The Pernicious Myth Of "If You Can Speak You Can Breathe"

From reddit, so I put it in this sub. But I did some research and he is correct.

http://np.reddit.com/r/ProtectAndServe/comments/2odvre/the_pernicious_myth_of_if_you_can_speak_you_can/?context=3

I wonder if this will ever be brought up to the people who believe this myth. It is my hope that having the information out there will give others the knowledge they need to combat this idea before it kills someone.....well someone else.

 

75% of all drowning deaths occur 2-3 days after the "drowning accident" it is called "partial drowning" and just further elaborates your point.

http://www.webmd.com/parenting/news/20140602/dry-drowning-faq

Pneumonia is another example of "drowning" and death is often caused by hypoxia.

Hell, even altitude suffocation is a form of "drowning" and you can still breathe you just can't get enough oxygen.

 

People aren't conditioned to think about things at such depth.

They have been trained to always cling to the simplest, knee jerk answer. The first thing that they can grasp upon will become their truth and any evidence that contradicts that first grasp be damned.

 

Right. Kind of like "white cop killed black man, therefore racism."

To the op: sorry, tl;dr, but I already knew that you can speak without being able to breathe normally.

 

Yes, exactly like that.

 

Talking about two different things. There's a difference between having all the air forced out of your lungs and having your windpipe and throat compressed.

If your throat is compressed to a point of choking then you CANNOT speak or breathe. It's very easy to tell. Just have someone come up behind you, wrap their arm around your throat and squeeze and try to talk. Or just grab your own throat and squeeze good and try to talk.

Can't do it.

As I said in the other thread, he may have not been able to breathe because of people on top of him and his weight (which is the kind of "can't breathe" that your article is talking about)... but it was NOT because of the chokehold. If it was the chokehold he couldn't speak.

 

Yep. Back when I taught martial arts I never once had anyone carry on a conversation with me when it came time to carefully apply significant pressure and nor was I able to recite poetry or talk about politics when the same was done to me. That's why 'tapping out' was invented.

 

I fight amateur MMA... and I've had a rear-naked choke applied to me 1000 times...a nd I ASSURE everyone... if someone really has you in a rear-naked choke and he's actually choking you... you won't say (*)(*)(*)(*). You'll be lucky if you don't go unconscious in a matter of 20 seconds, waking up and wondering why your mom put cheese in your eggs.

 

Absolutely, and one won't be wheezing "I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe." That sort of thing is what we call a c-l-u-e that an actual chokehold (which was really not a chokehold) was not engaged at the time and that the person doing the talking was not having his air supply cut off.

 

You're so macho. I guess next thing you'll tell us is that you're a medic and you know from your extensive field experience that Garner didn't die from the unnecessary force used against him.

 

He didn't die from unnecessary force in particular but mostly from bad health and unnecessary Statism.

DR. MICHAEL BADEN, FORENSIC PATHOLOGIST: You are absolutely right, Greta. And the findings of the autopsy were that he died because he couldn't breathe. And he had said that he couldn't breathe as this was progressing. There was pressure, not only compressing the neck, that interferes with breathing and oxygen flow, compressing the chest, but also compressing the face and mouth and nose area. So, he died clearly of, as medical examiner's office said, of inability to breathe.

 

I don't care if you believe me or not. Let me put you in a rear-naked choke and try to talk... I guarantee you won't say a damn thing. You'll be tapping my arm very quickly, but one thing you will NOT be doing is talking.

The only person who would say they can talk while being in a rear-naked choke is someone who has never been put in one. Period.

 

That is not my point my point is it is actually superfulous to the argument.

Apparently everyone BYPASSED my first reply to this thread which is the very first reply and which is pertinent that you can DROWN days after the incident.

The reason this is important is because the force used, needlessly mind you, resulted in Garners death.

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The medical examiner's report is what matters not some ******** on Greta Van Sustran.

 

In a medical examiner’s report “homicide” just means one person intentionally did something that led to the death of someone else. It doesn’t mean the death was intentional and it doesn’t mean it was a crime. Medical examiners do not make legal judgement.

 

That's patently false.

First of all, it's called "secondary drowning". And secondary drowning can occur 1-24 hours after an incident of near drowning. But the REASON that it happens is articulated very clearly in this article: http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/09/health/secondary-drowning-symptoms/

The swimmer often appears fine immediately after the event. But over time, water left in the swimmer's lungs begins to cause edema, or swelling, said Dr. Juan Fitz, a spokesman for the American College of Emergency Physicians in Lubbock, Texas. When the lungs' alveoli are filled with water, they cannot exchange oxygen to and from the blood. This causes the heart to slow as the swimmer's blood oxygen level drops.

The REASON secondary drowning occurs is because water is left in the lung and it causes several issues. But this has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with this incident... unless I missed the part where the cops waterboarded him when they had him on the ground.

And aren't you one of the ones who was calling BS on the medical examiner's report on the Mike Brown case? Now all of a sudden the medical examiner's report "is what matters"?

Hypocrisy is an ugly thing

ETA: the medical report indicates not ONLY the "chokehold" but also the compression on the head and chest where the cops were on top of him as the reason for his death. Your assertion it was just the chokehold is absolutely false.

 

It's amazing how frequently that point has to be made to all too many bandwagon mounting Left of Center people. It's almost as if they do not want to KNOW the facts because those get in the way of feeeeeeeeeeeelings-based self-righteousness. Weird, eh?

 

He started gasping that he couldn't breathe immediately after being released from the chokehold...so all of this MMA talk about not being able to say dick while being choked is neither here nor there.

For me, this is simple. People should not be met with violence for allegedly selling cigarettes. This guy was assaulted, choked and killed...for nothing.

 

Mike browns medical. Examiner didn't say Mike brown was the cause of his death so I'm confused why you bring him up

 

You can cut off the airway or you can cut off blood supply to the brain. It depends where you apply pressure. Cutting off air supply won't drop you in 20 seconds but cutting off the blood can and in fact can drop you a lot faster than 20 seconds.

 

There is a difference between kneeling on someone's back, which inhibits breathing in (and is actually how people die when stepped on during crowd panics, etc), and cutting off the air going in both directions in the neck.

 

Interesting. I've been trying to sort out what exactly happened to him. I mean medically in the sense of how he got from point A to dead. It isn't like they strangled him on the ground and he was dead in a minute before they let go. He lasted quite a while, and there's that second video of the cops telling people to back up so he can get some air and then the EMTs showing up. The personnel didn't seem to think he was in any sort of serious trouble.

When they had some medical guys talking it on cnn they indicated that the choke was putting pressure on the jugular veins and didn't put much pressure on the windpipe.

 

Like it or not the man had a thirty year criminal history including several attempts to resist arrest so to say that there was no reason to treat him as he had essentially insisted he be treated in the past is to overstate the case by a rather large amount.

 

Red herring.

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Red herring.

 

That is not true.

Do you even know how a chokehold works?

It is deadly because it chokes off the 4 major blood vessles that carry oxygen to and from the brain. Take a human biology class.

 

You can't talk when you pass out due to lack of bloodflow to the brain in like 5 seconds.