Journalist must not even appear biased

Recently, a well respected local columnist wrote a column which appeared in the local paper. The local paper is owed by Post Media and many believe Post Media has a hate on for the federal Liberal party. Furthermore, many readers believe that this hatred results in biased reporting.

The column in question said that Finland’s poverty rate was of 0.1 per cent. To put this in perspective, the poverty rate in Canada was given as 7.4 per cent according to census figures.

Whoa! Can that be true? Can Finland actually have a poverty rate of 0.1 percent? A little research revealed the figure may be one reported by MacroTrends. Curious, I looked for the MacroTrends figure for Canada. It was 0.0 percent.

The MacroTrends figures are highly suspect. Heck, I heard from the columnist and even he admitted  "Any source that says Canada's poverty rate for 2022 was zero percent is laughable." And that is a quote.

The columnist went on to tell me, my "point was that Finland's poverty rate is significantly below that of Canada and the United States." That is another quote. But, is it also an assumption? The columnist compared a "laughable" poverty rate figure for Finland and a proper census figure for Canada. Is some bias against the ruling federal Liberals creeping in here? Has the columnist bent over backwards to put Canada's poverty rate in the poorest light?

I found a risk of poverty figure for Finland for 2022 published by Statista. It was 12.3 percent. This figure defined poverty as being below 60% of the median income. I could not find a comparable figure from the same source for Canada. But, I did find this figure from Statistics Canada: 9.9 percent of Canadians lived in poverty in 2022. But it is hard to compare this number to the Finnish number. It is not an apples to apples comparison.

I decided the Low-Income Measure (LIM) may be a better choice to use for the Canadian number. It considers household poverty to kick in when an adjusted income is below 50% of median household incomes. I found that themost recent data available has approximately 12.0% of Canadians living at or below the Low-Income Measure (LIM) calculated for 2022. This is the same year as used in the Finnish number.

I could continue this research but I believe I have made my point. The columnist used a laughable (his word) figure to make the point that Canada is lagging far behind Finland when it comes to solving the problem of poverty. Assumptions are not acceptable and his assumption may well be wrong. Period. Canadians should be able to expect more from their newspapers.

Heart Failure Life Expectancy Calculator

I found two Heart Failure Life Expectancy Calculators online.(https://www.omnicalculator.com/.../heart-failure-life...). AND the Seattle Heart Failure Model (https://depts.washington.edu/shfm/app.php?width=1536&height=864).

 

I'm going to show these calculators to my heart doctor when I see him next in about five months. I'm interested in hearing his opinion as the calculated results seems so different. Doctors are reticent to give a patient with HF an estimate of their life expectancy. A calculator lets them off the hook, so to speak. 

 

If you go to the first link shown and scroll to the bottom of that page, you will fine an assortment of more cardiovascular system calculators.

 

And what were my results? Drum roll, please.

 

 

 

And the Seattle Heart Failure Model was a bit more optimistic.

 

 

Examples of my photography. All but one image shot with a point-and-shoot.

 

Bruce Cockburn

Face-painting

 

School bus shelter in American prairies.

 

 

 

 

 

 Colourful hair and colourful covid-19 face mask

Joan Barfoot, award-winning London author

Children's Museum

California surfer.

Model at fashion show. Shot with a point-and-shoot.

 

Karate class. Just who is the instructor?

Pfizer Covid 19

 https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-pfizer-covid-19-vaccine-doesnt-prevent-transmission-antivax-disinformation-goes-viral-again/

How to find an Ann Coulter article using the Wayback Machine

Wayback Machine

Ann Coulter

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/289574

Ann Coulter claims she's the victim of hate crime

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/289433

One of the best articles on how to spot heart failure

10 Signs of Heart Failure You Should Never Ignore

When it comes to drug abuse, particularly prescription drug abuse, are we getting the whole story?

A lot of reporters have won awards reporting on the drug overdose situation. One can be forgiven for thinking that the avalanche of award-winning articles have presented the only take on the drug overdose epidemic. A relatively recent piece by Randy Richmond, of The London Free Press, touches on some of the ideas that have not been widely discussed but note the article was written in late 2021. The linked article below was written a full three years earlier and there are other similar pieces going back decades. An under reported position, I'd say.

For another perspective, read:

We Can’t Go Cold Turkey: Why Suppressing Drug Markets Endangers Society
Nick Werle and Ernesto Zedillo

Today, opioid agonist treatment (OAT) for addiction maintenance is the gold standard for treating opioid use disorder. As a chronic, relapsing mental health condition, opioid use disorder is not susceptible to a cure, per se. But evidence-based treatments employing OAT can help patients stabilize their lives, manage their addictions, reintegrate into society, and reduce the harmful consequences of drug use.

 

Maintenance therapy has been shown to be more clinically effective and more cost effective than detoxification.12 Abstinence-based treatments are common in the United States, where they often follow the model for alcohol abuse treatment, with the goal of lifetime abstinence, but there is little evidence of clinical efficacy.

 

Abstinence-based treatment can increase mortality risk: While heroin withdrawal itself is rarely life-threatening, putting people with opioid use disorder into withdrawal poses a high risk of overdose, because a period of abstinence leads to reduced tolerance.14 This risk of overdose explains why abstinence-based treatment approaches for alcoholism are dangerous when applied to people with opioid use disorder: Relapse to alcohol use is rarely fatal, but relapse to fentanyl-laced heroin often kills.

The government has long sought to suppress consumption with a medication that would “cure” opioid addiction outright. But evidence shows that this goal can be deadly, because using medication to keep someone abstinent further raises overdose risk. Many drug courts and treatment programs now rely on naltrexone, which is sold under the brand name Vivitrol as a wonder drug for stopping opioid use. Naltrexone is an opiate antagonist that triggers immediate withdrawal and blocks opioids’ pharmacological effects. But this abstinence is costly: Overdoses are more common following cessation of naltrexone treatment.