Reddit and What I Found There

   So my first though to this blog entry was, "what the heck is Reddit?" I had heard of it a couple times but I honestly had no idea what it was.  After going on Youtube and watching a video on what the point of it all is, I understand now that it is a popularity based type of news website.  I also learned that there are no editors on Reddit, so the information can come from all over the place.  However, since the information is all scattered, it makes the news that I learn more interesting since it involves way more than just one topic of public health.  In this blog post, I will be discussing what is going on in the Reddit Public Health World and what stories are most interesting to me.

1.  What kinds of things do people in the Reddit forums seem to be discussing?
     What I first noticed on the Reddit Public Health page, was that a lot of the forums were personal and not all fact based.  There were a lot of questions that pertained to trying to get a job in the field of public health.  In the first slot, "the number one hot topic" was asking whether or not it was possible to avoid taking the CDC survey.  There were forums talking about internships that were available for public health as well as what to do after graduating graduate school and having a masters in biostatistics.  There were about three or more comments on each of the personal question forums that seemed to be beneficial to the person who posted.  There were very few posts that had articles attached to them which made me realize that these articles that were attached were popular and were "trending".   The forums that did have articles attached to them didn't have comments since they went straight to the site of the article.  The articles that I did see though were the same topics that I have seen all over the internet from the past blog entries.  There were forums on the Zika virus, the Flint water crisis, and the controversy of vaccinations.

2. The two most interesting debates that I found on Reddit:

• The safety of E-cigarettes 

Ecig Click. "Electronic Cigarette/Vaporizer/ E Cig". 12/11/14 via Flicker.
Creative Commons Generic License.  

     The debate on the safety of E-cigarettes was interesting to me because of the different kinds of people that commented on the article.  One of the users, shawnthesnail is a graduate student of public health in California and also owns a vape store.  He or she was arguing that the majority of the E-cigarettes that are made, are made to be extremely clean and safe while the handmade E-cigarettes won't be as safe.  He or she also noted that they are trying to get the vape liquids to be made with safer chemicals but that since they aren't getting the support they need from the public health officials, it is hard to keep the chemicals from being harmful.  However, shawnthesnail made a good point when he or she said that if the E-cigarettes are banned then they will just "go underground" and will probably be made in much poorer conditions leading to health conditions worsening from vaping.  Zeshan_Hashmi argued that smoking is bad for health whether it is tobacco or the vape.  However, the majority of the other commenters argued that the claim was not valid since there was really no evidence in the article that said one way or another about the health of E-cigarettes.  Personally, I agree with Zeshan_Hashmi in that all smoking is bad for you and I know that I don't appreciate any kind of smoke being blown into my face so I would love it if the E-cigarettes turned out to be not safe so less people would feel the need to use them.  Although there may not be any valid evidence in this specific article, I would like to believe that in the future there will be.  

illuminating9_11. "expose the lies SAY NO TO THE VACCINE".
08/10/09 via Flicker.  Creative Commons No-Deriv Generic License. 

• HPV Vaccines are underutilized

     The debate on vaccination has been quite popular on a lot of news sites recently.  In this conversation however, the users are discussing how when the HPV vaccine came out, their mothers did not want them to get the shot because it was "too new" and they didn't trust it.  The mothers thought that the vaccine would backfire and end up doing chronic damage to their daughters.  But grumpywumps noted that there was once a story in the news where people got sick supposedly from the HPV vaccine but it turned out to be from something else besides the vaccine.  Even after the confusion was all cleared up, people were still uneasy about getting the vaccine since they didn't want to get sick.  

     Some of the users were saying that the reason that they didn't get the vaccine, besides the reason of their mother's not letting them, was the price of the shot.  letsmakeart said that she would have gotten her shot now, but it is far too expensive and her insurance won't cover it.  This is also the problem with vaccines-their price.  Although, I think that even if it takes a lot of money, in the end it will have been worth it because you'll be healthy and ultimately saving money than had you waited and become more sick.

3.  My impression of Public Health after going on Reddit:
     Now that I have seen what other people talk about related to pubic health on social media sites and news sites, I see now that all sorts of people, not just professionals talk about daily controversies that deal with health issues.  People can have opinions on health topics, although I did notice that it is more beneficial to everybody when the people posting actually have knowledge on the topic before discussing it and arguing about it.  It not only helps the reader, but it helps to solidify the fact that the person arguing has legitimate reasons to be saying the things he or she is saying.  Public health is applicable in all situations for all types of people and that is why I think I am so excited to major in it.