Divemedic

Talking to people on the Internet, especially on social media, wears you down. Sometimes you get to the point, where you just tire of talking to the morons on there, all of whom are experts on things like military tactics and strategy, finance, police tactics, the law, the Constitution, and medicine. A couple of cases from my recent experience:

Finance

In a discussion of my recent post on the couple with the 538 FICO being charged 20% interest on a car, there was the guy who told me the law should cap interest rates at 6%. When I pointed out to him that this would force banks to stop loaning money to anyone with a FICO of less than 650, and would likely force them to require 50% down for those from 650 to 700. After all, with a 28% chance of default within a 12 month period and a cumulative 41% chance of default over 36 months, people with low FICO scores are poor risks for credit.

He told me I was wrong, then claimed to have received a Nobel prize for his work with Grameen Bank, when that bank saw an increase in repayment rates of 1000%. I pointed out to him that mathematically, it would be impossible for any bank to have such an increase unless their repayment rate was 10% or less before the change. He told me I need to educate myself. Then pointed out that a bank who has a repayment rate of 1 in 11, then sees the other 11 people begin to repay just had a 1000% increase in repayment. Never mind that this would mean 12 of the 11 customers are now paying, thus making it mathematically impossible. Not only that, but the Grameen bank is making loans of an average of $100, and is charging 20% interest on those micro loans. The bank does have a repayment rate of 95%, but it does this through local peer pressure.

This is how the bank works: A peer group consists of 5 people who live in the same village. Each of them individually receives a loan, but if any one of the five defaults, the others in the peer group are no longer eligible to receive any loans in the future until the delinquent account is brought current.

Borrowers must contribute to group savings accounts, and the savings accounts take the place of collateral. Rather like a secured credit card, the borrowers are essentially borrowing their own money at 20% interest. I don’t understand how that is worthy of a Nobel prize.

That’s the system he wants to emulate? Not to mention the fact that he clearly can’t do simple arithmetic. At the end, he accused me of being stupid in supporting billionaires who are earning profits through usury, and said I probably had a 450 credit score. Whatever.

Medicine

Then there was a story about a woman who was traveling at a high rate of speed and running red lights, and was spotted by police. The police tried to pull her over, but she refused to stop, instead turning on her flashers and waved out the window at them. After giving her several warnings on the PA, they performed a PIT maneuver. The woman stated she was driving like that because her mother was having stroke symptoms and she was taking her to the hospital.

I pointed out in comments that the cops don’t know that, and failing to pull over for the cops was a bad idea. After all, there is a non-zero chance of them hitting someone, they may not even be heading to a stroke center, and this would actually delay the mother’s care.

This mental midget came on and tried to explain to me that they weren’t headed to a stroke center, but to a hospital, or even an emergency room. I pointed out that I am a board certified ED nurse, paramedic, and certified stroke nurse. She said “So of course you will support calling an ambulance, so you can make an extra $2000 for an ambulance ride, and that’s the problem with US healthcare. They don’t need a stroke center, an emergency room will do just fine.”

I then pointed out that not every ED is equipped and staffed as a Comprehensive Stroke Center, so depending on the type of stroke the mother was having, they may not be able to deal with it, which would require that the ED call an ambulance to transfer her to the proper facility, thus delaying care (perhaps even past the window), whereas calling an ambulance to start with would have seen the mother taken to the proper place to begin with.

She then told me that I was wrong, and don’t know what I am talking about. She said “No emergency room will turn you away.”

A great example- my previous ED was a primary stroke center. The nearest comprehensive stroke center was an hour away. We had a Labor and Delivery department, but two nearby hospitals didn’t. We had a Level II cardiac cath lab, the next three closest hospitals didn’t. Every hospital and ED has different levels of what they can provide. The local ambulances know who can provide what services, and they take patients to each facility accordingly.

When you drive a person to the hospital, you likely don’t know that. If the person needing care has a problem that is beyond the capabilities of that hospital, care will happen, but not the best care. The best care for that person will happen after the person is transferred to a higher level of care. Few and far between are hospitals that are the best at everything. It’s expensive and difficult to staff every specialty doctor and the equipment they need, and many hospitals don’t have the patient volume to be able to do so.

In Person

Even in person, it’s no better. I was recently at a pineapple farm, and some idiot next to me actually told the friends he was with “I don’t understand why the put in all of this effort when they can just buy pineapples in the store for five bucks.”

Sigh. Some days, talking to the idiots just makes me weary. Talking to people is generally useless, and I just get tired of doing it sometimes. They don’t know what they don’t know, but are happy to beat you over the head with their ignorance. The older I get, the less I like people