On Fri, Sep 5, 2014 at 11:33 AM, Joe Hass <[email protected]> wrote:

> My apologies for skipping over that word. You're right: it does make a
> difference (though I was a little surprised at Rivers' death mostly because
> the implication I drew from my limited awareness was that she was
> stabilized.
>

I think the confusion about Rivers' prognosis was almost entirely due to
her daughter's reluctance to accept the likely outcome - that is not a
criticism of Melissa Rivers, it is obviously a very common initial reaction
among family members. I think I hinted obliquely here last week that the
publicly reported details (a woman of her age placed in a medically induced
coma) suggested a very low probability of recovery. I have not read if they
decided to take her off life support after three days or so, but in my
experience that would be the most common path - the coma gives an outside
chance of they person marshaling their resources to recover, but in context
it mostly gives relatives a buffer zone to come to terms with the impending
death.

I agree with all of what has been said here about Dave's reaction to the
two recent deaths, and the framework I would place that in is, while always
sad when it happens to someone you know and love or even just like, the
death of an 81 year old subsequent to a medical procedure does not quite
rise to the level of a shocking tragedy, not because older people are less
important, but simply because old people tend to die of one thing or
another. The death of a relatively young (63) year old man from suicide is
at a whole different level. Having said that, Dave did very intentionally
if indirectly make room for a later finding that River's death might be
found to be due to some kind of malpractice, which certainly would up the
tragedy level.

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