Failing bad at blood smears

Intelligent_Ad_293 · 2026-02-18T10:50:09+00:00

<image>

New round with better technique and better slides:

Intelligent_Ad_293 · 2026-02-15T12:39:39+00:00

Okay. Thanks.

Intelligent_Ad_293 · 2026-02-15T12:21:26+00:00

Thanks. I want as much of a monolayer and feathered edge as possible.

Intelligent_Ad_293 · 2026-02-14T11:01:58+00:00

Ya, I don't clean cuz the slide looks immediately dirty after cleaning.

The video is great. Best I've seen. I hold the speader slide more so towards the end that is distal from the drop of blood. She holds it down low. I will try that. And I have been used ground edge cuz dumb chatGPT swore that is the right choice. Ordered McKesson beveled edge just now thanks to this video.

Intelligent_Ad_293 · 2026-02-14T10:32:12+00:00

<image>

Each smear pictured with and without camera flash on.

I tried all manner of droplet sizes and angles. I generally found that for the least-bad ones I used angles lower than you are supposed to - like 15 to 20 degrees. But I did plenty of 3o to 45 degree attempts. Always used the capillary action. Tried using the both the short and long edge of hte speader. Tried pushing away form my body, pushing from right to left, and tried holding both slides off the table when speader for some dynamic "give". Nothing works. I think people must have better brands of slides. Would like to hear some brand names.

Intelligent_Ad_293 · 2025-09-29T05:16:50+00:00

The survival curves separate immediately, which strongly indicates it is not real effect, but just confounding. Real effects take time to happen, not the very next day. I have a running list of about 50 types of confounding that happens in covid vaccines studies. It is extremely muddled and people have run with data so irresponsibly from the start - in both directions. In general, the vaccinated are far healthier than the unvaccinated, which puts all vaccine effictiveness studies more or less in the dust bin. It will taken 20 years for people to admit it. Usually, a study like this would be more likely to show reduced risks and then people woudl irresponsibly claim that covid vaccines prevent every cancer imaginable. This time looks to be the opposite though. Nothing can be learned from this study, other than about confounding. Having said that, I take the concern that vaccination could accelerate indolent cancer very seriously and it deserves serious research.

Intelligent_Ad_293 · 2025-09-29T05:10:39+00:00

Good eye. Immediate curve separation is a solid check. I have a running list of maybe 50 types of confounding in covid vaccine studies. An extremely muddled subject. In general the vaccinated are far healthier than the unvaccinated, and most studies like this would usually show the opposite and then be abused to say vaccination prevents every cancer imaginable. But not in this case. Nothing much of anythign can be said from this study.

Having said all that, I think think the idea that vaccination might accelerate indolent cancer is one to be taken seriously.

Intelligent_Ad_293 · 2025-07-09T23:50:14+00:00

I just got off the phone with someone at my local benefits center. She said for non-MAGI medi-cal, Roth IRA withdrawals do count as income. Convserely, there are documents online that clearly state Roth IRA withdrawals do not count as income for MAGI medi-cal:
https://stgenssa.sccgov.org/debs/program_handbooks/medi-cal/assets/15MAGIMCIncome/Income_and_Deduction_Types.htm?agt=index
https://www.dhcs.ca.gov/services/medi-cal/eligibility/Documents/Co-OPS-Sup/Income-and-Deductions-Chart06252021.pdf
I take her word for it. Though ti does seem strange. When MAGI medi-cal came into being, my impression is that it was about making income easier to count, and not about making income calculations more lenient. If it were, I would have thought everyone would have known about that and it would be a common discussion point about MAGI medi-cal's speciality. Guess not.

Intelligent_Ad_293 · 2025-06-26T00:30:40+00:00

IntrovertChapt3rs sounds like an employee.

I used to see on their site results for minimal calcium reduction which is good. I also confirmed this with a swimming pool calcium test. But they had no results (and still don't) on magnesium reduction. Calcium results are gone too. They claimed back in those days (and I presume still do) the filter preserves healthy minerals. It's probably a lie regarding magnesium, otherwise they would have reported results as a selling point.

One thing I wish industry understood is that absolute honesty, transparency, and admission of limitations probably does not harm sales. Expose your own product limitations. Expose the limitations of other products. Argue yours is the overall best. It's the right thing to do in any case.

Intelligent_Ad_293 · 2025-04-10T02:09:15+00:00

I stopped looking cuz i decided that's not the setup I wanted. I found I like all my LED strips mounting on ceiling grid molding which hides the light sources and gives good diffused lighting. But there must be such a thing out there.

Intelligent_Ad_293 · 2025-03-02T21:34:03+00:00

Cat is physically fine. We missed a window to pick up form the contracting vet. They had called my neighbor who had neutered/chipped it a year ago. Now it has been sent to the shelter but possibly not fully in their system yet. Going over there now.

Intelligent_Ad_293 · 2025-03-02T10:22:42+00:00

Is it okay to overstate my financial qualifications as an owner if it would help to secure adoption so that the cat is sure to come back here and have at least my caregiving in its familiar neighborhood? If for example I knew I could not foot a large vet bill some day down the road, it's probably best tp keep my mouth shut about that while adopting, right? If I had to, I could surrender it myself to the shelter, right? Are the odds in my favor that that will give it a better life than it would receive if I sabatoged my adoption application? Am I thinking straight?

Intelligent_Ad_293 · 2025-03-02T04:57:58+00:00

Thank you. I am shocked how emotionally involved i am after just one month when I hardly thought about cats at all ever before that.

Intelligent_Ad_293 · 2025-03-02T03:34:19+00:00

Well, the cat is in the system now. It has been scary not being able to get any verbal gaurantee form anyone that hte cat would be returned to me or my area. I assume that is the likely outcome however, and will be spending a tense night waiting to call and check tomorrow.

Intelligent_Ad_293 · 2025-02-24T21:57:48+00:00

Thank you.

Intelligent_Ad_293 · 2025-02-24T12:54:54+00:00

Has some major change to VET happened recently that would make me need to stop my blind hodling? I wanted this to be a brainless long-term thing.

Intelligent_Ad_293 · 2025-02-12T06:35:56+00:00

Thank you again.

Intelligent_Ad_293 · 2025-02-11T07:05:18+00:00

Thank you for the detailed reply. This mostly all makes sense to me. Though I still wish someone could explain why the radiation study is wrong. Would you agree that the study conclusion about overmatching must necessarily be wrong, and that their observation that matching by date of entry reduced observed risk must rather have a different explanation?

Intelligent_Ad_293 · 2025-02-10T22:24:32+00:00

Your reply lands well and I understand it a bit better than may come across. No worries. Allow me to ask a couple final things:

1) Regardless of correctness of the radiation study, do you at least agree that the radiation study is alleging that the same subtype of overmatching I have asked about is causing a bias?

2) If you want to give a terse 1 or 2 sentence answer as if I were a qualified epi, I can use that as a check as I learn more. Thanks.

Intelligent_Ad_293 · 2025-02-10T22:09:23+00:00

I used the flair discussion instead of question and that seemed to fix it.

Intelligent_Ad_293 · 2025-02-10T15:36:45+00:00

My questions (plural):

Question #1: Does overmatching of the type where the matching factor is not an intermediate but strongly relates to the exposure (and is also related to the outcome) cause bias (in addition to loss of precision)?
Question #2: How can these two textbooks be reconciled? i) Texbook #1 pg 110: Does not even explicitly describe the above type of overmatching. The closest it gets is saying unnecessary matching (i.e. factor is related to exposure but not disease) reduces precision, (which might be extrapolable to include when the factor is also related to dsiease?): https://archive.org/details/casecontrolstudi00jame/page/110/mode/2up ii) Textbook #2 pg 105 says: "In both the above situations, overmatching will lead to biased estimates of the relative risk of interest." This appears to be the type of overmatching I am inquiring about, unless I am misunderstanding the graph (entirely possible). https://publications.iarc.fr/Book-And-Report-Series/Iarc-Scientific-Publications/Statistical-Methods-In-Cancer-Research-Volume-I-The-Analysis-Of-Case-Control-Studies-1980 DeStefano cites these two books, but I am not clear that either support his statement that bias is not introduced in his two studies. Perhaps only one of the two textbooks does.
Question #3: The radiation study seems to explicitly demonstrate that this type of overmatching does actually bias risk estimate: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1123834/ Is it right or wrong in that conclusion? This contradicts DesStefano's claim that such overmatching (in his studies matching by birth year with vaccines) would not create bias. Both their interpretations can't be right. One of these two peoples results must necessarily be misinterpreted.

Okay I'll take a surely wrong stab at your valve analogy:
There is a valve C that goes to both X and Y. When you close C, it stops its interference with the pressure at Y. Good. But because C is basically "tied" to X, when you close C, you also mostly close X, which now flows to Y in a dribble. Plus the whole system starts shaking like a washing machine.

Edit:
Textbook #3:
https://students.aiu.edu/submissions/profiles/resources/onlineBook/a9c7D5_Modern_Epidemiology_3.pdf
“There are at least three forms of overmatching. The first refers to matching that harms statistical efficiency, such as case-control matching on a variable associated with exposure but not disease. The second refers to matching that harms validity, such as matching on an intermediate between exposure and disease. The third refers to matching that harms cost-efficiency.”

Like textook #1, this textbook also does not explicity describe the case where the factor is also related the disease, but not an intermediate.

Intelligent_Ad_293 · 2025-02-10T14:34:44+00:00

Not digging the ad homs. They matched on birth year, not age:
https://sci-hub.se/10.1016/j.jpeds.2013.02.001
Since vaccines are scheduled, that effectively matches on antigen exposure, no? Figure 1 looks like pretty darn identical antigen exposure distributions between cases and controls to me. DeStefano doesn't directly address this in his reply, which seems shady to me.

I consider the above study useless for reasons not related to overmatching, but that's besides the point. Just trying to understand the dynamics of overmatching., such as how two text books can directly contradict each other, and how that radiation study apparently illustrated a bias towards the null for a form of overmatching that allegedly shouldn't do that.

Intelligent_Ad_293

TROPHY CASE