Re: Helmet efficacy test

On 3/28/2025 4:43 PM, Radey Shouman wrote:

Frank Krygowski <frkrygow@sbcglobal.net> writes:
 

Flu vaccinations get developed based on predictions of upcoming virus
characteristics. And they are evaluated by after-the-fact reports on
effectiveness, by counts of flu cases and severity in the general
population: How much did this year's vaccine reduce flu infections?
Sometimes the vaccine works really well, sometimes less well.
>
If that same sort of general population evaluation was applied to bike
helmets, the conclusion would be "Yeah, our initial tests looked good,
but they failed in the general population."

 I doubt you have looked into flu shots with the same energy you have
bike helmets.  Flu shots are a moneymaker, and are promoted every year
regardless of how well they have done.  This is not to say anything
positive or negative about their efficacy, just that it's not relevant
to the decision on whether to promote them.  Same as bike helmets

I see major differences. Flu shots are revised year by year based on the best science available, which typically involves "what strain of flu just dominated in the southern hemisphere?" Yes, sometimes they miss, but the results are typically good, with 50% fewer flu cases being pretty typical. And they try for improvements the next year.
And flu causes tens of thousands of U.S. fatalities in most years.
Bike helmet design and certification is calcified (by law!) in 1970s technology. Unlike flu vaccines, there is no national population data indicating any significant reduction in deaths. And bicycling TBI deaths are very rare anyway, typically around only 500 per year out of a national total of over 50,000 TBI deaths.

You're an odd case.  Most people who begin to doubt the party line on
one issue begin to see parallels with other issues, and their doubts
multiply.  Bike helmets don't work?  Maybe flu vaccines don't either.
Maybe statins are actually bad for you.  Maybe, as Mr. Shadow tells us,
US standards for blood pressure are counter-productive.  Maybe even
those studies on second hand smoke were nonsense.  Who knows where it
will stop?  Maybe eating saturated animal fat is actually *good* for us.

IIRC, in this discussion group and in this society, each of us gets to choose the issues that are important to us.

Of course, it's wise not to mention too many heterdox opinions in any
one setting, lest decent people decide you're entirely crazy.  But you
seem quite uncalculating -- It's just bike helmets that are an
unaccountable failure in public health policy, on everything else we
should obey authority.

:-)  On helmets, I'm among the last people to whom you should apply "uncalculating." Review my many posts citing data and data processing.
And you have roughly zero idea about my views on "everything else," including statins, blood pressure, second hand smoke, saturated fat, etc. Check your assumptions at the door, please.
--
- Frank Krygowski