Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Severe infections leading to hospitalizations during childhood are associated with lower school achievement in adolescence,reports a study in the July issue of The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal (PIDJ).
In the nationwide study of nearly 600,000 Danish children, higher numbers of hospitalizations for infections were associated with a reduced probability of completing ninth grade, as well as with lower test scores, according to the new research by Ole Köhler-Fosberg, MD, of Aarhus University Hospital and colleagues. An expert commentary discusses the role of vaccination in the relationship between investment in health and protecting and improving "human capital."
The study included nationwide data of 598,553 children born in Denmark between 1987 and 1997. The researchers looked at two measures of childhood infections: hospital admission for infections, an indicator of moderate to severe infections; and prescriptions for anti-infective drugs (such as antibiotics) in primary care, reflecting less-severe infections.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 17 2018, @11:37AM (2 children)
I worked in Geek Squad for 5 years (finally started making a enough money doing freelance development to quit this past december).
I've done malware removal on 5-10 computers a day, 5 days a week for most of that time. So I've seen thousands of malware infections on the average consumer's computer. I've seen more different malware infections than just about anyone outside of an antivirus research lab.
When I first started most of malware came from users downloading files from P2P sites. However, for the last 2 years nearly all the malware I found was installed via a drive-by download that happened without user input.
You can talk all you like about avoiding porn sites and installing AV software, but it's not that simple. The majority of the computers I worked on had current AV programs--they weren't able to prevent the infections. The situation with malware and windows is absolutely terrible, and it doesn't only happen to idiots who stuff their drives with porn.
Macs have security flaws--they aren't perfect, but when compared to the malware ghetto I've dealt with over the years, calling this a mac malware problem an "explosion" is just ridiculous.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 17 2018, @01:27PM
Did you by chance happen to suffer a major infection when you were young? You post sure seems to indicate some impairment in your mental function.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 17 2018, @01:31PM
I do malware removal for an office of a thousand people, and you are completely divorced from reality.
Here in the real world, malware is an entirely social problem. The same people keep getting malware constantly, and they al! know each other. The malware people are all idiots who visit seedy websites, but it's worse than that. They literally email malware links to each other. No amount of telling them to stop visiting seedy websites is effective. No amount of telling them not to share links to seedy websites is effective. Their social clique is a stronger influence than any warning they receive about the dangers of malware. The social norm in their clique is to follow every link sent to them and install every piece of malware they can find. Antimalware protection is entirely ineffective since there is no way signature updates can keep up with the sheer amount of exposure these people have.
The people who get all the malware are, as you might expect, the people who handle the money. Accountants, HR, managers. Everyone else is too busy working to dink around with chain letters full of links to malware.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday July 17 2018, @12:05PM (16 children)
How the hell are hospital-stay-worthy infections a common enough thing among kids to be worth measuring in any western nation? Oh, nevermind.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday July 17 2018, @12:20PM (1 child)
Socialised medicine - the people pay taxes to have as much certainty as possible a throat infection causing halitosis will be properly treated under hospital's quarantine.
Are you still sure you don't want to pay more taxes for the privilege of never being exposed to bad breath?
(very large grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday July 17 2018, @12:54PM
You make a strong argument.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Immerman on Tuesday July 17 2018, @12:22PM (12 children)
Well, for starters we're talking Denmark - so hospital stays probably correspond to "this is serious enough to have experts keep an eye on them for a while", rather than the USAian standard of "this is serious enough to spend at least several months wages on".
Also, even in a tiny country like Denmark you're talking about 60,000+ births per year - if even 1% of children get an infection severe enough for hospitalization before growing up, you're talking over 600 kids per year. More than enough to look at the consequences in a culture that actually cares about not leaving the least-fortunate behind.
Not to mention - hey, a topic people might actually care about to write a graduate thesis on! Woohoo! You know how hard those are to come up with?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday July 17 2018, @01:07PM (11 children)
I don't really care for either. If the infection warrants continued, constant, professional observation rather than "bring him back in if it gets any worse or you start to see <blah>", it's because the child is in significant danger of dying before he can be returned to the hospital. Doing so for anything less is astonishingly wasteful of medical resources. Having to spend several months wages on an overnight stay is equally ludicrous but that's another discussion entirely.
I've been asked to read and critique several. I wasn't particularly impressed with the utility or even potential future utility of any of them. So I expect it's either quite difficult or we're giving graduate degrees to people who have no business possessing one.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by requerdanos on Tuesday July 17 2018, @02:02PM (8 children)
Let's think about that. It doesn't look like you did, but let's do it now.
There are many outcomes of an illness. Brain damage, loss of hearing or vision, or other permanent injury due to mismanagement of high fever. Loss of body parts, especially extremities, from mismanagement of infection. Things like that. Medical doctors (specially trained people who look after the health of humans) are trained to know more often than not when an illness needs watching to avoid such things.
Under the "TMB system" you have outlined above, it is "astonishingly wasteful" to prevent easily preventable permanent, serious impairment in children--only death itself might warrant preventing, and that not unless it meets the "TMB standard" of statistical likelihood.
Therefore, it is a bad system and if someone genuinely believes in it, he is probably a bad person.
Yes, but.... If you live in one of the advanced nations such that seeking proper medical care for a condition inherently involves such an expenditure, then often it's the same discussion, weighing "can I afford it" vs. "should the child receive medical care." I know how you would decide it (avoiding astonishing waste and all), but for many people, it's a genuine conundrum.
Yeah, that one's pretty good.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday July 17 2018, @03:16PM (3 children)
High fever also carries a significant risk of death with it, as a general rule. Significant risk of loss of body part or senses would also be a perfectly acceptable, though even that's something that's more likely to be able to be monitored at home. It's not usually something that's going to run out of control before you can make it to the nearest hospital unless you live pretty far out in the sticks.
You really don't. I have no problem with legitimate medical needs being taken care of but I absolutely have a problem with pointless hand-holding at extreme expense.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Tuesday July 17 2018, @08:33PM (2 children)
Fair enough. I should have said "I know how you are saying that you would decide it". I only know what you said, not what you probably should have said.
(Score: 3, Touché) by krishnoid on Tuesday July 17 2018, @09:47PM
You sure that's what you meant? You're on the Internet, you know.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday July 18 2018, @03:18AM
I thought I was fairly clear. There's a distinct possibility you're seeing what you want to argue with rather than what's there. It's a common failing among us human types.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday July 17 2018, @06:32PM (3 children)
“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” -- Benjamin Franklin
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday July 17 2018, @08:40PM (1 child)
S'true but prevention almost never requires a hospital stay.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Tuesday July 17 2018, @11:58PM
Indeed, if you've been admitted to hospital for something, whether illness or injury, at that point we must acknowledge that we've failed to prevent the illness or injury, and now we are down to treating it, in search of our particular pound of cure.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday July 18 2018, @12:02AM
An ounce of prevention every day makes 22 pounds of prevention/year - William Shatner.
This is what those vitamin/supplement peddlers won't throw it in your face.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday July 17 2018, @04:15PM
True, that. But - I clicked the link to try to learn something here. I'm not sure if I'm learning anything at all. In summary, US Citizens can't afford a hospital stay for any reason that isn't life threatening, but other countries don't mind checking into a hospital to be on the safe side. Ehhhh . . .
What I haven't learned yet: Do the infections impair learning ability, or do the hospitals impair learning ability, or is it the antibiotics that impair learning ability? Or - alternatively - do only idiot children contract infections?
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday July 18 2018, @02:31PM
>Doing so for anything less is astonishingly wasteful of medical resources.
How, exactly? Unless there's a large-scale crisis, there's usually going to be a lot of beds sitting empty in a well-equipped hospital. Putting a kid in one of those has a very low incremental cost - a little more work for the cleaning crew mostly. Similarly, having a nurse swing by for a couple minutes every hour to make sure there's no problems developing unrecognized by completely untrained patients and family doesn't cost much - looks like an hour of nurse's pay only costs around $30-$60 in Denmark. You might want to have a doctor come by for a couple quick evaluations during the course of the day as well, but really you're just looking for observation by someone with medical experience, and to have experts immediately at hand if there's a problem.
So, maybe $100-$200 a day in actual costs if you're pessimistic, assuming medical intervention isn't needed, for patients who are already recognized to have a dangerous infection.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday July 18 2018, @03:01AM
Sounds to me more like "kids with poor immune systems" which may also correlate with lower cognitive function.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Immerman on Tuesday July 17 2018, @12:30PM (8 children)
If you're hospitalized for an infection, even in Denmark, I would think the odds are good that you have a high fever. High enough that you're potentially causing minor brain damage doesn't seem like a stretch - untreated hyperthermia can quickly damage the brain , along with the heart, kidneys, and muscles. And the threshold for "some permanent damage" is likely much lower than for "any obvious damage".
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday July 17 2018, @02:55PM (7 children)
100% agree. I acknowledge the correlation they've observed, but I question the causality:
Perhaps the infections cause brain damage.
Perhaps there's a biological connection between learning disability and susceptibility to infection.
How about the long-term effects of antibiotics on the brain?
Maybe some people are more prone to learning disability due to some antibiotic after-effect that isn't well understood yet?
Maybe the antibiotic kills some good bacteria that aren't well understood yet? For example, recent research discovered a symbiotic relationship between certain cancers and certain bacteria which secrete cancer-protecting enzymes. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/09/how-bacteria-could-protect-tumors-from-anticancer-drugs/539670/ [theatlantic.com] Perhaps there are bacteria which protect the brain from currently unknown forces, such as prions, and the antibiotic kills the protectors?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by PiMuNu on Tuesday July 17 2018, @03:05PM (5 children)
My middle-class bias is that you are more likely to be admitted to hospital for an infectious disease if you are poor, disabled, or some other similar confounding factor.
FTFA:
>The associations were adjusted for other factors linked to school achievement, such
> as birthweight, mental and physical health, and parents' education and mental health.
I think that is very difficult to do correctly. It would be interesting to know how they did it...
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday July 17 2018, @03:24PM
For sure that and many other factors. I didn't include them because they've been discussed above.
And being a nerd, I'm more fascinated by the biology / science. Throughout history there have been diseases which had no cure, but if you were rich enough, you could get the best available "treatment" - symptom relief, prolong life, pain relief, etc. Then along comes a simple vaccine or antibiotic and all but the absolute poorest can survive TB, typhoid, strep, you know, the long list of almost forgotten diseases that my poor brain can't come up with because I have much more pressing things than typing here... I know, my priorities are inverted. :-\
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday July 18 2018, @03:25PM (3 children)
Are you USAian? Keep in mind that wealth inequality is radically lower in Denmark, so poverty is going to play a much lower role. Especially since they have universal health care, so that there's very little incentive to neglect minor health problems until they become serious, unlike in the US.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Wednesday July 18 2018, @04:30PM (2 children)
> so poverty is going to play a much lower role
It's not all roses in Europe. I believe wealth inequality still translates to worse health. Citation needed.
But... your post does highlight just how difficult it is to account for these systematic effects. Say, for example, the researchers want to correct for the poverty bias. I guess the way to do this is to find someone who has studied "effect of poverty on education outcomes" and someone who has studied "effect of poverty on healthcare outcomes" and look for correlations. But as you just pointed out, the correlations are different between countries. Indeed, they are very likely different between e.g. urban and rural populations in the same country. What about all of the other confounding factors? What about cross-correlations *between* the confounding factors themselves. (e.g. rural vs urban population). Anecdotally, I know someone who used to sit on UK's NICE healthcare committee, and to paraphrase "we heard a very earnest young chap talking about the statistics. No one understood it but it all sounded jolly convincing".
I maintain that subtracting off these systematic effects is very, very hard. So I don't believe the results.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday July 18 2018, @07:11PM (1 child)
You're making it too complicated - if you want to correct for poverty bias, just compare the outcomes of people in the same socioeconomic strata. If you also want to correct for regional biases, do the same for regional sampling.
And the general incompetence of policy wonks when it comes to actually understanding the science they should be casing their decisions on is completely irrelevant, except to point out that even after the science is settled, it's not relevant to policy unless you can explain it well enough to convince a politician (whose meal ticket may well depend on them failing to be convinced)
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Thursday July 19 2018, @08:10AM
> if you want to correct for poverty bias, just compare the outcomes of people in the same socioeconomic strata.
> If you also want to correct for regional biases, do the same for regional sampling.
That doesn't work because it is a very correlated problem. The effect of being poor in an inner city sink estate is very different to the effect of being poor in a small village in the countryside. The problems are completely different. To pick an example:-
* In the city, poverty is much more strongly correlated with drug abuse.
* In the city, if you are poor it is much harder to fund leisure activities. In the countryside you can ride a bike or go for a walk.
* In the countryside, not being able to afford a car is a big deal. You can't get to the doctors or secondary schools easily. Public transport coverage is worse.
So you can't correct for each effect independently. GGP even said this, when they said that the effect of being in US is completely different to effect of being in Denmark.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 17 2018, @07:35PM
Or that worse students are more likely to be the partying, socialising, exchanging bodily fluids types, rather than sit alone studying types. Take a guess at which set of activities has a higher likelihood of transmitting infections?