token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
No bio...
User ID: 1737
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
2mo ago
Sorry, being sick sucks. Having to work while sick really sucks. I definitely see people blame forcing people to work while sick on US-specific idiocy so it's interesting to hear the same from another country.
I thought doing flu/RSV PCR along with any COVID PCR was standard? Maybe just in the US?
I guess he hasn't mentioned it in a bit, but for a while Daniel Griffin in the TWiV clinical updates was harping on the fact that COVID+flu happened enough and had a sufficiently different treatment plan that flu tests should always be done for COVID patients (I'm guessing he meant hospitalized ones?).
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
4mo ago
why do you also believe N95 masks are better than surgical masks when there is either no or very weak evidence it makes a difference?
I have not carefully reviewed the literature myself. I'm following what expert science communicators claim the literature says, as I expect them to be better identifying the flaws in studies and understanding what they actually say.
I agree that study result you linked is surprising. I guess it implies that either the masks are equivalent in quality in this setting or that masking had no measurable effect, most likely due to transmission at work being a rounding error compared to community transmission. Or something else is going on that I don't know to look for.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
4mo ago
I do see it. Presumably either because it's cold outside and a mask keeps your face warm or because they're not going to be outside for very long and it's not bothering them enough to take it off and put it back on (possibly exacerbated for some people by getting the mask properly adjusted to a good fit taking time, so not worth the trouble to have it off for just a few minutes).
It is in fact possible, albeit very unlikely to transmit COVID outdoors. Depending on how paranoid / medically fragile someone is, and how annoying they find wearing a mask, some people may consider it worth it to wear a mask outdoors for health reasons, at least when close to other people. I only know one person who does that, but they also use more serious respirators than just an N95 mask.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
10mo ago
Now, if only there was a way to live in the Bay Area without fighting junkies and opioid zombies..
I'm honestly not sure if this is a joke or not. But if it isn't: you don't have to do anything special to avoid that in the Bay Area. If you're in the areas frequented by street homeless people, there's a lot more of them than there were a decade or two ago, but you can just ignore them.
On the other hand, the cost of living compared to the salaries in the Bay Area seems like a pretty bad deal, so I wouldn't recommend living there if you don't have a good reason to do so.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
10mo ago
I would think that it would be easy enough to find someone who is pregnant and wants an abortion.
I could see that being difficult because there's no possibility of the case being resolved fast enough to matter for the plaintiff.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
11mo ago
The reasoning for that supporting the market hypothesis is that it suggests the virus was spreading among animals within a farm that sold its animals to the market. It's exactly what you'd expect a zoonotic spillover event to look like. But it could also be explained by other theories, for instance the lab repeatedly selling infected animals to the market.
A far simpler hypothesis for why this could happen is that both lineages were circling in humans prior to the market
That's not supported by the data. In order for this to be true, either (1) the data has been manipulated to omit cases not linked to the market, (2) all of those humans were closely linked to the market, or (3) all of those humans were very careful (or coincidentally happened to) not spread the virus except at the market.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
3mo ago
My understanding of the problem with banning "gain of function" research is that the term is that any research on real viruses* is either (1) intentional bio-weapons research which we already have policies around (which generally read "Don't.") or (2) something that could reasonably be called "gain of function" because you can't do anything with viruses without allowing them to propagate and therefore evolve. And for (2) we already have rules about what experiments require what level BSL. Scientists tend to not approve of the proposal of "don't study real viruses".
*As opposed to pseudovirus models of some kind where you've ripped out most of the virus so you're pretty sure it's not dangerous. But, oh, yeah, to do that, you've changed the function of the virus. Has it gained function? Who's defining "gain" here? Truly not trying to play semantics games here: if only some experiments are "gain" of function, what's your process for deciding which ones those are? What happens if they're wrong? How is this any different from the current system?
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
10mo ago
I don't think that in American society and American public discourse the question of "whether we need better regulation of live animal markets" even exists, let alone has any prominent placement.
Not markets specifically. But I do certainly hear people talk about the disease potential of cramming animals too close together and overusing antibiotics. Which was in the news recently due to the avian flu outbreak spiking egg prices, which has the potential to lead to an avian flu pandemic. To be fair, part of why egg prices went up is because the US was aggressive about culling birds suspected to be infected.
I'm not proposing some active conspiracy, just the natural tendency (along the lines of fundamental attribution error) to think of problems as only able to happen to other people.
If drawing attention to China or Chinese wet markets as source of infection were declared racist, then it'd be racist regardless of any statistical justification you could provide.
I think you're agreeing with me.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
11mo ago
I think we're talking past each other. For instance, I could just as easily describe "tough-on-crime" as a "luxury belief" because a common talking point of the pro-reform point of view is that doing so increases crime by unnecessarily putting people in prison so they build connections to criminals and pushing them away from the non-criminal economy, and therefore the rich isolated from crime can afford to revel in punishing criminals but the less isolated people in cities can't afford such beliefs. This would be an absurd way of structuring a political argument that is using the term "luxury beliefs" to sneak in an assumption that pro-reform view is correct. But I don't see any difference between that and any other uses of "luxury beliefs" in this thread.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
11mo ago
I don't follow sci-fi cons all that closely but I do follow some authors on Twitter Mastodon that care, and I recall them being pretty upset at the idea of Worldcon in China with Cixin Liu as a guest of honor (given his public positions on the Uyghurs). And I didn't remember the details mentioned below of accusations that an organization within China rigged the vote (by purchasing lots of voting memberships), suggesting the general Worldcon community wasn't a fan of holding Worldcon in China.
I was pretty surprised by your comments in this thread about the left giving China a pass... but I think there's a difference between business/media and individuals here. Left-leaning business and media rely on China's business enough that they don't they want to say much. But left-leaning individuals on social media have plenty negative to say about China's government in my experience. Some of it complaining about Disney appeasing China.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
6mo ago
A UK judge has ordered that that the baby be killed. Her parents have protested this, saying that they don’t think the government should kill their baby.
Now wait a minute, the order is to stop actively keeping the baby alive, which seems pretty different from killing the baby, even if the end result is the same.
The court point of view is that they're ordering the parents to stop torturing their child, and that they can't condone the parents moving the baby to a different country that is willing to torture it. Obviously there's clear disagreement over whether the medical care is comparable to torture.
I don't think the court is obviously right here, but I think you're being unreasonable in claiming they're obviously wrong.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
6mo ago
What's the number of kids who are put on puberty blocking or cross-sex hormones?
Those numbers were also in the article I linked: about 3.5 in 10 000 or 0.035% which is also about a tenth of the diagnoses of gender dysphoria. Looking more closely, according to that data, hormones are about four times more common than puberty blockers, which surprised me as I'd expect the relative prevalence to be reversed. Which I think shows that I'm not very familiar with medical interventions for gender dysphoria.
Do these surgeries prevent the child from ever becoming a breast-feeding mother?
A quick web search found articles like this one suggesting breast reduction very frequently (the author quoted their surgeon as giving them 50/50 odds; in my quick search I haven't found better numbers) prevents breastfeeding. The article I linked explicitly says "mastectomies" under the top surgery section although I know trans adults who have chosen breast reduction instead of mastectomy for their top surgery specifically with the goal of being able to breastfeed. (The internet also suggests breast augmentation rarely impacts breastfeeding, but usually only a short-term impact, so probably not relevant here.) In other words, around 10 times as many cis children as trans children will find themselves unable to breastfeed later in life due to gender affirming surgeries... but both numbers are pretty small.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
6d ago
You're smuggling in the assumption that the reaction to paying out tax instead of having it withheld is the more "correct"/rational reaction. I could just as easily assert voting conservative for that reason is letting their heart and wallet override their mind.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
3mo ago
(or at least for their children to)
I thought second-generation immigrants nearly universally spoke English natively, with the possible exception of some insular religious communities like the Amish. Are there notable exceptions that I'm missing?
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
11mo ago
A couple quick thoughts:
I'm not sure if bullying exactly fits under the category of "hate crimes", but I definitely have seen people talking about moving away from trans-unfriendly states has greatly reduced or even eliminated the anti-trans bullying they / their children have encountered. These laws are seen as the government condoning that bullying, so the two aren't really considered separable. My understanding is that the danger to trans children is mainly suicide, and both bullying and the government denying them recognition of their identity or appropriate medical care contributes to that.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
2mo ago
Legalizing gay marriage was seen as a radical leftist movement, but the actual result was that all the gay people - and most importantly, gay artists and icons and culture warriors - stopped living as radical counter-culture outsiders challenging every pillar of the nuclear family, and switched to being respectability-politics-first normies living quiet lives in the suburbs with 2.5 adopted kids.
I don't think this really changes your point, but "all the gay people" is definitely an exaggeration here. I definitely know people whose queerness is central to their counter-culture identity of "down with heteronormative patriarchal capitalism" or whatever, including speaking out against nuclear families. And queer artists who joyfully include the same themes in their work.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
2mo ago
A quick google overdose deaths topped 112k in 2023 an all-time record.
[...]
I believe an order of magnitude bigger problem than COVID.
Trying to put some actual numbers to this:
According to the NYT COVID data page, weekly COVID deaths in the past year have ranged from 490 (July 2-8) to 2,462 (Jan 7-13) or 0.9%-3.6% of all deaths. Of course, this is deaths from acute COVID, actual COVID deaths is somewhat higher than the official numbers, but hard to get good data on how much higher, so let's stick to these numbers. Also, going back further the numbers are a lot higher and less regular, I'm assuming the past year is a much better approximation of what to expect going forward than including any older data. (Also, I'm not seeing an official 2023 death count... looking I found this 2022 report published in May 2023 so it's probably just too early for finalized 2023 numbers.)
112k/52 = average 2,153 deaths/week from overdose deaths, doesn't seem hugely different from number of COVID deaths, although since overdose doses are mostly young and COVID deaths are mostly old, measuring in QALYs would likely paint a different picture... although if you're measuring QALYs, not trying to measure the impact of post-COVID conditions seems unfair, and I'm not sure how that would affect the conclusion.
There's also the obvious issue that COVID is practically unavoidable, although there's ways to reduce the impact (vaccination, antivirals, not getting old being healthier), while avoiding an overdose is straight forward: Don't Do Drugs(tm). Or, at least, that's the oversimplification in the popular conception of the two.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
4mo ago
We might hear about the odd obese person whose health problems were caused by something unrelated to their weight and carelessly overlooked by a GP, but for every one I'm sure there are at least 100 cases where the GP's snap diagnosis was right on the money.
And from the fat person's perspective, they go to the GP saying "I have this new issue; I've had this body type my whole life, so that part is not new." and the GP is ignoring their history.
(See also trans activists, who demand that healthcare professionals waste hundreds of man-hours asking 6-foot tall, bearded, broad-shouldered people if they are or have been pregnant recently.)
Well, that question has been on every medical history form I've ever gotten because they don't print different ones for men and women.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
4mo ago
A lot of these people are simply in denial about how Obama treated republicans
I'm honestly not even sure what you're talking about. The story on /r/politics is that Obama's primary failure was working with Republicans too much.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
9mo ago
This is false. Needless to say, we don't have studies (at least not ones we trust) on the effectiveness of the vaccines China used. But we do have studies showing the ones the United States used remain highly effective against severe disease and death.
There's actually some weak evidence the Omicron-updated vaccines are worse against Omicron because we made them a half dose of the old vaccine and a half dose of the Omicron-adjusted version, which might be more similar to giving the vaccine at a half dose. (There is evidence the updated vaccine did a better job of protection against infection for Omicron... but it was never very high, never lasted very long, and the study suggested the currently circulating variants have drifted far enough that there's no measurable protection against infection anymore... probably will see a slight bump with the next formula update, but that's mostly a research curiosity.)
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
17d ago
Great! Then you can have the police deal with the criminals and you'll get rid of the drug addicts and bums for free. Why do you need separately send the police at the bums, then?
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
19d ago
I'm not sure how the current precedent is worded, but any rule along the lines of "you can only ban sleeping on the streets to people whom you offer 'acceptable' shelter" of course is going to have a lot of arguments over what constitutes "acceptable" shelter. Which should probably be below a studio apartment and might be below what is acceptable to rent out (although the laws setting overly high minimums on what's acceptable to rent out are a non-trivial factor in the rise of homelessness, so, uh, those should probably be lower, too).
But we should definitely set the line somewhere and actually enforce public camping laws if a reasonable attempt has been made to get the person into "acceptable" housing. And I thought that was more or less what the precedent said.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
2mo ago
The question of who is the aggressor in the culture war comes up here every once in a while. As every other reply seems to be certain that the Blue Tribe is the aggressor against the Red Tribe, I feel like I should point out that the Blue Tribe believes the opposite. From the Blue Tribe point of view, they want equality and rights for everyone regardless of identity, and they believe that's the default if only the Red Tribe would stop discriminating.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
2mo ago
It certainly wasn't that bad pre-2020, but probably a large part of why it got so bad is that Seattle's downtown has never been a place normal people went very often. Away from the touristy waterfront (which doesn't have many tourists in the winter, hence your lack of wait at the "original Starbucks" which I assure you was quite packed this past summer), it's pretty much just office buildings. Outside of 8-6 on weekdays, pre-2020, it was completely empty other than where the public transit transfers are. You could go blocks without seeing another human, even in the summer at mid-day. A lot of restaurants didn't bother opening for dinner or on weekends because they were only for office workers, and the nearby nightlife neighborhoods (Belltown and Capitol Hill) are not that far a walk (or short transit ride).
I'm still confused; the context is talking about the not wealthy people trying to hold these "luxury beliefs" that they can't afford to and it's hurting them.
Wanting to abolish the police is voting against your interests only if abolishing the police actually increases crime that hurts you (worded vaguely because it's reasonable to claim, say, shoplifting in my neighborhood hurts me indirectly even though I'm not a direct victim of the crime). The progressive views on reforming law enforcement and the justice system usually talk about how they believe the desired changes would reduce crime (usually pointing to science saying so). I fully understand that most posters here disagree. But describing such things as "luxury beliefs" goes against the honest belief of those who hold them that they would make life better for everyone.
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