Share this page!

Enter URL or ID to Unroll

You can paste full URL like: https://x.com/threadreaderapp/status/1644127596119195649
or just the ID like: 1644127596119195649

How to get URL link on X (Twitter) App

  1. On the Twitter thread, click on or icon on the bottom
  2. Click again on or Share Via icon
  3. Click on Copy Link to Tweet
  4. Paste it above and click "Unroll Thread"!
  5. More info at Twitter Help
Crémieux Profile picture
@cremieuxrecueil
Jun 1, 2023 • 8 tweets • 4 min read • Read on X
Scrolly
American military veterans have a suicide problem.

Some have theorized the reason is deployment-related trauma.

Leveraging the random assignment of new soldiers to units with different deployment cycles, Bruhn et al. found that was wrong.

Deployment did not increase suicides. Image
Looking only at violent deployments (ones with peer casualties), there aren't noncombat mortality effects either.

What explains veteran suicide rates? Image
The reason seems to be that the proposition is wrong: veterans do not have increased suicide risk.

This may seem surprising, but it's not. Their suicide rates are elevated over the general population because most of them are young White men. That group has a suicide issue. Image
There are good and bad parts to this observation.

On the one hand, it means that there is not selection of suicidal people into the military.

On the other, demographic selection makes this problem into one that agencies like the VA will probably not be able to fix on their own
because it's not a soldier problem, it's a young White male problem.

I don't know how this can be fixed, but presumably tackling opiate use would help.

Soliman (2022) found that DEA crackdowns on overprescribing pharmacies resulted in fewer local suicide deaths. Image
Soliman also found that sanctioning specific doctors affected opioid-related mortality more generally without impacting suicide rates. Effects were generally larger for males than females and they were larger for people aged 30-49 than those aged 15-29 or 85+. No race data.
Kennedy-Hendricks et al. found that Florida's pill mill crackdown reduced opioid overdose mortality considerably.

Their supplement contained details on the characteristics of the people who died from opioid overdoses, but I wasn't able to access it.

Regardless, this problem can Image
probably be helped to some degree.

Sources:

nber.org/papers/w30622

fivethirtyeight.com/features/suici…

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…

ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.21…

More:

bfi.uchicago.edu/insight/resear…

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with Crémieux

Crémieux Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @cremieuxrecueil

Crémieux Profile picture
Jun 4
This 91 vs 103 thing is either ignorance or chicanery.

The issue has been explained to him multiple times, but TL;DR:

(1) The standardized difference is still the same 1 SD its always been, (2) IQ does not have a ratio scale, (3) the population hasn't gotten smarter. Image
If you want to understand this error, I have material aplenty for you.

First, on the issue of rescaling differences, here's a post:
Second, on the issue of the scale of the gap, as of 2023, it had not shrunken from where it stood in World War I: cremieux.xyz/p/the-state-of…
Read 8 tweets
Crémieux Profile picture
Jun 4
The Wall Street Journal just published the FDA's Opinion piece-length rationale for banning talc.

I was happy to see they were citing studies, but after I read the studies, I was dismayed:

The FDA fell victim to bad science, and they might ban talcum powder because of it!

🧵 Image
The evidence cited in the article is

- A 2019 meta-analysis
- A review by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC)
- A 2019 cohort study from Taiwan

Let's go through each of these and see if the FDA's evidence holds water. Image
The first piece of evidence they cite is a meta-analysis, and it's a doozy.

The study includes 27 estimates of the observational association between talc use and ovarian cancer rates.

Three estimates come from cohort studies. Those are fine. The problem is the 24 other studies.
Read 42 tweets
Crémieux Profile picture
Jun 3
Let's make this even clearer.

The severity of COVID vaccine-related myocarditis was far lower than the severity of COVID-related myocarditis, which instead looked like regular viral myocarditis.

You can see this in many cohorts. For example, this was seen in France: Image
This result replicates everywhere it's tested.

We knew this from the initial small studies... Image
Image
And we knew this based on somewhat larger Scandinavian register-based work as well

Do note, however, that the Scandinavian work had a poor case definition for infection-driven myocarditis compared to other cohorts. As the long-term study linked in the QT shows, they missed most Image
Read 22 tweets
Crémieux Profile picture
Jun 2
A friend of mine won a bet about myocarditis and the COVID vaccines a few years ago.

He bet that the myocarditis side effect was real and sizable for young men.

While COVID was more likely to cause myocarditis in general, among the young, the Moderna vaccine was a bit worse. Image
This still wasn't really something to worry about.

Look at the rates. They're incredibly small, at just about 15 per 1,000,000 under 40 years of age for the second dose of the Moderna vaccine and 3 per 1,000,000 for the Pfizer one.

Compare to whole-population COVID-myocarditis.
The vaccines were safe and effective, but this side effect was not all hype, as some health authorities jumped to claim.

Oh well, lessons learned. Hopefully.

Worth noting, though, that the vaccines still saved more lives than were harmed. ~15-20m lives by late 2022, in fact. Image
Read 4 tweets
Crémieux Profile picture
Jun 2
With so many people identifying themselves as having disorders that they're not diagnosed with, the U.K. will certainly have a glut of diagnoses in the near future.

People think it, and then make it so, and if the state honors those diagnoses, they'll end up paying out the nose. Image
Similarly, in Minnesota, the state recognizes clearly fraudulent autism diagnoses.

Who's doing them? Normal parents, but also certain communities.

For example, Somali immigrants have figured out how to get more welfare funds by getting their kids fake diagnoses. Image
As a result, fraud cases have opened up and the FBI has begun to investigate the Somali communities where autism funds are getting disproportionately directed.

In 2009, Minnesota Somalis had an autism rate about 7x the non-Somali average. Today, it's still high, at just over 3x.
Read 6 tweets
Crémieux Profile picture
Jun 2
Obesity has immense costs, and not just direct, medical ones.

Obesity makes people miss work and increases the odds they're on disability. It also increases presenteeism and workers' compensation costs.

The total cost is in the hundred of billions to over a trillion per year. Image
The costs of overweight and obesity are so extreme that making reducing the obesity rate can pay for itself if it can be done at prices achievable today.

And this number doesn't even consider all the costs. There are high costs from cardiovascular issues and cancer, too. Image
The most extreme estimate I'm aware of put the cost of obesity in 2016 at $1.7 trillion per year, due to $1.2 trillion in indirect costs.

But this study calculated costs based on all treated comorbidities associated with obesity/overweight, so might've been skewed.Image
Read 5 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

Send Email!

:(