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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   33986 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 9, 2024

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My odds of getting a needle stick injury are objectively pretty low. My odds of getting HIV (or something else) from a stick are even lower than that.

You'd better believe I shit myself just a bit whenever I handle a needle in the process of making sure those odd don't become real.

Yep, us civilians better be a lot more on edge than cops based on those stats. Considering on average a non-cop has a 50% higher chance of being murdered.

The point is that I have to deal with a low likelihood event on a day to day basis, which I have the training to avoid, but it lives rent free in my head altering my decisions, and it doesn't happen in part because it's more likely for me than the general public and because I use that worry and training to avoid it.

Looking at your stats you have a 1 in 50 chance in a given year, so I can see your worry. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK493147/

The risk isn't the stick which is relatively rare but not unheard of, it's going on to end up with an infection. From your article:

"However, after a needlestick injury developing HIV is not common at all. In fact, from 1981 to 2010, there have only been 143 possible cases of HIV that were reported among healthcare professionals. Of these only 57 of the exposed workers seroconverted to HIV. Percutaneous needlestick injury was the known cause in 84% of these cases. Other infections acquired from exposure were 9% by the mucocutaneous route and 4% by both routes."

Those numbers are a bit more in line, and involve a similar anxious thought process of "okay how carefully do I follow the occupational health guidelines after this stick."

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