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611 points sohkamyung | 4 comments | | HN request time: 0.002s | source
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ehnto ◴[] No.43102277[source]
The pathology for broken collar bones was changing right as I took up mountain biking, and subsequently shattered my collarbone.

It was hotly debated at the hospital, if my specific case should be operated on or not. Each time I had a checkup, one doctor would say "wait and see" while the other was saying "I can't believe we didn't operate on this".

At any rate, the outcome was as good as if they had operated on it, according to the doc anyway. Nice of them to test it out on me!

More related to this though, I have broken both my collarbones, the first time I had little direction and just held my arm still for 2-3 months. It took forever to heal, and my arm atrophied significantly. The second time, similar severity. I was guided through rehab and I was back using my arm within the first month, very little atrophy.

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edwcross ◴[] No.43102787[source]
Given the amount of injuries related to mountain biking, is there some specific insurance needed for it? It seems one of those "net-negative for the society activities", like trampolines.
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grayhatter ◴[] No.43103177[source]
this is such a wild take to me... it's impossible to quantity at what point something becomes a net negative for society. Smoking seems to be an obvious example, because it's addictive quality inhibits a fair decision to the smoker, and it's something with a lifelong pathology.

But trampolines and mountain biking are both activities that result in ephemeral injuries. There is the rare case where a particular injury might become chronic, but how is that a drain on society, and not primarily the individual?

by your logic, should we also ban (or require insurance?) for football (hand egg), boxing, martial arts, (Tai chi?), cars, religion, guns, knives, prescription medicine, children, leaving your house at all?

edit; I'm happy to steal more ideas from sibling comments! I already stole football, but now I want to add obesity, and all mental health conditions.

I'm really curious about the context the idea of net negative comes from, but I probably should also take a stab at a conclusion; why contrast individual actions and decisions in the context of society at all? The decision to do anything should stop at 1st order, and maybe 2nd order effects. That is to say, when trying to improve society, it's fair to look down into smoking and say, we should spend attention on fixing this. But it's incorrect to look at an individual decision "should I smoke" and weight it's effects on society. (How will this effect my family, or my environment is 2nd order, and should be accounted for)

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1. layer8 ◴[] No.43103329[source]
I agree that a ban doesn’t make sense, but even “ephemeral” injuries routinely generate significant costs.

(In my experience, musculoskeletal injuries are rarely completely ephemeral, they tend to have long-term effects, even if minor.)

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2. grayhatter ◴[] No.43103499[source]
I'm gonna call that sample bias. If you exclude all injuries that are ephemeral, (because they don't get reported, because they're ephemeral, and forgotten), you're left with the injuries that aren't ephemeral. I mean duh, obviously lol. But my point is still, yes injuries are bad, and as a society, we're pretty trash at healing them, but injuries are more impactful for the individual, than for society.

And bonus point; if we're talking about sociatial responsabilities, given injuries are unavoidable, shouldn't we be trying to fix our responses to them rather than trying to limit people from enjoying life? Mountain biking in fun, so are trampolines. Strictly speaking, the world where we've solved injuries (think any sci-fi pantopia) is better than the world where we didn't because we just outlawed getting injured.

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3. layer8 ◴[] No.43103743[source]
My point is, most injuries aren’t ephemeral in the sense that your body would end up as if you didn’t have the injury in the first place. In particular the sports injuries we are talking about. You may only truly realize that a decade later or so. So I find making that distinction questionable, it trivializes the injuries.

As I said, I agree that bans don’t make sense. But the costs are real, and therefore one should take care to avoid injuries instead of trivializing them.

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4. ◴[] No.43107682{3}[source]