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England set to be one of the first countries to eliminate hepatitis C

bbc.com

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Re: England set to be one of the first countries to eliminate hepatitis C

#441

Post by hgoel »

gadders wrote: post #430
hgoel wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My belief is that for most of those people, no amount of evidence would have ever been enough. The entire "I looked at the data and found it insufficient" thing is by and large cover for people that lack the tools to evaluate the data. They play that card so they can pretend that they're actually intelligent skeptical adults and not easily manipulated idiots or malicious grifters. They're the equivalent of a random p…

"It was developed in the last 6 months" and "It was developed 50 years ago and millions of people around the world have used it with no ill effects" doesn't really require a degree in biochemistry to evaluate the possible risks.

Telling that the millions of people that have used the Covid vaccines without issue never come into that conversation.

Instead those supposedly literate people pull out percentages so blatantly incorrect that any attempt to convince them turns into evidence for the validity of "Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience".

You see this all the time on social media, with the most recent version being rabid antivaxxers pretending that 80% of to be mothers that got the vaccine had miscarriages.

Re: England set to be one of the first countries to eliminate hepatitis C

#442

Post by fkozlowski »

collinmcnulty wrote: post #347
fkozlowski wrote: post #335

I've always found it a bit surprising that we don't all celebrate smallpox elimination day. I think it'd be a great reminder of the victories that humanity has had against the four horsemen.

I got really sad reading Good Omens where Pestilence has retired because of all the progress of medical science and thinking "if only". Funny enough, Pratchett has Famine doing exactly what's working for Pestilence today, convincing people to make bad choices despite easy ways to avoid the horsemen's influence.

I wish Pestilence retired already!

Re: England set to be one of the first countries to eliminate hepatitis C

#443

Post by ericd »

waweic wrote: post #421
ericd wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, I've found yearly physicals with full blood workup very helpful in heading off issues before they become much larger issues. For example, a random blood marker pointed at mold exposure. I thought that was strange, I didn't think we had any mold. Then I tore open one of my ceilings, there was a very slow leak in the bathroom above the top of that drywall was covered in mold. I replaced all of that drywall…

Do you happen to recall, which blood marker this was? In my living situation, mold might be an issue, but it seems to be hard to actually test for it.

C4a, iirc, followed up by some specific tests for mycotoxins in urine.

And yeah, it can be really tricky to find the mold itself.

Re: England set to be one of the first countries to eliminate hepatitis C

#444

Post by tavavex »

venzaspa wrote: post #416
tavavex wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mistake they made is to directly say "one of the first countries" in the article title, which immediately implies a comparison to foreign countries. But clearly, since they're talking about England, which is a subdivision of the UK, why aren't they comparing this achievement to equivalent subdivisions, such as states or provinces, in other nations instead? This isn't a direct comparison (which might also make it…

England and Scotland are separate countries, the UK is a federation of them both.

The UK is a unitary state. Even if it were a federation, the equivalent to your statement is something like "Ontario and Quebec are separate provinces, and Canada is a federation that includes them". These are by definition subdivisions of a country. Just because the UK has a special definition of the word country that doesn't apply to anything else doesn't make England or Scotland rise to the nationhood that's implied by this word in every other case.

Re: England set to be one of the first countries to eliminate hepatitis C

#445

Post by jadyn513 »

Aurornis wrote: post #106
thex10 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I forgot to mention my experience was in the northeastern USA in the 2000s-2010s. I’m happy you got a better standard of care than I did!

Hep C screening at least once for adults >= 18 is recommended and considered standard of care in the United States. I checked my medical records and I have a negative Hep C result in an old checkup when I was younger, and another one from a new provider who insisted on a big panel of standard testing for new patients (despite me having no risk factors). It’s unfortunate that your early providers dropped the ball. I w…

And even in the US the Hep C screening recommendation is new. Before 2020 it was only recommended (and therefore covered by most US insurance carriers) for people who injected drugs, had received a blood transfusion or product before 1992, or born between 1945-1965.

Re: England set to be one of the first countries to eliminate hepatitis C

#446

Post by Teknoman117 »

anon84873628 wrote: post #314
nly wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Note that doesn't include HSV (especially 2) which can be transmitted asymptomatically, and even with a condom. The medical establishment doesn't consider it a concern, but it's worth having both parties check.

The problem with screening for HSV is that the HSV IgG tests are pretty terrible (the blood antibody tests). They have a false positive rate around 20% and re-running the tests several times won't yield different results. This would result in more people thinking they have HSV but don't than people who actually have it.

Re: England set to be one of the first countries to eliminate hepatitis C

#447

Post by tialaramex »

alexchamberlain wrote: post #436
tialaramex wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a citizenship thing though right? The Republic is of the opinion that everybody on Ireland† is a citizen of the Republic. If my mother had happened to be in Portavogie when she gave birth to me last century, my understanding is that the RoI considers I am automatically a citizen, because I was born on "their" island even if certainly Portavogie is not under their control. † The exact rules are complicated, but…

I don't think so. My understanding was "confirmed" by ChatGPT, though I haven't looked at the sources. > Rugby in Ireland is governed by the Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU), which was established in 1879, decades before Ireland was partitioned in 1921. It has always organised rugby on an all-Ireland basis.

Oh! I looked into it more and you're quite right that the IRFU decides and their rule happens to be about the island of Ireland and so who may control some or all of the island is irrelevant. Thanks.

Re: England set to be one of the first countries to eliminate hepatitis C

#448

Post by legulere »

MarceliusK wrote: post #407
thex10 wrote: post #48

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…

A disease that can stay silent for years, but is also highly curable once detected, seems like exactly the thing you want to screen for more aggressively

Depends on the false-positive rate of the test. With a high false-positive rate testing a lot of people leads to a lot of unnecessary treatment

Re: England set to be one of the first countries to eliminate hepatitis C

#449

Post by crabette »

renegade-otter wrote: post #320
crabette wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Pre-facebook, the barrier of entry was high enough that only fairly educated, students, and the nerds were driving the content. Once the barrier came down and the floodgates of "average intelligence" were opened, it was over.

Nope, the move from nerd to professional publishing was around 1996, many years before "social".

Re: England set to be one of the first countries to eliminate hepatitis C

#450

Post by r_lee »

mft_ wrote: post #417
billfor wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It didn't start out as liberal/left, so a lot of the people that have been here since 2010 want to keep most politics out it entirely. After all the name of the group is "Hackers". Most of the people in compsci/engineering were libertarian prior to 2007 anyway. It's really undergone a shift which is fine, but it actually adds absolutely nothing, from an intellectual point of view imho. It would be nice to at least se…

In 2010, vaccines weren’t really a divisive topic that was politically aligned. That’s come later as the right started to take an interest, and then accelerated via COVID and disagreements about the various approaches implemented to manage the epidemic by the government that caused controversy - masks, lockdowns, and vaccines. Which is to say, it’s not so much the liberal/left causing a problem here - I think they’re…

I think before it was mostly a nonpartisan topic, but after COVID it was kind of a thing where if you're on the left, you'd be on the side of science and thus vehemently defend vaccines while assuming the other side is a bunch of antivaxxers

and then the other side doesn't want to be associated with the other and thus ...

it should've never been politicized in the first place

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