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Health concerns grow in East Palestine, Ohio, after train derailment

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Re: Health concerns grow in East Palestine, Ohio, after train derailment

#271

Post by distrill »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #128
Julesman wrote: post #108

I see a lot of these responses starting with "The reason." I don't see many people talking about institutional bias. I don't see a lot of people talking about this disaster getting no coverage while the media is stuck on shooting down balloons. I don't see many people talking about the fact that if this was anywhere close to wealthy people that it would have been headline news. I don't see many talking about the abso…

> don't see a lot of people talking about this disaster getting no coverage Oh my god this is the only thing people are talking about. Please don’t do this. Let’s talk about the actual disaster instead of spinning up another useless whirlpool of meta-debate.

i feel similarly to you but i'm finding that people who are less online than i am have no idea that anything even happened in ohio. my media is full of coverage and lots of people pulling their hair out about the lack of coverage, which seems totally inaccurate. but my family who watch tv news and spend no time on reddit or hn or tiktok basically still haven't heard about this yet.

Re: Health concerns grow in East Palestine, Ohio, after train derailment

#272

Post by ClumsyPilot »

anigbrowl wrote: post #245
gowings97 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our fearless US press is too scared to have on-site staff to cover the largest ecological land-based disaster since Three Mile Island. Or they've been told by the regime it's a non-issue? Not sure which is worse, but the outcome is what you see before you; back page coverage a week after the incident. Barely a blurb. Yes, these things take time to fully investigate. Where are the daily updates from the EPA though? Wh…

Before you mock the press maybe take a look at how they are being treated in Ohio. This is from a press conference given by the governor last week. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQMLxBpiSu8

If true, thia should be even bigger news - instead front pages are covered with chinese baloons

Re: Health concerns grow in East Palestine, Ohio, after train derailment

#274

Post by yunwal »

steviedotboston wrote: post #89
shadowgovt wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason people are so upset is because they watched a smoke plume reach all the way to the cloud layer. That's it. That's the whole story. The average citizen's grasp of the medical risks of chemicals is basically negligible. But a smoke plume that reaches all the way to the cloud layer makes everyone ask questions about things they didn't care about 3 weeks ago.

[flagged]

Huh, because from my view, rail workers expressed concern over unsafe working conditions, complained about cost-cutting measures, negotiations were shut down without giving into demands by Biden and Buttegeig.

Then, a safety issue that was mentioned by union leaders[0] contributes to a train derailment days later. These seem very related to me, can you enlighten me as to why they're not?

[0] - https://www.timesunion.com/allnews/article/Railroad-union-sa...

Re: Health concerns grow in East Palestine, Ohio, after train derailment

#275

Post by vuln »

davesque wrote: post #218

This might be an unpopular opinion, but the speed at which this story has overtaken social media has made me skeptical. That coupled with the fact that the story practically doesn't exist in mainstream media. And in this case I just don't buy the whole "lamestream" media narrative. The mainstream media was all over the water crisis in Flint, Michigan. There's no reason they wouldn't be interested in giving more cover…

> The mainstream media was all over the water crisis in Flint, Michigan.

Different victims and different person/people/organizations/administrations to blame.

Re: Health concerns grow in East Palestine, Ohio, after train derailment

#276

Post by thepasswordis »

mrguyorama wrote: post #219
claytongulick wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ayn Rand wrote a sci-fi/political philosophy book about this exact subject, named Atlas Shrugged. The main character in the book is a railroad executive struggling to keep her company afloat in the face of ruinous regulations that were designed to drive the rail systems towards nationalization. The flip side of course, that she fails to address completely in that book, is unethical behavior by private industry, such…

Also, you know, it's fucking fiction from an asshole who knew nothing about the world?

Looking around and it looks a little bit like she knew a fair bit about the world.

Re: Health concerns grow in East Palestine, Ohio, after train derailment

#277

Post by thepasswordis »

claytongulick wrote: post #162
unethical_ban wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory, I don't see government ownership of society-critical industries with no opportunity for competition to be crazy. Tell me how you'd spin up a competing national rail line network.

Ayn Rand wrote a sci-fi/political philosophy book about this exact subject, named Atlas Shrugged. The main character in the book is a railroad executive struggling to keep her company afloat in the face of ruinous regulations that were designed to drive the rail systems towards nationalization. The flip side of course, that she fails to address completely in that book, is unethical behavior by private industry, such…

The market tried to solve this problem with workers going on strike a few months ago. Government regulations are what stopped it.

Re: Health concerns grow in East Palestine, Ohio, after train derailment

#278

Post by anigbrowl »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #128
Julesman wrote: post #108

I see a lot of these responses starting with "The reason." I don't see many people talking about institutional bias. I don't see a lot of people talking about this disaster getting no coverage while the media is stuck on shooting down balloons. I don't see many people talking about the fact that if this was anywhere close to wealthy people that it would have been headline news. I don't see many talking about the abso…

> don't see a lot of people talking about this disaster getting no coverage Oh my god this is the only thing people are talking about. Please don’t do this. Let’s talk about the actual disaster instead of spinning up another useless whirlpool of meta-debate.

I generally agree with you, and I also agree about the uselessness of meta-commentary. But this story has been ranking quite low on news sites, eg on the default) Google News it's not on the homepage at all and is 7th in the US news section which usually displays 3 stories per 'page' requiring scrolling. PBS Newshour, which normally covers environmental stories in detail - especially the kind involving long term problems like cancer cluster - only addressed it yesterday and then very briefly.

We need a better way to quantify media coverage to assess whether stories are under- or over-reported relative to others of the same type, but absent that people-talking-about-it is what we've got. I sometimes think HN could use meta-headings to cluster exceedingly obvious topic subthreads, because the top-to-bottom linear format is not ideal for multi-lateral discourse.

Re: Health concerns grow in East Palestine, Ohio, after train derailment

#279

Post by AutumnCurtain »

ly3xqhl8g9 wrote: post #243
jsonne wrote: post #67

I've been seeing content on Tiktok where even 100 miles away they're seeing small dead fish which is apparently according to the folks making the videos a massive red flag. In general I grow super weary of companies and the government downplaying these sorts of things. It seems to constantly follow the pattern of people saying "It's not that bad" and then only years later do we actually see the horrific health and en…

A tad of Yes, Minister wisdom [1]: "The Four Stage Strategy: Stage 1. Nothing is going to happen. Stage 2. Something may happen, but we should do nothing about it. Stage 3. Maybe we should do something about it, but there's nothing we can do. Stage 4. Maybe there was something we could have done, but it's too late now." [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSXIetP5iak

[flagged]

Re: Health concerns grow in East Palestine, Ohio, after train derailment

#280

Post by scarecrowbob »

anotherman554 wrote: post #165
jsonne wrote: post #67

I've been seeing content on Tiktok where even 100 miles away they're seeing small dead fish which is apparently according to the folks making the videos a massive red flag. In general I grow super weary of companies and the government downplaying these sorts of things. It seems to constantly follow the pattern of people saying "It's not that bad" and then only years later do we actually see the horrific health and en…

"I've been seeing content on Tiktok where even 100 miles away they're seeing small dead fish which is apparently according to the folks making the videos a massive red flag." I wouldn't bother watching a Tiktok video unless the video maker is an environmental professional. Otherwise this is just the blind leading the blind. Here's a legal definition of environmental professional used by developers when they do a envi…

What are your qualifications for making that statement?
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