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Notes on French Medicine, with a Red Army Choir Bonus
As some of you know, I’ve been complaining ceaselessly for the past couple of days that I’ve picked up a stomach flu. I’ve seen a French doctor. I’ve been assured there’s nothing wrong with me that a few days of rest won’t fix. Nothing to worry about.
Now, it takes a lot to get me to see a doctor in France. If I report having seen one, you know I’m not just malingering. This isn’t because there’s anything wrong with French medical care–French physicians are very competent and well-trained, as far as I can tell. But there’s also no such thing as a French doctor capable of understanding the following words: “I’m not a French citizen. I have a private insurance plan that only covers me in the event of emergencies. You’ve just assured me that this isn’t an emergency. So is there really any good medical reason to order all these tests, given that I’ll have to pay for them myself?”
Do you find that idea impossible to understand? Doesn’t seem too hard to me. But when I say this I’m inevitably met with a blank stare. It’s truly as if this idea–that medical care is not, in fact, free–is too difficult for anyone in France to understand.
This is all the more aggravating when the physician has just checked your vitals and said, “Doesn’t seem like there’s anything to worry about. You’ve got a bug. You’ll be fine.”
So, long story short, I’ve got a bug and I’ll be fine. But I’m still feeling too tired to say anything intelligent about politics. In fact, I can’t really concentrate on the news, and have no idea what’s happening in the world. That said, this came swimming up on my Twitter feed, and I figured it was a must-share. I watched it four times, and it made me laugh more each time.
Is this as hilarious as I think it is, or is my delight with it a sign that I’ve gone a bit loopy from the medication? (Not exactly sure what I was given, but it works. I’m guessing it’s some kind of synthetic opiate, and it either crosses the blood-brain barrier or the placebo effect is even stronger than I realized.)
If only the Russians weren’t insane. It’s just so hard to dislike them.
Published in General
That musical number could have been an outtake from Top Secret!
This thread is getting scarier and scarier.
How do you mean, a great people? Sort of like what makes Britain great? Or what?
I detest any performance of Battle Hymn of the Republic which uses the lyrics, “As He died to make men holy, let us live to make men free.” The only correct version of that line is, “As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free.” It’s a battle hymn, and if you can’t bring yourself to sing it as one, you should shut the [CoC] up!
I had that stomach flu a couple of months ago. I assure you that you will die. But you’ll be too wiped out to quit.
Don’t agree. I think it’s quite efficient to ask the world to take extreme care about spreading infectious disease. While most of us won’t be killed by a cold or a stomach bug, even someone like me is significantly set back by one. I had to turn down assignments this week (tomorrow is a major Turkish election). I’ve been useless as an editor for days, causing inconvenience to my colleagues. Multiply that economic effect across the economy and I’m sure it adds up to a lot of money. And basic moral intuition says we have a particular responsibility to those unlucky enough to be more vulnerable to serious or lethal side-effects of these ailments.
The cost to a single “polluter” of behaving in a way that causes no harm (i.e., self-quarantine) is not apt to be high. The cost to those experiencing the pollution–depending on the virulence of the infection–is apt collectively to be very high. Obviously, I have no idea how many people in Paris have been laid low with this bug, but I assume that if the First Polluter (FP) had chosen to stay home, quite a number of us would have been healthy and productive this week. Depending how many of us FP infected, it makes perfect sense to assign a very high penalty to FP. (Execution seems appropriate to me right now, but I’m willing to concede that this is probably too high. At the very least, though, FP should be socially shamed and viewed as a disgusting, reckless, irresponsible person.)
You can disagree with me on this, and in so doing, you merely evince your habitual concern for others, since you don’t generally fall into this class yourself. For me to agree with you, however, would simply be selfish – it would be expecting the world to revolve around me.
We’d have to run the numbers on this, but I believe most exposures to pathogens do not, in fact, result in acquiring a disease. Generally, a healthy immune system fights disease off.
Since altering routine because of minor illness can result in lost opportunity, lost income, and even loss of a job, I’m less sanguine than you about assuming that the cost to ordinary people of self-quarantining every time they get sick is low. On the other hand, if you’re so vulnerable to, well, everything, that self-quarantining is your routine, perhaps the cost to you of avoiding otherwise-healthy-people-who-come-in-sick is one you’re more willing to accept.
Huzzah! Bastiat! Hazlitt!
I’ll try to figure out what I mean by this on a day when my rational faculties are in better shape, but I suspect that I know what he means. I have a respect–and a fondness–for Russian culture that I don’t for, say, the culture of ISIS. Russia is a tragedy. The seemingly ineliminable authoritarianism of the culture is a curse. ISIS is just an army of degenerate psychopaths. And nothing more.
When I read that we’ve killed 10,000 ISIS fighters, my first reaction is, “I hope so. Keep killing.” (I don’t know what this says about me; I just report it for what it’s worth.) When I consider that we may have to kill many young Russian men to keep Russia out of Europe, my reaction is sadness and horror. I don’t conclude that we ought not do it. If we have to, we have to. But it pains me.
Our disagreement is just a conflict of intuition unless we have concrete numbers to think about. My instinct is that sick people who fail to self-quarantine cause a great deal of misery and impose very high costs; yours is that they’re probably not doing that much harm.
Where would we look for real research into this? It would be very hard to figure out, but it would be suggestive, at least, if we had evidence from countries in which self-quarantine is the social norm. Do we?
Miss Berlinski, I do not sorrow for the possibility of wilting the flower of Russian youth. Then again, I never sorrow for wars against barbarians. I do not have a high opinion of what someone here called the Russian people. I am unsure what they have to do with what you call Russian culture–you mean, a small number of writers & musicians?
No, I mean–I like Russians. Generally. I don’t find them to be nothing but barbarians.
The Old Russian Culture has faded, like the red banners carried by the barbarians who suppressed it.
Agreed it is a conflict of intuition.
Or overwhelmingly so. But in that intuition is also an element of due regard for others. Neither of us wants to be selfish and remake the world to suit our personal convenience, which is probably as it should be. Nor, as Mike H reminds us, is intuition contentless.
Ricochet member Mendel may be more acquainted with whether there are hard numbers addressing this question, and if so, where to find them.
I don’t know if we do, but, given that being able to accurately distinguish contagious from non-contagious diseases, as well as to take sick days, is a form of wealth, I imagine we could limit our search to advanced industrial countries.
This also may simply be one of those questions that we don’t have enough information to answer either way yet. Sometimes the jury really is still out.
Your desire to enjoy reasonably good health doesn’t seem to me best described as a craving for “personal convenience.” It’s not as if you’re asking for business-class seats with extra legroom, here. Not wanting to be sickened–or killed–by an infectious disease is much higher-order. More like not wanting to be slugged in the face.
In fact, that seems the right simile: My liberty to swing my germs ends where your nose begins. We don’t have the right to injure other people. If I punch you, sure, it’s possible that I won’t hurt you that badly or cause lasting damage, but no reasonable person would think, “Well, most people can take a punch, especially if it’s not a really hard one. If she’s got a glass jaw, that’s her problem.” We understand that the risk of hurting someone if we punch them in the face is sufficiently high that it’s just not acceptable to do it, period. (Self-defense aside.)
What’s the real difference between punching you and coughing on you? Only difference I can see is that the first might bloody your nose immediately. The damage done by the second might take few days to be fully evident. But we certainly know enough about the germ theory of contagion to say that coughing on people is apt to hurt them. It is apt to make them sick. And sometimes it can make them very sick indeed, or even kill them.
I don’t think you’d be selfish to think, “No one has the right to do that to me,” and I don’t think you’re asking the world to conform to your longing for “convenience” if you assert that you have a right not to be exposed to contagious diseases by someone who is aware that he or she is harboring one. Everyone in the developed world understands–or should understand–that some behaviors are apt to sicken others. Knowing this, they should not engage in them. To do so is wrong.
Miss Berlinski–careful there, that’s the road to total control of people in the name of germ-spreading prevention. What possibly could enforce one’s right not to have germs spread on one? Chinese tyranny never achieved that!.
Certainly, people should be more careful–but preemptive house arrest?
No, of course not. Not really. My ideal would be a change in social norms such that people view behaving in a way that is apt to spread their infectious diseases as shameful, inconsiderate, disgusting, and not done. I don’t want the government involved. Social shaming seems to me the right tool for the job, and think it’s high time: We do understand how most of these things are transmitted.
But yes, there are some cases in which I’d favor punishment. If, after seeing a physician and being told, “Go home and don’t spread this,” I failed to follow those instructions and caused a disease outbreak, I see no reason why I shouldn’t be held legally liable for reckless endangerment.
It doesn’t make sense to me to arrest anyone who coughs in the subway, but say I’ve been diagnosed with an infectious disease and instructed to go home and stay there until I’m no longer symptomatic–as I should have been, because obviously, I am infectious. I can’t see that ignoring those instructions is an innocent act–no more so, anyway, than driving drunk. I won’t necessarily harm someone else by cheerfully going to the office and sneezing on everything in sight, but the risk of harming others is unacceptably high.
How about kids? Should they learn this shame or have it imposed on them by the relevant adults, too? How far are we to go with the conventions?
When a doctor orders a test, is he ordering a patient to undergo the test, or is he telling a lab it’s OK to perform the test.
How else would they learn the shame except from adults? Yes, kids should be taught that when they’re sick, they stay home from school. They should be taught to sneeze into their elbows, not their hands; they should be taught to wash their hands often, etc.
Obviously, we’re not going to tell parents to leave their sick kids in a room by themselves and not touch them–that would be ridiculous.
To the extent that’s reasonable. Right now, we’re just far more tolerant of disease-spreading behavior than we ought to be, given that we understand fully that this kind of behavior spreads disease.
I suppose you know better than I do what’s good for people. I certainly do not wish to press you. I have seen, however, very civilized boys. It did not occur to me, this being could benefit from more conventions about health, safety, risklessness.
Do you mean in France? Doctors here can’t order patients to undergo tests–they just authorize the labs.
My complaint is that I’d like to have a rational conversation with a doctor about whether this makes sense given my financial circumstances. I’ve found this bizarrely impossible. I think the following words should make sense to any adult without a mental handicap: “I am not covered by the French social security system. I must thus pay for this out of pocket. Is this really necessary?” Physicians here just don’t understand them. They look at me as if I’ve said, “I’d like you to shoot me, please.”
I’d like to be able to have a rational conversation with this about a doctor, rather than seeing his or her confused expression, followed by the receipt of a lecture to the effect that “these are the tests we do in France.” I get it that “these are the tests we do in France.” I don’t get it that I can’t say, “Yes, but I’m not French. I have to pay for this, personally. So I need to consider the question, ‘Are these medically essential tests, as opposed to ‘the tests you do in France.'”
I don’t think it’s hugely controversial to say that being sick is bad for people. Do you?
No one here envisions a world of perfect risklessness. I’d just like a world in which people who’ve been diagnosed with an infectious disease aren’t cavalier about spreading it to other people. (I very much appreciated Ann Coulter’s saying, “No, I’m not going to hug you: I have the flu.” I wish she’d seized the opportunity to say, “And your belief that it would be moving for me to do so is ridiculous, given that you might not mind catching it, but the thousands of people you’ll hug next sure might.”)
Then don’t treat them as if they can order you to do something you don’t want to do.
Certainly not. For the first time since whenever, civilized people seem to focus on health over against anything else.
Well, I’m glad she stopped where she did. The goddess of war may be polite about it, but surgeon general she ain’t.
I dislike disagreeing with you. & then, too, you’re so reasonable…
Which itself is no guarantee you’ll actually get treatment for anything that might actually be wrong with you. First try to find a doctor that accepts Medicaid patients.
My adult daughter is on Medicaid/Medicare because she’s blind and developmentally disabled. We’re in the process of getting treatment for her for a [some anomaly relating to the female plumbing that I don’t really understand, her mom’s dealing with it].
Not complaining, we’ll deal with it. Just pointing out Obamacare accomplished less than nothing because (seems to me anyway) everyone’s medical coverage got hosed. And the people who really get the shaft are the people who really need help, have no one to be their advocate getting it, and can’t do for themselves.
Although I suppose it has ever been thus, it rankles that the Democrats pretend like they give a —-.
I don’t think that it’s really that they don’t understand. I think it’s that they don’t know the real answer. They do not deal with the billing. They have no idea how much things cost.
Yes, it is. Ever hear of stress wood in trees? Having the immune system challenged occasionally keeps it in tune. It can also keep it from going paranoid and attacking the body.
That’s wholly possible. There wouldn’t be anything wrong with just saying that, though.