Comment by jimmar
15 hours ago
One of the first signs that a somebody has Alzheimer's is that they'll get lost. E.g., they've been attending church on Thursdays nights at the same chapel for 15 years, but suddenly they forgot how to get home after a recent service. Part of the reason for the findings in the current study is that people quit those professions when they feel themselves starting to struggle.
Yeah my mom would slowly forget how to get to my house, it was sad she would always try but just not quite get it... She eventual died of Alzheimer's a some years later...
Is the profession cached in the data when they leave the job? And does the data attribute 2 entries for someone with 2 careers. That’s the question I think
They explain it in the article. Someone, often the funeral director filling out the death certificate, asks what the deceased did for most of their working life.
I’m a little skeptical of the category “ambulance drivers; not emergency medical technicians” as reliably coded, because people will often say so-and-so “drove an ambulance” when they were actually an EMT or paramedic. But it’s also not clear to me that would invalidate the findings.