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this post was submitted on 19 May 2024
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Unpopular Opinion
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That doesn't mean this is the right course of action. A doctor will actually examine you rather than just listening to your explanation of things that may or may not be relevant. The point isn't that people don't know doctors exist, it's that they want to find the cheapest route rather than spend the money to see one in addition to the fact that you have zero idea who the person you're talking to is.
Asking for medical advice online is no different than asking a magic 8-ball.
If people want to blindly apply the advice, do no followup or apply any kind of common sense to the answers thats on them.
Theres no folk remedy OR prescription for fucking stupid.
Your last sentence explains perfectly why people say “see your doctor”.
Nobody wants to participate in some idiot hurting themselves because they don’t have the ability to apply common sense in the first place.
People that ask for “tips and tricks” regarding healthcare also can’t fathom how incredibly complex modern medicine can be.
what if they can't spend the money?? just suffer? someone who's suffering from the same thing as me is frankly someone i respect more than a normal successful guy who went to school for 20 years
If asking online cures your illness then you probably didn't need to go to the doctor in the first place and you never know if someone is truly suffering from the same thing as you since so many illnesses have overlapping symptoms. Remember it wasn't too long ago that people online were recommending bleach and horse dewormer to cure COVID. Is that the type of advice you're looking for?
You're angry at the (I'm guessing) US healthcare system. I get it. It sucks. But that anger is woefully misplaced going against doctors or random people on the internet. The doctor that treats your ailment is not responsible for how much the clinic, the hospital or insurance charges you. But they will always be on your side and give you advice that they are sure will work and will help you get better.
People on the internet however, a few of them will give you advice that kills you or cause permanent harm without even an inch of remorse. They'll frame it as medical advice as well. Often without even recognizing that what they're doing is harmful. The internet has told little kids to chew on detergent pods, drink bleach, people with COVID to do bleach enemas and horse dewormer, told psychiatric patients to stop taking their medications (leading to accidents and suicides), caused ear infections with recipes for extraneous concoctions for tinnitus, and the list goes on.
The vast majority of the people on the internet do not want to be responsible for stuff like the ones above, so we tell people asking for advice to go see a doctor. If it's so much trouble, there are alternatives, asks for a friend to help you call and set up the appointment, they can come with you into consultation if you feel unsafe. You rely so much on the internet, make a gofundme or some similar donations page and get people to help you pay for the doctor. Hell I would rather help you with that, than give you potentially bad advice. The point is, “go to the doctor” doesn't come from a place of malice, quite the contrary, it comes from a place of care.
And finally, yes, the guy who went to school for 20 years knows more than the one guy who is suffering the same thing as you. Because, the one guy who suffers the same symptoms as you has very intimate experience with one body and one expression of the disease. Without even considering the fact that you have to find that one guy in the sea of million of users who have no idea what they're talking about. However, the guy who went to school has direct experience with thousands of bodies who have had the same disease, and indirect experience with millions of bodies that have been documented with the same disease in scientific and practice journals. He has seen your symptoms not once, but expressing in a million different ways, in a million lifestyles, treated with thousand different ways with control for hundreds of possible variables. He knows what works and what doesn't and can adapt his advice to your specific body, lifestyle and circumstances in ways that a random on the internet simply cannot.