Map Enthusiasts @sopuli.xyz The Picard Maneuver @lemmy.world 7 hr. ago

"Hot spot" map of prevalence of autism spectrum disorder by county

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Hot-Spot-Analysis-for-the-Estimated-Proportion-of-Children-with-ASD-County-Level_fig2_370523386

37 comments

Without knowing what the definition of hot and cold, it is difficult to make conclusions.

Is there a source paper?
- There is a researchgate link in the post body that has more info and a link to the publication. I haven't skimmed through it myself, but I thought I'd link for anyone who's curious.
For reference. That middle blue spot is centered on the DFW metroplex. An area of over 8.4M people in the center. What that most likely means is there are a large number there that are undiagnosed likely due to political and educational reasons.
- Maybe, or maybe it's environmental, or just statistically insignificant. With no further information on what their "confidence" is in this is basically map gore.
- Nah, that's centered on Oklahoma. It includes DFW, but that's basically all of Oklahoma.
- Holy shit man, yeah DFW is big but not that fucking big lmao
- I am going with regional insurance/medical provider policy on coverage of the diagnosis. If an autism diagnosis gets more covered care, it's diagnosed more. If other diagnosis gets the patient the care that they need, it's another disease that overlaps.
One can interpret the maps as: Rural children are diagnosed less than children in large cities
- Absolutely not. There's some hugely populated places in cold spots here and very rural hot spots. Rural Georgia is all red here. The greater San Francisco bay area is a cold spot. Dallas-Ft. Worth, Minneapolis, Seattle too. Some very rural parts of Mississippi are hot spots here.
- Map can be interpreted as "if you look for something, you'll find it."
- I don't know, a lot of the red is over pretty rural areas in the south and parts of the southwest, and the majority of the most rural parts of the country are "not significant".
  
  Also that big blue part in the middle covers some very large cities.
  
  All kinds of medical regulation, financing etc. could lead to differences like this.
- Could also be effects of air pollution or something. There’s not enough information to tell.
  
  But yeah, maps like this are almost always cities doing things differently than rural areas.
  
  Could represent genetic distribution. Autism is heritable.
  
  The middle of nowhere Montana has more pollution than downtown Dallas?
  
  Yeah. Could also be that spending time outside also helps. (The causation might be reversed though).
Is this about where a diagnosis happens or where a diagnosed person resides?

There's an area where most the US military, or at least the US Army, sends their servicepeople with disabled children to consolidate access to services and that area is marked 'cold'.
I strongly suspect the modern "spectrum" is just grouping and labeling certain personality profiles that have always existed in roughly similar proportions. Meaning that it's not the proportion that is increasing, it's that we chose to define certain combinations of human traits as ASD.

On the whole this labeling is probably useful since more people will get the support they need. But the point of delineation is mostly arbitrary.
- Same way there's suddenly more lefthanders or LGBT+ people now that we don't beat it out of them as much anymore.
  
  Now I want to see a line graph of left handedness and LGBTQ over time.
- Strongly heriditary. When you married within the local village the chance/risk of your spouse also being on the spectrum was lower than when you matchmake through online services and hundreds of dates.
  
  /non-diagnosed GenX with two out of three kids diagnosed so far
  
  Genotype x Environment = Phenotype.
  
  So is it genetic background or is it your neurodivergent modeling of the behavior to them?
  
  FYI it can't be determined without a much more in-depth genetic studies. This is especially true with complex multi-gene interaction traits like autism seems to be.
- Autism is indeed just a label how the medical world identifies us.
  
  Neurodivergent is how we identify ourselves and i believes it fits your observations very well.
  
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurodiversity
  
  This map likely only looks at diagnosis and ignores dyslexic and adhd types.
Does United healthcare "cover" ASD screenings in those blue areas?
The Bay Area is a cold spot?
- And is that Seattle in the northwest? Strange.
  
  Yeah right. That was one of the first things I noticed.
Georgia and Alabama, huh?

Guess that proves it isn't vaccines.
- Yeah, I tried to get anything else at all out of this image and I couldn't, but the vaccine thing man - if not getting vaccines had anything to do with it this map would look very different.
Can confirm, from east coast, have autism.
- Well that settles that.
In a world where everyone wants your money and time and a couple of different words can make the difference between a reasonable or bad contract. Attention to detail stonks are going up!
San Fran vs LA is pretty fascinating. A whole lot of extra variables should be closer to constant in that particular case.

You've viewed 37 comments.