you're willing to accept. Ambulances or fire engines sometimes can't reach you quickly: logistical issues, mechanical failures, dispatcher problems, insufficient volunteers. In rural settings during a cardiac event, waiting thirty minutes for basic EMS care—followed by a 30-60 minute hospital transport when you have alternative transportation—may not be your best choice. Even in a volunteer live-in program with career-grade response times, I found it could take 20-30 minutes to reach people at the edge of our territory. That's not counting the 2-3 minutes to get us awake and out the door at the station, plus another 2-3 for dispatch. My household is minutes from two decent suburban EDs (we're lucky). Certain situations would lead us to skip 911 and drive straight to the ED: massive hemorrhage or an obvious heart attack when another adult is present to drive. This requires nuance. Time saved by skipping the ambulance can easily be lost to an incompetent admissions screener. You need to use the magic words: "heart attack," "chest pain," "think I am going to die." If you're having a stroke, you may not be able to drive at all (and you shouldn't). You'll also need to choose the right hospital—challenging in the moment, potentially impossible if you're impaired. The wrong hospital can be as lethal as waiting for an excessively delayed ambulance. In large cities with saturated EDs, this strategy often doesn't work: too many false alarms and just overall volume mean you won't skip the line. I have direct experience managing and assessing these issues. You may not—consider getting meaningful first aid training. It helps. The general rule: If you're confident in your department and know a nearby fire station generally has a paramedic-engine or paramedic-staffed ambulance with reasonable response times, wait for it - paramedics can do a lot for you on the way to the hospital and most critically get you to the best facility for care. You could crash your car or deteriorate en route to the point where you can't drive. But if you're fifteen to twenty minutes in and don't hear sirens (admittedly, not all departments use sirens properly), it's time to consider leaving—and how you're going to do it. [1] Regarding Narcan: I won't engage in broader discussion about police possibly asking about circumstances requiring it—that's your business. IANAL. But many cops and almost all ambulances carry it, and the person will be alive after they administer it.
• blobbers 11mo ago
  My condolences. Did the ambulance ever show up to your house?
• lhh 11mo ago
  Very sad, for more reasons than one. For pretty much everyone, heart disease is totally preventable now. If you’re over 30, get your ApoB checked (non HDL cholesterol is a proxy), and if it’s high, get a calcium scan on your heart. If you score above zero, get your ApoB down as low as possible (which will probably require drugs - diet barely moves the needle on this for most people). Low ApoB -> no heart disease. Source: Peter Attia
• Xunie 11mo ago
  Someone, please, for the love of all that is holy: Set up a website with information on how to reach emergency services from x to y country. People are literally dying here. I once tried to call an ambulance on an active suicide attempt in the United States (while I myself was in Europe). Problem 1: What number should I call? My country's national emergency line could not help and had no direct communication with ANY emergency services in the USA. Unable to find the phone number for EMS in the USA, I called the local police department which was answering their regular phone line at that time. Problem 2: This requires long distance calling and local police departments do not accept collect calls. Problem 3: Police receptionist was hesitant to connect me to dispatch but did so anyways. Problem 4: I am now easily 10-20 minutes into making an emergency phone call and I haven't even talked to anyone able to help me. Problem 5: Ambulance took another 10-15 minutes to even show up. I explicitly stated "they just took pills, they have no neurological symptoms right now, do not leave immediately." Problem 6: Ambulance left after a simple "it's a prank call" given at the front door. Not much later, this person started showing severe neurological symptoms. I repeated the call, told them they were now actively dying and needed help. Luckily an ambulance came and helped this person, but it was an incredibly close call.
• protocolture 11mo ago
  >i don't understand why the common narrative that i was told, that we were all told growing up, is that one should wait for an ambulance My wife had a seizure a few years ago, and the first response team clocked in under 5 minutes (close to 3 by my count but I wasnt paying a lot of attention). Then 2 more ambulances arrived <5 more minutes. There was straight up an emergency services gathering at my front door. The emergency response team is an SUV rather than a full ambulance, with 2 trained paramedics and as much kit as they can fit in. They are faster, because they don't do patient transport, and can arrive ahead of patient transport vehicles. See issues with "ramping" and so forth. Anyway, this is really an issue of local government policy. Just vote/spay/neuter/tar/feather your politicians.
  • DustinEchoes 11mo ago
    What country was this?
    • protocolture 11mo ago
      Australia.
      • culi 11mo ago
        In this post alone there's at least one other comment from someone very familiar with Melbourne's emergency response system deriding its shortcomings. I think it's clear there's always gonna be a ton of variation
        • squigz 11mo ago
          It's not so much about the amount of variation in experiences - it's more that even 1 bad experience reflects harshly on the entire system.
        • protocolture 11mo ago
          Melbs has had a pretty well publicised Ambulance funding crisis. https://vic.liberal.org.au/news/2024-11-28-riordan-triple-zero-victorias-funding-slashed-by-labor https://vic.liberal.org.au/news/2024-11-28-riordan-triple-ze... https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/may/19/ambulance-delays-caused-by-victorias-triple-zero-system-leading-to-dire-outcomes-for-patients https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/may/19/ambul...
• antman 11mo ago
  I have the opposite story. Friend collapses in front of the house. I pick him up and rush him to the hospital, he is a geek and we had spent great amount of time going over his rare genetic condition that randomly causes internal bleedings from his organs. No ambulance available but no traffic also, we arrive soon at the hospital. Only to wait for 1hr or more because he didn't look bad, since internal bleeding doesn't look bad, and his arrival time (or cause) had not been registered on the system since we came by car. After we were finally admitted in the actual room the doctor said his ematocrit was lower than a dead person’s, but fortunately he was saved that time.
• noduerme 11mo ago
  It's not moloch. It's all health systems, even ones that are religiously oriented. Triage and logistics and having enough trained people working all hours to handle all cases of life threatening situations... it's a bug in all systems. Nothing is scarier than the moment you realize you're in the hands of the medical establishment. Whatever that looks like, wherever you are. Ever tried to rush a mechanic to fix your car? Ever tried to argue with a gate agent at the airport about rebooking a cancelled flight? Now imagine doing that while your heart is failing and 10,000 other people are also trying to get their attention. If you want to blame anything, blame the fact that our society has failed to produce sufficient numbers of people trained or willing to help in emergency situations. And the people who sacrifice their lives to doing it are heros, the finest of us. The difference between individual societies and governments is quite small in the long run.
  • Aurornis 11mo ago
    > It's not moloch. It's all health systems, even ones that are religiously oriented. The moloch reference is a shibboleth for the rationalist community. It’s not an actual religious reference. There’s another reference to “updating” further down which is another rationalist term meaning “updating your priors”.
    • endtime 11mo ago
      Specifically: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
    • noduerme 11mo ago
      Huh. This gets complicated. I wasn't making an appeal to religion... my perception was that "moloch" was understood by non-religious socialist-leaning people to mean the god of money or capitalism (which seems to comport with what you're saying). But it has a separate meaning as a vengeful deity from the bronze age that demands sacrifice and which is used as an example in Abrahamicreligions for why you shouldn't worship other deities. I was pointing out that the alternative to a "moloch" health care system would be a "religious" one - by which I guess I meant a Judeo/Christian/Islamic one, but it serves a few separate meanings, like, one which isn't at its core capitalistic, or one which doesn't sacrifice children. All I was trying to say was that the organizing ideology of such a system (healthcare) doesn't matter as much as having enough people committed to and working within the system. A capitalist version may work better than a communist one, e.g. at developing new approaches to disease, or serving more people in more tailored ways, as long as the incentive structure exists to bring enough people into the workforce so that each practitioner is not overwhelmed. TL;DR I was playing along with the "moloch" reference, although clearly it means different things to different people.
• hytrex 11mo ago
  [flagged]
• efitz 11mo ago
  This is not a criticism of the author of the article; I can feel their frustration and the pain of their loss but I don’t have anything to say that can ameliorate that. I’m coming up on 60 years old. The mindset that many people have now seems to be to wait for someone from the government to help them- whether it’s ambulance, police, health care, food assistance, college, whatever. Back in the 80s when I was coming of age the mindset among the people around me was different. The mindset of many people today seems more “I’m helpless”. The government has never been good at anything; it doesn’t have the right organizational incentives and doesn’t give the right personal incentives to employees. I’m not criticizing government employees; there are individuals that do a great job, and from time to time I am delighted with an interaction, but mostly it’s just lots of waiting for mediocre service. I don’t know how to change a widespread mindset of helplessness, but I suspect that it involves changing laws to remove all the obstacles that government and lawsuits have put in place to helping yourself and helping others.
• badhackernews 11mo ago
  [dead]
• buyx 11mo ago
  My grandfather died at a hospital in South Africa in 1997 after experiencing chest pain. Apparently, he went to reception, and they told him and my uncle to take a lift/elevator up to the ward, and he died in the lift. I was told afterward that it's a no-no to exert oneself during a heart attack. No idea if that's true or not. Anyway, not second guessing OP, just putting it out there.
• onlypassingthru 11mo ago
  The state has an incentive to encourage callers to wait for trained emergency drivers. Nobody wants mom in a panic and flying through red lights at the intersections. Or worse, my former teacher drove himself to the ER while in the midst of a heart attack rather than wait for an ambulance. He didn't survive the attack but made it to the hospital without incident. edit, to add this old gem: "I want to die peacefully in my sleep, like my grandfather. Not screaming and yelling like the passengers in his car."
• NiloCK 11mo ago
  Absolute sympathy for the author. My own story of heavy industrialized medical process goes the other way. My daughter could be dead, but she isn't. At birth, she presented with some abnormalities around her stomach. Not good. We lived in a somewhat remote location where the hospital's capacities were modest. Really not good. Within 8 or 10 hours of birth, she and I were aboard the smallest plane I've ever been on, with a pilot, and neonatal specialist nurse and respiratory therapist (all had arrived on the plane). Daughter was in an incubator and I couldn't touch her. Five or six hours later we were in one of the largest children's hospitals in Canada. Another hour or two and a probable diagnosis was sussed out, and a plan made for a surgical exploration / opportunistic fix. I'm at an age where there are real professionals who register to me as children, and in the pre-op meeting, this is how the anesthesiologist struck me. He was even wearing a Star Wars t-shirt. I didn't mind either the age or the t-shirt, but it was jarring because it situated me somehow as a more responsible participant in the whole situation - a grown-up. Failing to tell him to use the force will proably be the esprit d'escalier that follows to my grave. (I mean, don't turn off the targeting computer, but use the force too.) Anyway. Another six or seven hours - the worst of my life by far - and finally the good news emerges. Seven years ago now. There were probably close to 100 people directly involved in providing care to her that day, and I couldn't imagine the number for indirect involvement. To be honest, all of it was the first experience of gratitude in my life. --- We are all burned daily by the rough edges of our approximating policies and norms - life's outrageous slings and arrows. I'd spent a lifetime being too smart and too aloof to be impressed with anything. Suddenly the most important thing to have ever happened to me went sideways, and put me completely at the mercy of the great machine. It really came through for me. It's a good time to be alive. --- aside: People will have lots of reasonable principled and pragmatic objections to $MEGACORP laundering image via $OUTREACH_EFFORT, but I'll also take the moment to say that Ronald McDonald House is the real deal. Lifesaver. Extraordinary reach to provide a sense of "new-normalcy" utterly snide and unnecessary dig: The weakest meal (although not bad by any means) that I had at McDonald House came from Microsoft. Hard for a tech company to compete with groups named "3rd Street Grandma's Club" in terms of banger comfort food. Thanks for the pizza, MS.
• bensonn 11mo ago
  I won't call clickbait on this as it is a personal site and the headline is accurate. I saw another article recently with the same issues. He is dead from a heart attack. If dispatch, EMS, hospitals, etc. didn't exist doesn't mean he would be alive. They didn't kill him, they failed to save him. The other article I saw was how the hospital "killed" a drowning victim. Water was never mentioned. There are many failures in our systems. There will always be exceptions to rules. It is a heart-breaking story but at the same time it is impressive. Maybe the system failed on this call but the fact that their is a system with this many resources is amazing. Hit 3 digits on the phone and LEO, EMS, Fire are all alerted 24/7 us pretty impressive to me.
  • MattRix 11mo ago
    I’ve gotta say I’m almost impressed at how callous this response to the story is.
  • monadgonad 11mo ago
    > I won't call clickbait on this But you are going to imply it by bringing it up at all. > They didn't kill him, they failed to save him. The post does not say otherwise. Please give this, of all topics, the respect it deserves, respond to the article as it is actually written, and don't use this, of all things, as an opportunity to get on your high horse about some other article you have problems with.
• sohrob 11mo ago
  The emergency response system is broken in many areas. I once dialed 911 in Los Angeles seeking help for a motorist and was put on hold for 8 minutes. A lot can happen in that time.
• aarroyoc 11mo ago
  So sorry for your loss. Some months ago I was very angry to found out that a person was dead for a bike injury that can be easily solved but he had to wait for almost 50 minutes for the ambulance. Not because he was far away, but because he was in between two regions and the 112 was discussing who should send the ambulance. In fact, they initially send one and later told the driver to go back while in the highway. He's dead just because he happened to have the accident near the border of two regions of the same country, each one with its own public health system. Link (Spanish): https://www.elespanol.com/alicante/vega-baja/20251028/hijo-ciclista-muerto-sin-ayuda-murcia-alicante-preocupados-pagaba-ambulancia/1003743988842_0.html https://www.elespanol.com/alicante/vega-baja/20251028/hijo-c...
• DeathArrow 11mo ago
  I can't help but feel that this tragedy is closely related to the the direction Canadian politics and society is heading. This should never have happened.
  • Sprocklem 11mo ago
    What direction is that?
• whatsupdog 11mo ago
  [flagged]
• didgetmaster 11mo ago
  Communities across the world have a dilemma. How to have enough emergency responders available without breaking the budget. They tend to staff just enough to handle a normal workload plus a little extra. A major event can overwhelm them. If you have an emergency when no one else has one, you can get a quick response. If there happens to be three other emergencies in your area at the same time, then the response time may be very slow.
• zitsarethecure 11mo ago
  Sorry for your loss, but this experience is not universal in Toronto. I was visiting my (sick) older brother about a year ago when he woke me up calling out about chest pain. I called an ambulance and they were there within about 10 minutes and saved his life, for which me and my family are so very grateful. Had he been visiting me here in Ohio when he had his heart attack, the results may not have been as good. https://fox8.com/news/i-team/i-team-more-people-waiting-30-minutes-for-an-ambulance-see-why/ https://fox8.com/news/i-team/i-team-more-people-waiting-30-m...
• philipwhiuk 11mo ago
  Not having visiblity on how far the ambulances are away is wild.
• Surac 11mo ago
  My condolence to you. I live in Germany and had to call the ambulance on different occasions. Ambulance driver later told us to never wait for them to always try to get to ER ourself
• jll29 11mo ago
  First of all, Jenn, I'm very sorry about your father's passing. The scheduler gave your family the correct instruction to wait for the ambulance car to arrive. There is something called the "rescue chain", which begins with first aiders (standers by) who are expected to take first action, then hand over to paramedics upon their arrival, who in turn provide professional emergency care and transport the patient - once stable - to a hospital, again handing over the patient to an ER/stationary care. Instead of "just waiting", next of kin are normally advised to start resuscitation procedures according to the algorithm recommended by the Red Cross or CHA * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiopulmonary_resuscitation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiopulmonary_resuscitation * https://www.redcross.org/take-a-class/cpr/performing-cpr/cpr-steps?srsltid=AfmBOopJTBKCVLQ30nAC3ziTV0zE6b0OywQ4sBCTOra3mt6sNq25Vu7c https://www.redcross.org/take-a-class/cpr/performing-cpr/cpr... * https://www.mayoclinic.org/first-aid/first-aid-cpr/basics/art-20056600 https://www.mayoclinic.org/first-aid/first-aid-cpr/basics/ar... All kind of bad things can happen when transporting a critically ill person in a private car, notably accidents caused by a shaking, stressed and overwhelmed driver (e.g. a relative) ignoring traffic lights actual traffic and sometimes buildings. Ambulances have medication onboard as well as qualified staff, and they are only supposed to live once a patient is deemed stable. In case an ambulance is very far away, the scheduler can also be asked to send a volunteer semi-professional or professional aider e.g. a medic living in the neighborhood or a Red Cross paramedic volunteer, to walk over and bridge the time. Once, one of my co-workers died in the office (in Switzerland), which was right next to a hospital, despite two dedicated colleagues calling for help and administering CPR/first aid (I was at home in the shower when it happened). It can happen that all cars are somewhere else, or all emergency medical staff is already dealing with emergencies. In this case, the ambulance arrived after more than 40 minutes, which triggered a routine investigation by the attorney general. To all readers: in case you have never taken a First Aid course, now it is the time to register for one. They are typically offered free of charge, and you may regret one day not to follow this advice now in case you are thrown into a situation such as standing next to a loved one of yours who collapses.
• theturtle 11mo ago
  [dead]
• encoderer 11mo ago
  I was floored when watching the recent documentary about the Grenfell fire that residents who called 911 were told to stay put and if they needed to evacuate a fireman will come. These poor people, inside an inferno, losing their last chance to escape, because they listened to the official state policy. An animal knows to run from a burning barn but here we are, trained to ignore that instinct.
• KETpXDDzR 11mo ago
  I can highly recommend looking to response times for you locality. For me it's Denver and I'm shocked that they didn't meet any of their goals: https://www.denvergov.org/files/assets/public/v/2/auditor/documents/audit-services/audit-reports/2024/emergency-medical-response-time-december-2024-final.pdf https://www.denvergov.org/files/assets/public/v/2/auditor/do...
• tsoukase 11mo ago
  It cannot be taken for granted that arriving at the hospital alive, he would stay alive. A massive heart infarct or other fatal incident (aortic rupture, lung embolism) must be ruled out through an autopsy which is strongly indicated, if not taken. Such a sudden death usually is predated by alarming symptoms like minor chest pains in the past few days or by a history, like heavy smoking, uncontrolled hypertension/diabetes or a covered anxiety/stress An ambulance is for emergencies but unfortunately only effective for hour-long ones, not minute-long. For the latter self transport might work in a life or death situation.
• rufus_foreman 11mo ago
  Where I live, it's common for them to not answer when you call 911. They were out trying to steal my neighbor's car, and my girlfriend called 911, and no one would answer. She went and banged on the neighbor's door and told them someone was trying to steal their car, she walked right past the car thieves to do this, which was more than I would do, because I was scared of getting shot. The car thieves noticed and moved down the block to steal someone else's car. My girlfriend stayed on the line, but yeah, 911 never answered. You live somewhere where the ambulance is too slow when you call 911, be grateful. Here, they just don't answer. You deal with whatever it is personally. 911 never answered. They were busy with something else I guess. For the woke/progressives among you, I agree, this was not as bad as the crime wave of the late 1980's and early 1990's. I was there for that crime wave. It was fucking epic. This was not as bad as that, so we're all good. This is fine.