311–320 of 452 posts
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He was appointed and holds those views because these ideas are now popular... not the other way around.
RFK and his anti-vax ideas are popular only within a small fringe of the American population. Enough to drop herd immunity to the point where we now have to worry about measles again, but it's far from the majority.
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Interesting, my insurers, through my employers, have always required a annual physical
I have never seen or heard of this requirement before. I don’t even see how it could be enforced. What would even be the point, the insurer (even if employer funded) is not allowed to deny or price coverage based on health risks of the insured.
Fixing hole in tooth is far cheaper than replacing a full tooth, for example.
I am glad they’re screening for it. I was born to someone who had the virus, but didn’t know I had Hep C myself until I submitted myself to an exceptionally thorough STI testing panel. I say exceptional, because the standard ones I’d done throughout college and early adulthood do not happen to include that particular test. So I feel a bit lucky to have been able to get diagnosed and treated in my mid-20s, before the…
That's odd. I just looked at what I thought was a pretty standard piss and blood STI test results of my own, and it covered: - Syphilis - Hep B - Hep C - HIV 1 and 2 and P24 - Chlamydia - Gonorrhoea
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Pre-Trump, anti-vaxxers were notorious left-wing granola types. Lots of anti-vaxxers were white liberals living in Marin and NorCal and sending their children to private schools like Waldorf. Only after Trump did people start lumping them in with right wing.
Well that’s just not true, anti vax has always been a theme of the far right, infowars and i’m sure others have a long history of it. The left wing libs types are far more recent, and i would lump them more in with the wellness brigade.
This is from Mother Jones, a very liberal web site.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/06/the-anti-vax-mo...
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Is it? There are a lot of edgy contrarians that are very overconfident - doesnt seem like a global consensus to me
They are very overconfident, to the point of losing their own money. There was the case of the rootclaim debate where Peter Miller successfully convinced two paid unbiased experts that COVID was not created in a lab and won $100,000 https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/practically-a-book-review-r...
To the extent that there can ever be a "smoking gun" in this debate, this is it for me. Given the mutation rate of covid, the lab leak requires that two lineages transferred to the same area a week apart by mere accident.
> Estimates indicate 84.6% of those living with hepatitis C have been diagnosed - just short of the 90% target.
How do they know there are that many Hep C patients if they haven’t been diagnosed?
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That's odd. I just looked at what I thought was a pretty standard piss and blood STI test results of my own, and it covered: - Syphilis - Hep B - Hep C - HIV 1 and 2 and P24 - Chlamydia - Gonorrhoea
In Europe I don't think it's commonly done. For example, the standard Dutch MSM STI test [1] covers HIV, Syphilis, Chlamydia, and Gonorrhoea only while Trichomoniasis, HPV 2 and Herpes are rather common. That being said, it's freely available at most hospitals. [1] https://www.mantotman.nl/
Seems like both HSV-1 and HSV-2 seroprevalences are actually rather low in the Netherlands.
As for STI testing: Serological testing is pretty meaningless regarding infection risk and direct viral detection is only done on visible lesions for differential diagnostics AFAIK. You can shed the virus without lesions, HSV-1 can be contracted without direct mucosa contact, and while HSV-1 is associated with oral herpes and HSV-2 with genital herpes, both types can cause lesions anywhere on the body. Sure someone without positive antibody status very likely can't transmit it, but that's a very small minority of people of relevant age.
I believe talking to Americans about "herpes" can be misleading, as it's weirdly stigmatized over there and people seemingly conflate visible "cold sores", genital herpes and antibody status.
Incidentally, genital herpes and HSV-2 in general is more common in the US, which may be a direct outcome of this cultural dynamic. Due to lower incidences of early oral HSV-1 infections, compared to most western Europe, Americans are more likely to get infected with genital herpes of either type, but in particular HSV-2, too. Prior oral HSV-1 infections are somewhat protective.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemiology_of_herpes_simplex
I am glad they’re screening for it. I was born to someone who had the virus, but didn’t know I had Hep C myself until I submitted myself to an exceptionally thorough STI testing panel. I say exceptional, because the standard ones I’d done throughout college and early adulthood do not happen to include that particular test. So I feel a bit lucky to have been able to get diagnosed and treated in my mid-20s, before the…
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> I would blame the "social" media, on the old internet they had barely any visibility. They managed to get plenty of visibility long before computers. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leicestershire-50713991 > There followed a 100-year battle between the authorities and an often sceptical, sometimes aggressive, public. In Britain, a succession of laws made vaccinations free, then compulsory - backed by fines and…
I do not disagree, but I don't remember antivax to be visible in pre-facebook internet either, so I only blame it for ~current wave
Once the barrier came down and the floodgates of "average intelligence" were opened, it was over.