Not just the US. Here in the UK, I recently went to a follow-up appointment regarding a non-healing ulcer and the NHS doctor took the dressing off and said "It is healed" despite the fact that:
1) the ulcer is deep enough that you can see the muscle below the skin fat layer (she said it no longer needed dressing!)
2) it has looked that way with nearly no change at all for nearly 3 months[1] (expected heal time is roughly 7 weeks)
3) there is a large area around the wound that is still red and inflamed (ulcers are not even regarded as healing until the inflammation is gone)
I've had to go for private care and I am currently scheduled in for minor surgery to see if a foreign object caused the ulcer and is still present, preventing it from healing. Probably no surprise to you, dear reader, that I am pursuing a case of medical negligence against the doctor.
[1] When I pointed this out to her, she said she "didn't have a crystal ball, so [she doesn't] know what will happen in the next week or month". Literally nonsense due to being a non-sequitur. I was informing about the past, not asking about the future.
This does require that the resident of the house is aware that they, in this example, have a cellar to check. Of course, if you aren't aware you have a cellar, you won't have stored anything personal or of import in it that could get damaged either.
I can personally attest that having a working sense of smell is not a reliable method for knowing what something novel-to-you is and it can be easy to misattribute. Decomposition of flesh has a very unique smell in my experience, but it was only through that experience that I now know that that smell is flesh decomposition (and not related to nearby farmland work).
It is pretty amazing (and horrifying) to me that there are also some people who discover that someone else has been secretly living in their home with them. I can only imagine how intrusive that would be and the paranoia that would set in after such a discovery, even if they moved to a new house. I wonder if this has become even less prevalent given the use of internal cameras?
I think this actually rather reinforces your point, even if it contradicts the assertion in the leading sentence. How much can you expect people to know their computer has been co-opted, which might be an almost completely alien environment to them, if it is possible to co-opt someone's home (an environment they are intimately familiar with)?
[As an aside, this is my first post here on HN. If anything I have written above is not in line with the desired tone/content of comments, could someone spare the time to point it out and explain what and how it could be improved, so I can adjust? Thank you!]
Your comment got was marked "dead", so I went ahead and vouched for it + upvoted, which I think now has marked it with the proper respect it deserves. You can vouch for comments after you reach a certain karma level (there are various unlocks for various levels of karma, but nothing that changes your experience here, really)
1) the ulcer is deep enough that you can see the muscle below the skin fat layer (she said it no longer needed dressing!)
2) it has looked that way with nearly no change at all for nearly 3 months[1] (expected heal time is roughly 7 weeks)
3) there is a large area around the wound that is still red and inflamed (ulcers are not even regarded as healing until the inflammation is gone)
I've had to go for private care and I am currently scheduled in for minor surgery to see if a foreign object caused the ulcer and is still present, preventing it from healing. Probably no surprise to you, dear reader, that I am pursuing a case of medical negligence against the doctor.
[1] When I pointed this out to her, she said she "didn't have a crystal ball, so [she doesn't] know what will happen in the next week or month". Literally nonsense due to being a non-sequitur. I was informing about the past, not asking about the future.