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I just saw "child safety guidelines" from a pediatrician visit which said not to allow your child out to play from 11AM to 3PM, because of the sun.
Didn't anti-sunlight safetyism peak years ago? Why has the advice continued to get crazier? Is this pediatrician a lone vampire groomer, or is the whole AMA like this?
It wouldn't make me so angry if the children in question weren't pasty obese maggots who desperately need sun and exercise. The doc made a choice to ask "so, are they being exposed to the evils of natural light? Oh, they sit inside and play Minecraft, eating Totino's™ Pizza Rolls™ all day? Good, good, check that health problem off the list. Now, are there any guns or motorcycles in the house? Because they can lead to dangers like going outside and doing things."
I'm not a parent, but everything I've seen of education and child-raising recently has been throwing up giant red flags. How are motte parents dealing with this stuff?
As always, a kernel of truth grows into a turd of idiocy.
Motte: Wearing SPF30 sunscreen is probably among the cheaper interventions in terms of cost/inconvenience compared to QOL saved. Even if you can't do it 100% of the time, do it 90% of the time since the damage is additive.
Bailey: Avoid the sun, wear a thick knit sweater, reapply sunscreen hourly.
This is harmful advice. Skin cancer kills almost no one. If I recall correctly skin cancers only lower U.S. life expectancy by a few days.
On the other hand, people who get more sun live years longer.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/heres-something-unexpected-sunbathers-live-longer-201606069738
Supplement with Vitamin D you say? Not so easy: https://www.outsideonline.com/health/wellness/sunscreen-sun-exposure-skin-cancer-science/
Sunlight is good for you. Go get some. Personally, I use sunscreen on my face because I don't want to look old. I compensate by sunbathing the rest of my body.
AHEM.
And this is Ireland, not noted for "long hot sunny days year-round".
So basically 100 people in a country of 5m? 1 out of 50k isn’t that worrying. Moreover Irish are probably most susceptible to it.
Dying from something easily preventable is also a stupid way to go.
Why not advise kids to smoke tobacco, too? They probably won't get lung cancer, and the benefits of nicotine are that they won't get fat and will have better focus!
I had a close relative who died of lung cancer from smoking, so "only a few people relative to the entire population are gonna die" isn't a good sell to me. It's a fucking miserable, humiliating, degrading, painful, awful, horrible way to die and I can't think dying of skin cancer is any better.
Depends on whether the cost of that prevention would have been too high. It's easy to prevent death via recreational mountaineering -- don't do it -- but I think you'll find that to be a rather unpopular position among mountaineering enthusiasts. Similarly, it may be easy to stay inside when the sun is out, but the cost of doing so is high regardless.
It's a reasonable question to ask, but I think if you added up the pluses and minuses you'd find smoking is a negative on balance. Not just lung cancer but COPD and a host of other diseases which debilitate as well as kill, plus stinking like smoke and having cravings for cigarettes.
But maybe I'm wrong; my mother was a lifelong unrepentant smoker, though it did kill her in the end.
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