[alexfrydl]

The problem is that people are not statistics. It may sound reasonable on the surface to say that this heuristic minimizes harm on average because she doesn't perform unnecessary interventions on the 99.9%. However, there are still actual human beings in the 0.1% who are harmed. What you're really saying is that if a group of people is small enough, it's fair for them to suffer preventable harm if preventing it would expose the larger group of people to risk.

I'm not going to argue about whether that is true or not, because I think that clearly depends on many factors and may be unanswerable. But as a member of a minority group who is often denied health care, it is often denied for this very reason. If the wrong person is prescribed this treatment, it is harmful. I'm just saying that when you're in the 0.1%, it can be difficult to accept the idea that you have to sacrifice yourself because someone in the 99.9% might be at risk otherwise.

[throwaway22032]

There are an unfathomable number of possible things that could be wrong with you at any one time. All of those might not be present in 99% of people and present in 1%.

But the 1% is not the same for every disease. If you perform unnecessary interventions on everyone for every disease, then you also perform unnecessary interventions on the 1% of every disease for all of the other diseases that they don't have.

Now you've given everyone weird cancers because you've done thousands of x-rays and CT scans for all manner of things.

[pessimizer]

You have no way to know if you're in the 0.1%. It's not written on your body anywhere. So if an early test can save 1/1000 from dying, but the false positives from an early test kill 3/1000, false positives are more dangerous than the disease you may or may not have.

[the_af]

I am arguing that the doctor must remain alert and not be lazy (though doctors are often overworked and tired, but that's a different problem), but that her default of "aspirin and rest" is a good one.