Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Spot the Drowning Child (2015)

spotthedrowningchild.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 424 posts

Re: Spot the Drowning Child (2015)

#211

Post by keanzu »

yCombLinks wrote: post #197
pmarreck wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Swimming is one of the few activities that children engage in which can go so wrong as to end up in their death Climbing trees (fall risk) Climbing tall playground equipment (I broke my arm falling from a height of just 3 feet once, on one of those). Broken neck, etc. Playing in the street (cars) Bicycling (can get hit by a car, sigh) Trampoline (don't get me started) Exploring (falling down deep wells, etc.) The G…

Drowning far outweighs all of those categories for ages 1 - 9 https://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/pdf/leading_causes_of_inj... In the large majority of motor vehicle incidents the child is an occupant of the vehicle : https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...

I see they have a category "Unintentional Pedestrian, Other" unable to find a glossary. Possibly refers to being hit by MV while a pedestrian?

Unintentional Poisoning seems really common for adults?! Misuse of prescription drugs apparently.

Re: Spot the Drowning Child (2015)

#212

Post by catrina11 »

Hello

Do you need financial support?

Sign up for all kinds of loans and get the money urgently!

* Get a stress-free loan today! * No Contest Qualifying! * No credit check, no faxing! * Instant online approvals! * Completely confidential! * Cash in 48 hours!

* Appointment between $5,000 and $100,000,000 USD (only one hundred million USD) * Interest rate of 3% * Choose between 1-25 years repayment. * Choose between monthly and annual repayment plan. * Flexibility of loan terms.

All these plans and more, please contact us via: catrinaprestamo@outlook.com

Enter your data as needed. Name, address, date of birth, monthly income, loan amount required, desired loan term.

Administration Catrinaprestamo@outlook.com

WHATSAPP: +1(863)410-6179

Re: Spot the Drowning Child (2015)

#213

Post by ben7799 »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #206
AstralStorm wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you're incorrectly trained. You should always be able to flip and float on your back if push comes to shove, and in that position you can swim just using your arms.

Floating on your back is only possible for a subset of the population. There are plenty of people who simply sink when on their back, and must kick or more their arms constantly to stay afloat. FWIW

This is improper training. (Former WSI here) Especially in the ocean. The Salinity in the ocean makes it very easy for a well trained swimmer to float. People who sink on their back haven't been trained to maintain enough air in their lungs and/or use minimal arm/leg effort to assist. Also they are probably not leaning their head back far enough. (Head position being a massive component of the problem for non-swimmers.)

Anyone who is a "swimmer" can float prone or supine with minimal effort and work out a foot or stomach cramp. I couldn't even count the # of times I've had foot cramps while swimming and stopped and floated and massaged the cramp out. Floating prone is always the better solution for working out a cramp.

I taught adults in private lessons who had this "problem". It goes away with training.

Re: Spot the Drowning Child (2015)

#214

Post by killjoywashere »

keanzu wrote: post #150
lzol wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who worked as a wave pool lifeguard for 8 years and is a current certified Water Safety Instructor, I mostly agree. The large rafts are never really what I have an issue with. It's water wings and other personal flotation devices that are much more troublesome. Parents are a huge part of the issue. PFDs give them a false sense of security where they feel like they don't have to watch their kid. The best ch…

Somehow people don't realize the danger that pools possess. Swimming is one of the few activities that children engage in which can go so wrong as to end up in their death. I would suggest that it is borderline negligence for a parent to put a child in such a dangerous situation without proper precautions (supervision). I wouldn't let a small child I am responsible for go into a pool alone regardless of the presence…

> I wouldn't let a small child I am responsible for go into a pool alone

You would. Let me give you the scenario: you're home alone with the three kids, you've been chasing them around, doing laundry, cleaning up spilled grape juice, telling Jenny to stop cutting Tommy's hair, etc. Finally, you think everyone is down for a nap. You turn on the game. 5 minutes later, 5 minutes, you think "It's too quiet...". You get up and walk around for a couple minutes to find 4 year-old Sally's door open. No Sally. Where's Sally? Sprint around the house, run down to the kitchen, look in the back yard, and she's face down in the pool. You immediately get her out, desperate. You realize you have to separate from her to call 911. She's been unaccounted for by now for 12 minutes.

The paramedics get a breath back, but anoxic brain injury has set in. She dies, tubes in every orifice, 3 days later.

I have seen this play out more than once. My parents had a pool. I was a lifeguard, have made rescues. I was also on swim team, I'm in the Navy now, and I'm a physician. I surf, I dive, I do open ocean swimming and triathlons. I've helped rescue a diver in pulmonary edema. I think I wouldn't leave my kid unattended, but I know I might.

I've met the parents. They wouldn't let a small child go into a pool alone either.

Re: Spot the Drowning Child (2015)

#215

Post by mncharity »

HenryBemis wrote: post #11

To all parents out there, it takes 10 seconds for a toddler to drown. Once in the water, if they go under, they tend to get disoriented and don't know where is up or down. When you are with your kids near a swimming pool or the sea, keep your eyes glued on them. My rule is "never break line of sight" (I borrowed the term from Assassin's Creed where if you break line of sights from the guards chasing you for a few sec…

> or the sea

This can be surprisingly non-obvious.

A 5-ish year old walking around and splashing at the beach. In shallow below-knee water. With shallow above-knee surf. No worries.

Gets knocked down. Repeated wave impacts, unstable sand, water hitting face, struggle to breathe air and not water. They're unable to stand up again. Keep trying and falling. And then not trying.

The parent was a couple meters away, watching, interpreting this as play. Bystanders stepped in. Intervention was trivially easy. Parent criticized kid for fooling around. So even afterwards, it was non-obvious they had been watching their kid drown.

Perhaps if you don't have experience where the challenge to breathing isn't absence of air, but the presence of too much water mixed into it?

Re: Spot the Drowning Child (2015)

#216

Post by ben7799 »

robohoe wrote: post #156
pmarreck wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please learn to swim. It's never too late. Plus, it's fun. Plus, it's classy. Plus, you won't be caught "in over your head" (sorry) in situations like this. Humans are meant to learn to swim IMHO. The instinctive response is just a "stub" that is expected to be built upon, similar to language ability and crawling->walking and other human things. (Humans don't naturally walk unless they are taught to, did you know tha…

How does one learn to swim with small feet? I tried to learn how to swim multiple times when I was a youth (grade school, middle school, high school). I could never grasp it and would always end up flailing my legs or slowly sinking. It was quite traumatic :)

Larger feet are a genetic advantage for swimming but are in no way required.

Like most other sports there is a body type that is advantaged in swimming.

- Tall overall height (max speed is limited by length at water line just like boats)

- Lower than usual ratio for torso length to leg length

- Large feet

- Long arms (positive ape index)

- Large hands

Michael Phelps is a perfect example of this.

Re: Spot the Drowning Child (2015)

#217

Post by ben7799 »

alistairSH wrote: post #126
_ph_ wrote: post #89

I am impressed by these videos any time the pop up on hacker news. But one thing struck me: that they are using those large floatation rings. A lot of the incidents seem to be where a child looses contact to the ring and then cannot swim on itself. I am wondering, why they are allowed at all. In my personal experience, I have rarely seen such rings in public pools and that basically means, you are not getting far int…

Many of these samples are also in a wave pool. And crowded. I assume with all of the above, drowning risk is much higher in these pools. It's a shame that swimming/water survival aren't a part of school in the US. Knowing how to tread water and doggy paddle are valuable, life-saving skills.

I would expect so as well.

Most Wave pools are at resorts/water parks which typically do not necessarily even employ fully trained/high skill lifeguards.

They often rely on private certification programs that will train "shallow water lifeguards" who do not have to have a full set of swimming & rescue skills. They do tend to have good training for spinal injuries though.

Add in that these resorts are most attractive to non-swimmers and they are hopelessly crowded and it is a dangerous mix.

Places like Great Wolf Lodge scare the daylights out of me as a former lifeguard/WSI.

Re: Spot the Drowning Child (2015)

#218

Post by young_unixer »

dmos62 wrote: post #155
young_unixer wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1%-2% doesn't seem "very rare" to me.

What kind of intuition do you have about 1%-2%? I've a crappy grasp of probability. I'd say 1-2% is like being quite certain that you'll experience this or that within 50-100 tries/repetitions. That sounds rare to me. In case of life or death it's not a risk I'd tolerate, but I'd call it rare.

My intuition comes from other uses of "rare" and "very rare" in medical fields.

"In Europe a disease or disorder is defined as rare when it affects less than 1 in 2000 citizens." [1]

""" In the United States, the Rare Diseases Act of 2002 defines rare disease strictly according to prevalence, specifically "any disease or condition that affects fewer than 200,000 people in the United States", or about 1 in 1,500 people. This definition is essentially the same as that of the Orphan Drug Act of 1983, a federal law that was written to encourage research into rare diseases and possible cures.

In Japan, the legal definition of a rare disease is one that affects fewer than 50,000 patients in Japan, or about 1 in 2,500 people.

However, the European Commission on Public Health defines rare diseases as "life-threatening or chronically debilitating diseases which are of such low prevalence that special combined efforts are needed to address them". The term low prevalence is later defined as generally meaning fewer than 1 in 2,000 people. Diseases that are statistically rare, but not also life-threatening, chronically debilitating, or inadequately treated, are excluded from their definition. """

[1] https://www.eurordis.org/content/what-rare-disease

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_disease

Re: Spot the Drowning Child (2015)

#219

Post by mrob »

falcolas wrote: post #123
Nasrudith wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the reason for floatation devices is a transitionary measure to get them more used to and practiced in "preswimming" while participating and not simply wading or pool side clinging. They are just often misused - you are supposed to be supervising them when they are in the pool period and they only need deep enough water to keep their feet off the ground.

Personal opinion, based off my own experience and teaching other children how to swim: Flotation devices have no part to play in teaching how to swim. Parents (or teachers) holding their children and teaching them how to float is step 1. Only after the child can handle themselves in water (float, know when to breathe) should they be playing with flotation devices.

I learned to swim using a float shaped like a miniature surfboard that I held out in front of me. This was both supervised and done in water shallow enough that I could stand with my head above the surface. If I had not been allowed access to this I am certain that I would have refused to go in the water at all (I was already very reluctant to do so even with the float).

Re: Spot the Drowning Child (2015)

#220

Post by ralphhughes »

darkFunction wrote: post #192
robohoe wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does one learn to swim with small feet? I tried to learn how to swim multiple times when I was a youth (grade school, middle school, high school). I could never grasp it and would always end up flailing my legs or slowly sinking. It was quite traumatic :)

There are paralympic swimmers with no arms or legs who can swim a length faster than me, and I'm a competent swimmer. I wouldn't worry about your foot size.

I parsed that on first read as "no (arms or legs)" instead of "(no arms) || (no legs)" and was very surprised!
Post reply on HN