
Don't shake hands with men from the north of England - echair
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/oct/14/dirty-hands
======
maxklein
Look at what they did here. After talking about dirty hands, they throw in
this nugget:

"Worldwide, around 1.9 million people die from diarrhoea every year. In
Britain, an estimated one in five has an episode of diarrhoea each year."

You see what he did there? He put together two unrelated sentences in a way
that scares you. Let's break down the 1.9 million:

From a google search:

"Global deaths from diarrhoea of children aged less than five were estimated
at 1.87 million"

"WHO African and South-East Asia regions combined contain 78% (1.46 million)
of all diarrhoea deaths occurring among children in the developing world"

"In sanitary living conditions where there is ample food and a supply of clean
water, an otherwise healthy patient usually recovers from viral infections in
a few days. However, for ill or malnourished individuals diarrhea can lead to
severe dehydration and can become life-threatening without treatment"

"In many cases of diarrhea, replacing lost fluid and salts is the only
treatment needed."

You see what he did there? He took something common, threw in some death
statistics, and made a horror story out of nothing.

~~~
jodrellblank
Five thousand children per day _shitting themselves to death_ around the world
scares me without needing to put it next to any other sentence. :(

~~~
maxklein
That's not really how it works. The shitting part comes first, then
afterwards, there's nothing really left, and anything you drink just comes
flowing right out. They get parched and die of dehydration.

It's easier than dying of malaria. With malaria, you feel as cold as hell, but
you're burning up. Then you go into a heat delirium, where you start having
hallucinations, you start throwing up at the same time everyday, you can't
move anymore, and you slip into death. A lot more people die of malaria than
of diarhea. And malaria is a lot easier to cure.

------
sidsavara
There are a couple thing I wonder about:

1) Is sample size large enough to draw conclusions? They have people at bus
stops, rail stop, people from the north. from London, etc but only 409 total?
And not everyone agreed to have their hands swabbed, so is it possible that
the "dirtier" hands from London just turned down the swabbing?

And these are people who may also have just come off the rail or bus from
elsewhere. If they all touched some common thing on the way out of the
vehicle, they could be otherwise clean people who just got swabbed after
picking up pathogens.

Still, half the people is really high. They should redo the experiment and see
if they reach the same conclusions.

------
zandorg
I'm FROM the north of England, and I still don't think this has any relevance
to HN. Besides, I'm left-handed, so that's a whole new handshaking ballgame.

------
jbert
If there is such a disparity, presumably that will show up in the health
stats?

They mention a few viruses transmissable in this way, so if their numbers and
their inferences stand up, we should see a huge difference in the number of
cases (or speed of communication - I'm not sure which - I am not an
epidemiologist) between the London and Newcastle?

If such a difference doesn't show up, either their methodology was bogus,
their inferences wrong (these viruses can't be usefully transmitted in this
way) or it doesn't matter because some other factor balances it (maybe greater
exposure to these bugs causes a degree of resistance).

