ROPE - I have not heard of this snorkeling problem

[John the Pom]

I had this argument with a dad at work. The reasons he loved these full-face snorkel masks were the exact same reasons why I didn't like them: you didn't have to learn any skills to use them. We taught our kids to snorkel and they loved it, and went on to SCUBA-diving when they were older. Snorkelling's pretty easy, but you learn a lot of valuable things, like how it feels to get a bit of water in your mask or snorkel, and that you can deal with it okay yourself, i.e., you learn a bit of self-reliance.

 

[Billg68bg]

49 million people doing some healthy exercise in the water probably also saves a few lives!

What’s your point?

 

[John the Pom]

What’s your point?

I thought it was self evident, but I'll spell it out. Let's say you had a program to get half the country to take up regular swimming. Drownings would go up, but there would be less heart attacks, less obesity, peoples' blood pressure would drop, there would be less strokes, etc. Overall, it would probably be a positive thing. So it's very difficult to say that snorkelling is dangerous based on a few deaths amongst 49 million snorkelers - you have to correct for how many of those people would have died anyway, the health benefits of exercise, and so on.

 

[SlugLife]

Or, as someone put it the last time a snorkeler death in HI made the news, if you have 5 million people a year snorkel in your bathtub, you're bound to end up with a couple of dozen corpses in your bathroom.

That's what I told the police, but they had questions about the blood and knife wounds.

 

[Billg68bg]

I thought it was self evident, but I'll spell it out. Let's say you had a program to get half the country to take up regular swimming. Drownings would go up, but there would be less heart attacks, less obesity, peoples' blood pressure would drop, there would be less strokes, etc. Overall, it would probably be a positive thing. So it's very difficult to say that snorkelling is dangerous based on a few deaths amongst 49 million snorkelers - you have to correct for how many of those people would have died anyway, the health benefits of exercise, and so on.

I completely agree. And I wasn’t being sarcastic. Your statement wasn’t that clear. Thanks for the clarification.

 

[dmaziuk]

That's what I told the police, but they had questions about the blood and knife wounds.

I was jus' sittin' there peeling a banana with my dagger, Yr' Honour, when she was getting into the tub and slipped on a banana peel and fell right onto my knife. Seven times.

 

[Billg68bg]

I was jus' sittin' there peeling a banana with my dagger, Yr' Honour, when she was getting into the tub and slipped on a banana peel and fell right onto my knife. Seven times.

Hate it when that happens.

 

[smashweights]

According to a study, I just read, for 2019, slightly over 10 million vacationers visited Hawaii that year. It was estimated that @ 49% of those vacationers snorkeled. If their numbers are accurate, then the 22 snorkelers that died that year equates to 0.00044%. Not exactly enormous in the grand scheme of things. And the report I found didn’t even mention the number of locals that snorkeled in 2019. Further reducing the percentage of overall snorkeling deaths.
I am not downplaying the deaths. I’m just showing the math.

Yeah, I read this elsewhere and was curious what the actual incidence is that you'd be warning people of. Based on those lose numbers it would be around 1/200,000. People can still get this even after acclimating a fews days. If you told me about ROPE and it was 1/200,000 risk the day I arrived or 1/500,000 if I waited a few days I'd still go day 1.

 

[Billg68bg]

Yeah, I read this elsewhere and was curious what the actual incidence is that you'd be warning people of. Based on those lose numbers it would be around 1/200,000. People can still get this even after acclimating a fews days. If you told me about ROPE and it was 1/200,000 risk the day I arrived or 1/500,000 if I waited a few days I'd still go day 1.

Yeah. It’s crazy. You may literally have a better chance of being struck by lightning.

 

[Trilobite]

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