In the news

Respectfully, I was making no comment on anything other than the description of the driving I saw in the video as ‘dangerous’, and my belief that a more serious ‘aggressive’ qualifier is more accurate.

Have another look at the video. How on earth can anyone feel at risk of being run over unless they are standing in front of or behind the car? They're armed police doing a hard stop, they're not the typical vulnerable pedestrians, they're highly trained and have a good idea of what to expect. Either the driver will try to ram his way out, or he'll shoot them.

It feels more like it should have been some kind of corporate manslaughter charge (not sure how that would work in the context of police) rather than an individual murder charge.

I like to think if armed police stopped me in my car, I’d just step out of the bloody thing without trying to smash into marked cars, unmarked cars and the police themselves.

No comment on what ensued after that.

Maybe just maybe, the conspiracy theory maybe that this would open up lots of armed police would be open to being charged.

In this case, was the Audi the same car as used. What was Chris doing in the Audi, if it wasn't his?

If they are already pointing their guns at him he was asking for it, suicide by cop.

It’s like a “nothing to lose” manoeuvre, one last hurrah. From the outside looking in it really does scream that he was guilty [of something].

Crazy turn of events.

You don't bring an Audi to a gunfight.

Isn't it biomarkers in the blood so show up in the test that something isn't right.

Better to be tested and a false positive. So further tests.

We don't know what was the reason.

Let's not go down the nothing to hide route.

PSAs for the prostate. Can also indicate prostatitis, which is - I think - inflammation.

it really does scream that he was guilty [of something].

Shame they didn’t just arrest him so we could find out.

I completely agree.

At least you know there is inflation.

Getting things done early saves the NHS money.

Better to be tested and a false positive.

Curiously, increased testing without commensurate indications that something is wrong is correlated with negative patient outcomes.

What are negative patient outcomes?

I think it’s a hard one to call.
Man in car uses that car as a weapon at people.
Those people are coppers it’s attempted murder or they should have got out of the way.
Those people are not coppers it’s dangerous driving or they were in danger.
The people at risk are coppers the armed responder is a murderer
The people at risk are not coppers the armed responder is a hero
Should the responder be investigated in either of these cases? Fuck yeah. Should they be charged if there are grounds? Fuck yeah. I don’t know enough to make that call.
Do I think it’s shameful that if you are a black man you are 4 X more likely to be shot by the police than you are if you are white? Fucking hell yeah. Does it mean that in this case the responder could have taken an extra moment before shooting? We’ll never know. Does this mean that the driver may have felt they were probably going to get shot no matter what? We’ll never know.
The whole thing is shit.
Does this case help or hinder the public perception that a motor vehicle can be a weapon?

Something that harms the wellbeing of the patient instead of improving it. The act of testing contribute to anxiety, false positives lead to unnecessary stress and more testing, and statistically every medical procedure carries a degree of risk of harm or complication*. That’s leaving aside more complex issues like psychosomatic illnesses, disfunctional doctor-patient relationships, etc.

Basically, while the jury seems to be still out, there is some evidence showing that people are better off testing when there’s a reason to test for something, rather than blanket testing in case something appears. 🤷‍♂️

*E.g., yours truly in the recent past. Routine blood draw at Kings College Hospital, stupid fucking phlebotomist hit a nerve, which hurt like hell and left me with reduced feeling and occasional electric shock in my dominant hand. They also didn’t lay me down or brace me when I passed out, and their manager shortly after instructed me to walk to the ER by myself when I fell to my knees saying I was going to faint onto the ceramic floor then and there.

Life pro tip: always get blood drawn from your non dominant arm.

I had chronic prostatitis for a couple of years through the pandemic. Highly unpleasant and just grinds you down.

There’s a bit too much whataboutery to your argument. I insisted on a PSA test even though I had no symptoms and it saved my life.

Life pro tip: don’t take no for an answer.

https://prostatecanceruk.org/about-us/news-and-views/2024/10/ffb-westminster-launch-event

Depends on experience. You are right (we agree) on everything has a degree of going wrong.

In that case why bother with breast cancer screening in men?

We have different experiences, death of loved ones due to tests not being done, same as almac mentioned in the pinned blacklivesmatter thread

They tried to arrest him, shame he didn't let them.

And that is the attitude, guilty till proven innocent.

I’m genuinely glad to hear that’s the way it went for you. I fully agree that too many people die from preventable ailments because their condition isn’t caught in time, for myriad reasons especially lack of testing. Fully agree with your LPT.

too much whataboutery to your argument

I didn’t mean to make an argument in favour of less testing, although I see how I effectively did. I was only saying that there’s evidence that, at scale, testing people often for everything seems to result in more harmful outcomes than good ones. It was food for abstract thought and an odd (quasi?)fact.

Personally I consider it normal for people to get full blood work done every year, but that’s very much not the done thing here, I realise.

statistically every medical procedure carries a degree of risk of harm or complication

I had a tumour removed from somewhere between my kidney and my spine. They have to go in through the front to do that, which means being opened up all the way from breastbone to knob, with the cut zigzagging around your belly button. There are an awful lot of nerves in the area between belly button and knob. If they cut the wrong one you never ejaculate again.

They lift your guts out of the way and put them over there somewhere so they can carry on cutting down towards the spine. They have to handle your bowel, which it doesn't like, so it shuts down for a week. It's all so tricky and high risk that only a handful of UK surgeons do it.

I had recently had chemo, so my blood wasn't clotting very much, which meant my wound would heal very slowly, so instead of stitching it up normally they pulled the edges together to make a nice fat ridge which looked like a railway line on an embankment. The many nerve endings in the wound were going to be screaming just a bit, so they gave me an epidural for the pain. It's a big injection into your spinal nerves. After I'd been awake for a while the epidural stopped working. That happens sometimes. So I had no pain relief on all the sliced up nerves which were screaming in the railway embankment. I'm fairly sure it feels the same as having your entrails drawn when you're executed, like the end of Braveheart. I couldn't talk without causing movement of my stomach. Every few seconds I'd have a spasm of agony and then try to keep still. I was meditating to delay the spasms, so the nurses thought I was asleep. I didn't know what was happening. Maybe this was normal and I should just cope with it? Eventually I said something intelligible and the anaesthetist was summoned, but she was in the basement of another hospital where her pager had no signal. So it took 9 hours before I was given morphine. It later transpired that the tumour was dead tissue and could have safely been left inside me forever.