5 ms·

This adds a lot of necessary balance to the discussion. That being said, I can show you literally dozens if not hundreds of situations where a few minutes (act

This adds a lot of necessary balance to the discussion. That being said, I can show you literally dozens if not hundreds of situations where a few minutes (actually seconds) made all the difference between life and death.

JshWright 12y ago
Absolutely. That's still a very small fraction of 911 encounters. It's also probably more true for law enforcement calls. In the case of EMS calls, really the only things that need to happen Right Now™ are basic airway maneuvers (positioning, Heimlich, etc), CPR, and defibrillation. If you can do those things (all of which are taught in a CPR class), you've got 90% of the EMS related 'seconds matter' scenarios covered.
- rgrieselhuber 12y ago
  Agreed on the EMS calls and, to your point, is why first aid / CPR training is important for pretty much everybody.
  - copperx 12y ago
    Do they teach defibrillation in CPR classes?
    - JshWright 12y ago
      Yes (also an AHA CPR instructor...) A 'basic' CPR class for the layperson includes CPR for adults and pediatrics, using an AED, and the Heimlich Maneuver
    - noir_lord 12y ago
      They do here (in the UK) but the modern kits are self teaching (literally, you open them up and they start talking) plus self monitoring (they fire pulses automatically). Lots of businesses (mostly larger) have started having a unit on site as well. I was fascinated by that technology when I did my CPR training last year.
ObviousScience 12y ago
If one in a million people called emergency services on any given day, hundreds of people would be calling every day. (This is a woefully low number: the greater Los Angeles would get a total of 18 calls a day; the greater Seattle area would get a total of 3-4.) Even using this really low number, your "dozens" or "hundreds" would less <1% in under a year. That is, even using artificially low numbers, "dozens" or "hundreds" of cases are no more than freak events.
- Spooky23 12y ago
  I'm not really sure what point you're trying to make with two sets of made up (and nonsensical) numbers. A middle of the road urban fire company gets around 8,000 dispatches a year. Most of these calls are EMS, and run the gamut. The serious ones are all time sensitive -- someone having a cardiac incident or serious car accident needs immediate care from someone wight a clue. I think the real point here is the bullshit/ignorant knee-jerk reactions "911 isn't there to help you" are just that. Thousands of peoples lives are touched in a positive way by efficient emergency services response.
  - ObviousScience 12y ago
    I think you're violently agreeing: my point was that "dozens" or "hundreds" of times that it goes wrong, across the entire US, even if they're all from the same year is a statistical fluke we likely can do nothing about, and does not reflect any underlying problem with the emergency services. This is in direct reply to the person above me essentially making the argument "Well, yes, but I can show you exceptions!" Naturally, the first thing we should do is look at the rate of exceptions and see if that is reasonable for the process that we're talking about. I was pointing out that even low balling the number of calls (a good way to get an estimate on the scale of a situation to reason about it), the number of cases the person was offering to present was such a small fraction, we could never get below that threshold of times things went weird. The reason for low balling the numbers in my estimate is that it made the resulting figures biased towards favoring the argument being made by the other person. If when the number start biased in their favor and still don't support their argument, it's reasonable to use an estimate to reject their claim. The main thrust of my argument was essentially: the number of cases the person above my post offered to present was so small relative to the number of cases happening that they're mere anecdote, not data representing any underlying problem. I would encourage you to understand what estimates are and how they're being used in arguments before making comments about numbers being nonsense or simply referring to them as made up. It simply makes you come across as mathematically ignorant.

JshWright 12y ago

Absolutely. That's still a very small fraction of 911 encounters. It's also probably more true for law enforcement calls. In the case of EMS calls, really the only things that need to happen Right Now™ are basic airway maneuvers (positioning, Heimlich, etc), CPR, and defibrillation. If you can do those things (all of which are taught in a CPR class), you've got 90% of the EMS related 'seconds matter' scenarios covered.

rgrieselhuber 12y ago
Agreed on the EMS calls and, to your point, is why first aid / CPR training is important for pretty much everybody.
- copperx 12y ago
  Do they teach defibrillation in CPR classes?
  - JshWright 12y ago
    Yes (also an AHA CPR instructor...) A 'basic' CPR class for the layperson includes CPR for adults and pediatrics, using an AED, and the Heimlich Maneuver
  - noir_lord 12y ago
    They do here (in the UK) but the modern kits are self teaching (literally, you open them up and they start talking) plus self monitoring (they fire pulses automatically). Lots of businesses (mostly larger) have started having a unit on site as well. I was fascinated by that technology when I did my CPR training last year.

ObviousScience 12y ago

If one in a million people called emergency services on any given day, hundreds of people would be calling every day. (This is a woefully low number: the greater Los Angeles would get a total of 18 calls a day; the greater Seattle area would get a total of 3-4.) Even using this really low number, your "dozens" or "hundreds" would less <1% in under a year. That is, even using artificially low numbers, "dozens" or "hundreds" of cases are no more than freak events.

Spooky23 12y ago
I'm not really sure what point you're trying to make with two sets of made up (and nonsensical) numbers. A middle of the road urban fire company gets around 8,000 dispatches a year. Most of these calls are EMS, and run the gamut. The serious ones are all time sensitive -- someone having a cardiac incident or serious car accident needs immediate care from someone wight a clue. I think the real point here is the bullshit/ignorant knee-jerk reactions "911 isn't there to help you" are just that. Thousands of peoples lives are touched in a positive way by efficient emergency services response.
- ObviousScience 12y ago
  I think you're violently agreeing: my point was that "dozens" or "hundreds" of times that it goes wrong, across the entire US, even if they're all from the same year is a statistical fluke we likely can do nothing about, and does not reflect any underlying problem with the emergency services. This is in direct reply to the person above me essentially making the argument "Well, yes, but I can show you exceptions!" Naturally, the first thing we should do is look at the rate of exceptions and see if that is reasonable for the process that we're talking about. I was pointing out that even low balling the number of calls (a good way to get an estimate on the scale of a situation to reason about it), the number of cases the person was offering to present was such a small fraction, we could never get below that threshold of times things went weird. The reason for low balling the numbers in my estimate is that it made the resulting figures biased towards favoring the argument being made by the other person. If when the number start biased in their favor and still don't support their argument, it's reasonable to use an estimate to reject their claim. The main thrust of my argument was essentially: the number of cases the person above my post offered to present was so small relative to the number of cases happening that they're mere anecdote, not data representing any underlying problem. I would encourage you to understand what estimates are and how they're being used in arguments before making comments about numbers being nonsense or simply referring to them as made up. It simply makes you come across as mathematically ignorant.