token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
No bio...
User ID: 1737
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
4mo ago
That's the study I was referencing that shows that telling people to wear masks doesn't seem to do a lot. It's really hard to do a study on whether consistent mask use works because virtually everyone falls into one of two groups:
- Won't mask consistently.
- Will mask consistently anyway.
And furthermore, there's social desirability bias on telling a researcher studying masking that you're in group (2) if they are having you wear masks for a study.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
4mo ago
[...] Is there a need to exercise your immune system as well? Probably.
This is a complete misunderstanding of the hygiene hypothesis. I acknowledge that our understanding of the immune system remains pretty limited, but we are pretty certain that getting sick is bad for you.
I am constantly in contact with Covid positive people, I go to crowded areas all the time
And that seems like a reasonable trade-off to me. I have no interest in most activities that involve being around a lot of strangers where masking wouldn't work (e.g. bars/clubs/concerts), and I trust my friends I do spend time with unmasked to isolate when sick and be honest about exposures, so it doesn't cost me anything to wear a mask as I go about my normal daily life and it reduces my chance of infection to basically nothing. But I understand most people like gatherings with strangers, so the tiny marginal protection from, say, masking on the bus to/from such gatherings, is completely irrelevant to them. Just trying to explain why there's a minority for which masking is rational.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
4mo ago
Interesting. That's definitely different from my observations. I rarely see paper masks outside of medical offices (some of which still give them away and require masking) where they are definitely the most common type of mask. But elsewhere, I think KN95s are, although N95s aren't far behind. The rest are ones I just can't identify, which may be useless cloth masks, or the occasional paper mask. I'm occasionally tempted to straight-up walk up to those people and ask them (while I'm wearing my N95) why they are wearing an uncomfortable ineffective mask when there's no mandate, but I've never done so. (I don't think I've ever seen an airgami or P100 in the wild, although I've seen friends use them.)
(Of course, the vast majority of people I encounter in public outside of masks-required situations aren't wearing any mask at all; I'm not trying to imply mask wearing is at all common.)
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
4mo ago
These days there's no reason to be wearing low-quality masks, which were common in 2020 when there were shortages of medical-quality masks. N95 or equivalent masks are now cheap and plentiful. And much more comfortable than cloth masks. Also, I know multiple people who have better than N95 respirators (P100, I think?), mainly for plane trips, I think, which are likely plenty good for protection from someone unmasked and infected. While most of my friends have gotten COVID at least once by now, I've never heard of anyone who thought they acquired it while wearing a mask, including multiple stories of groups of people getting COVID and the people with them wearing masks did not.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
4mo ago
What do you mean by "evidence that masks work"?
Surely there's no meaningful doubt that COVID-19 is caused by SARS-CoV-2 virus particles, primarily entering through the nose and mouth, and the chance of infection increases with the number of virus particles (likely saturating at some point). Nor that N95+ or equivalent masks block the vast majority of such particles. Similarly, we also are pretty sure at this point that telling a population "wear a mask" has minimal public health benefits, since I hope we can agree that masks have no effect when not worn. To me, the non-obvious parts seem to be:
- Exactly how many virus particles are needed to infect. i.e. in a situation where you're exposed to a billion virus particles, if the mask reduces this a factor of a thousand to a million virus particles, but ten thousand are enough for 90% chance of infection, then the mask isn't very useful. This doesn't seem to be the case, but to get direct evidence would require some creative experimental design to study as the obvious study would be a titrated human challenge, which, uh, isn't going to get past a medical ethics board.
- If it's actually feasible for an individual to wear a mask at nearly all times they are actually in the presence of virus particles. This is difficult to answer because it varies greatly on the environment (how many people in their community have the virus, how carefully the people they come in contact test, ...) and the individual's behavior. If you live alone and never leave home and get everything via no-contact delivery, you can probably be pretty sure you're never exposed... but also, masking isn't relevant either. But I do know people who are medically fragile and extremely careful with masking whenever they leave their home, but still go out and travel, so it is possible. But, of course, nearly everyone is going to have a lot more human contact than that, but exactly what that contact looks like (lots of packed indoor concerts where everyone is screaming or just going to small restaurants and retail stores with very tall ceilings?) is going to greatly change the risk of exposure.
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
4mo ago
My understanding is that basically the reason we don't do that anymore is that as the federal positions mattered more, the state legislature elections turned into proxy elections for the federal positions and the state issues were getting ignored. If you're going to have an indirect system for selecting the federal positions, you would probably want to either (1) keep it separate from state elections or (2) decide to go even harder on giving power to the federal government (so it doesn't matter as much if the state legislatures aren't governing).
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
4mo ago
More than that, it's aligned interests. The places I've lived where I was renting and planning on only living there a few years, you better believe I didn't give two shits about the future of the place. Owning a home really changes the incentive structure.
I hear this and it's such a strange concept to me. I live in an expensive west coast city. The people I know with close ties and care about the place are locals who, for the most part, have parents who own houses because they got into the market so long ago, and they can't imagine ever being able to afford to buy instead of renting. The people who own houses are either the aforementioned older generation or the people who moved here for high-paying jobs and can actually afford to buy into the market, but will happily hop off to some other city if the opportunity presents itself because the cost of owning a home just isn't a big deal to them. Obviously, I'm generalizing and a lot of people fall into neither group, but those two are very common in my experience and make me quite suspicious of claims that "landowner" is a remotely good proxy for "cares about the local government".
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
4mo ago
Groups that believe they are summoning a god are usually called cults and are generally ignored or disliked. In fiction, when they're right and do manage to manifest a god, it rarely goes well for them.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
5mo ago
Christianity isn't like Judaism where Rabbis can make these decisions for people, especially Protestants.
Judaism doesn't have a church hierarchy like Catholicism. Jews famously don't agree on the interpretations of their religious commandments.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
5mo ago
Apologies, a bit late to the thread, but I think this is missing an important aspect of the liberal POV.
I have multiple times seen essays* by people advocating for consent-based frameworks of acceptable behavior explicitly highlighting that consent and bodily autonomy isn't limited to just sex and that thinking that it is is missing the point. The examples given are using things like kids getting hugged or kissed by relatives should be allowed to say no to that physical contact and that kids should be able to opt-out of play-fighting at any time (I've seen multiple explicitly mention safe words for this purpose).
I think there's a very real chance that your ideological opponents when presented with your tennis hypothetical would think it was obvious that being forced into a non-work-essential tennis game with your boss would be unacceptable.
*Sorry, it's physically impossible to locate old Tumblr posts. I tried.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
5mo ago
Couldn't it just mean that Candidate X is already more popular, and therefore raises more money?
My understanding of the political science consensus is basically that: funds raised is just another way to measure popularity like polling numbers (with the obvious skew of people with more money and more willing to give it to candidates getting weighted heavier); the actual things the money is spent on doesn't seem to make a huge impact on election results.
As the other commenters mention, this might not be true in narrow situations like early on in a primary to a non-well-known candidate.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
5mo ago
If having people living near you constitutes a reduction in your quality of life, city living might not be for you.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
5mo ago
Sometimes at least. I definitely know some people vaguely on the periphery of my friends group that talk a lot about being autistic and at least one of them mentions an autistic partner who doesn't really socialize with anyone else because they don't have to mask around their partner.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
5mo ago
Most relationships require a draining amount of social performance (autistic masking) and it just doesn’t feel like it is worth the effort anymore.
If you want to socialize but not with people who expect autistic masking, perhaps try to find some friends who don't expect autistic masking. i.e., other autistic people or people who socialize with them regularly.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
5mo ago
Yeah, I don't see Trump winning without also having control of the House and Senate, although possibly by very small margins. And the past few years both parties have been filing down the filibuster, so it's possible a Republican trifecta would eliminate it in 2025 even though they were unwilling to do so in 2017, and therefore be able to push through more legislation. Unclear a narrow majority (of either party) could actually agree on much legislation.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
5mo ago
I recently made a comment linking an article that gives the same numbers rae did, which might be the article you're thinking of: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-transyouth-data/ . That article's total number of teens diagnosed with gender dysphoria agrees with yours (the years/ages don't line up so the numbers aren't directly comparable):
Overall, the analysis found that at least 121,882 children ages 6 to 17 were diagnosed with gender dysphoria from 2017 through 2021.
So, according to that article it is orders of magnitude more common for a teen to be diagnosed with gender dysphoria than for any medical intervention to be taken. That seems like exactly what you'd expect: we think medical interventions are a major step that should be carefully considered, and especially should be avoided for people under 18 because we think they are too young to make that decision. Although I don't know the ratio of adults diagnosed with gender dysphoria to those undergoing some sort of medical intervention to compare.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
6mo ago
None of my sources mentioned cancer. You just made that up. The only "mastectomies" mentioned were gender-affirming care for trans teenagers. They were being compared to breast reductions for cis teenagers and adults for the purpose of appearance and/or back pain.
And, @Gdanning, while I appreciate your attempt to defend me, you accepted @Tyre_Inflator's completely made-up attack on my argument as a given.
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
6mo ago
I'm not entirely certainly this post is just straight up trolling giving how far I had to read into it before it being clear whether you were pro- or anti-trans.
What are you going on about? Gender-affirming surgeries on trans minors are exceedingly rare (that data does show a small upward trend, even controlling for population). That data gives under 30/year genital surgeries and under 300/year top surgeries on a population of about 40 million children. In comparison, gender-affirming surgeries on cis minors are about 20 times more common.
I'm not sure why any children are getting cosmetic surgeries; that seems like it's probably best left age-gated to adults. But they're rare enough that it sounds to me more like there's a handful a weird special cases, not that there's an epidemic of unnecessary harmful surgeries.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
6mo ago
Do you mean after filling out a VBM ballot before it's been counted? It goes into a county-maintained ballot box. Or I could hand it off directly to a county elections official if I wanted to go out of my way (I think the closest place to do that is out of walking distance). I guess in rural areas, getting to a ballot box might be not worth the effort, so it would go to the mailman instead, so not in the hands of an election official. But that's why there's a notification when your ballot is received; then you can submit it sufficiently ahead of time to try again in the unlikely event it failed to reach the elections office.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
6mo ago
Stay away from nonsense like band work (there are applications for this, but not general fitness).
"band work" = resistance bands?
What's wrong with them? They seem like a minimal equipment way to do strength training. Maybe they just are only functional at weights too low to be useful? Or is there some deeper issue?
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
6mo ago
Echoing self_made_human, not telling you the reason doesn't mean they don't know the reason. They might not, but, also, it's standard advice to never give a reason in such a situation. Among other problems, giving a reason makes some people think the reason is a problem to be fixed and then the relationship will happen after all, not merely an explanation.
Yes, that's the "immune debt" hypothesis. It's a completely reasonable internally consistent hypothesis; it's not at all obvious that it's better to avoid infection entirely as opposed to hopefully getting minor infections that train the immune system while not being severe enough to do any lasting damage.
... but as far as I can tell, every vaguely reputable scientist with knowledge of the immune system or epidemiology thinks it is wrong and the odds don't work out that way.
To be clear, I'm merely claiming less exposure to pathogens is healthier. There are obviously costs to going out of your way to reduce your exposure to pathogens and the trade-off may not be worth it.
More options
Context Copy link