CharonY

Same here. See you later, alligator.

Sorry, not quite clear what the precise scenario is. A country that is undervaccinated and opening up? Because that scenario has already happened but the effects varied quite bit depending on country. Or if it is about new mutations, every country is happily producing them right now.

No. At least not from a public health perspective. Think of it that way, if the risk of hospitalization is reduced e.g. tenfold, but the spread is tenfold higher, on average your hospital will be equally full. Even worse higher spread means that they are more likely to reach vulnerable folks. At the same time, containing spread got harder. Omicron waves almost nowhere died down as the previous waves. So even with more severe outcomes, there were more tools including contact tracing that could make sense if implemented correctly. These are mostly gone now, except vaccination and masking. As a result in many regions more folks died during the Omicron than in the previous years (if they had it under control pre-omicron that is) China is going to see the same. Individual risk is lower, population risk is potentially higher.

Effective is the keyword here. But that said prior to Omicron three dosages e.g. sinovac protected fairly well against severe disease. However, protection was lower with only one or two doses when compared to mRNA vaccines (not sure how it did to e.g. AZ vaccine, for example). It did perform worse for preventing infections, but the ongoing variants none are likely to do well. Either way, especially the elderly are undervaccinated.

The biggest mistake was not to promote effective vaccines, while they had the outbreaks largely under control.

Excuse me, but old? What the heck, man? Totally uncalled for.

Sorry, I should not have brought it up. It was just a research paper that crossed my mind. Please disregard it, as it is not typical practice. You could look up what types of vaccines are used in your area, but generally speaking you should be good. But do not take that as health advice and if you are doing something that is higher risk in getting infected, having additional boosters are normally not an issue (but again talk to your health hotline/provider).

Especially as these issues have nothing to do with other. Legally it is a bit of grey zone as many countries do not seem to have laws explicitly prohibiting marriages with animals. The wiki article is a bit of a mess https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human–animal_marriage. But I think these lines of argument follow a rather similar structure. First, remove any reasonable context (there are no laws explicitly forbidding human animal marriages as these things are normally expected to happen, same as marriages with plants, rocks or bodies of water are prohibited) and then cram in something you don't like (homosexuality, transgenderism, poets). Thereby it is easy to create ridiculous scenario to attack. I mean, clearly poets are linguistic deviants who just want to disassemble clear communication. All these contortions using rhymes and unusual sentence structures rob us of our ability to clearly present facts. As such, they should be banned under law. After all, what prevents me to declare myself a science poet and force journals to publish my gibberish!

So a few things first. A tetanus antitoxin (or more precisely anti-tetanus immunoglobulin) is not a vaccine, but an acute treatment for folks getting or at high risk getting tetanus (essentially antibodies raised against the tetanus toxin). There rest are basically different names for vaccinations. I started of with writing something about tetanus schedules, but upon reflection it would fall squarely into the medical advice area. Instead look up on major health care providers and look at the recommended vaccination schedules. I will just say that the scheduling depends on age and type of vaccine being provided and currently I believe all of them are on a recommended 10 year booster cycle. The CDC for example recommends Td (tetanus/diphteria) or Tdap (tetanus/diphteria/pertussis) every 10 years for adults (see the cdc tetanus website, for example). There is at least one paper that I believe showed that even after 30 years there is significant protection, but I do not recall the size of the study, so I would always follow the 10 year recommendation.

I see, you are referring to macroscopic structures then. There are gear-like structures in planthoppers, but as highlighted by bothers, free-spinning cellular structures would be very difficult to create and maintain in the first place and likely not be very functional

Bacteria? Do mean something like flagella? In eukaryotes you can find functionally similar structures (though they are built differently) including eukaryotic flagella and cilia. However the movement is more like a beating undulation but those are actually involved in fluid movement (either moving through fluid or to move fluids).

Besides what others have said regarding the importance of boosters, monoclonal antibodies are mostly used in more severe or high risk cases. However, depending on where you are, they might not work anymore. Recent increases are driven by immune evasive omicron sub-lineages (e.g. BQ.* and XBB.*) against which these antibodies do not work anymore. There are also quite a few studies regarding longer term impacts on a range of health issues, including the immune system. So if something feels off, even a while after recovery, it is worthwhile to mention to MDs the previous infection, just in case.

I have heard an interview from the stupid caucus arguing that this is a good thing for tax payers as the government is now not spending money. Beside the obvious stupidity of the reasoning it is also a great way to argue that one's job is worthless (or even detrimental).

Justice is at the heart of social reforms and there were good articles highlighting the connections between equity, equality and justice, though I cannot recall where I read them. With regard to children studies, I think most studies were aimed at fairness, rather than justice. The latter is more connected to a system that results in fair (or equitable) outcomes. I.e. if the system is set up to remove barriers that can lead to inequitable outcome. It does not mean the best (or optimal) outcome for everyone. It basically just means that a) there are no specific barriers to interact with a given system and b) that following those interactions, there are no differential outcomes based on factors outside of the control of the individual. Measures providing equity are stopgags to address inequality in the system. Justice means to remove the factors causing those inequalities in the first place and is much harder to achieve.

There is a bit of a problem with that, though. Equality in a democracy can not only mean equal access to voting (and already here we see discrepancies, depending on the system), but there are also issues in how equal power is distributed (or not). Countries without winner-take-all systems, including Canada and USA often struggle with over or under-representation of power, even if everyone is able to vote, for example. But even beyond that, the ability to exert influence over elections is vastly different. Here, you could say that we are all equal, as a billionaire's vote would not count any way differently than anyone else's. However, the ability to influence the outcome (so if we look at equity) it is very much different.

This is also true for most policies. Societies and communities are changing in many ways (demographic, economic, technological etc.) so policies that had a known effect in the past may have slightly (or significantly) different impact at a later point in time. As such ideally the outcome of policies should be constantly monitored and evaluated. While much of that stuff currently comes from the right-wing ecology of the internet (they seem to be better organized in some ways), it should be noted that a lot of misinformation is a consequence of modern (social) media consumption and how algorithms are pushing outrage over information. It is not as such a matter of lacking education anymore, it is a deliberate system wit which facebook and co make their money. We are officially in a post-information age.

I think the democratic process, at least in its ideal form, hinges on equality. I.e. folks are at least theoretically given the same opportunities in participation. As such, it is focused more on process, rather than outcome. However, equity (i.e. adjustments to balance out systemic imbalances) are and have not been fundamental aspect of democracy. I would argue that only in fairly recent times it has entered the discussion at all. Historically adjustments to the democratic process were focused almost entirely on the equality aspects (e.g. enabling women to vote, or before that allowing men to vote regardless of income).

I found it interesting that in Europe there are varying limits (as indicated above), quite likely due to the range of methanol generated in the various traditional production processes. Spirits from a selected list of fruit species have an allowable methanol content that is higher than the general limit for fruit spirits, for example (see European Parliament and of the Council (EU). 2019/787 Definition, description, presentation and labelling of spirit drinks, the use of the names of spirit drinks in the presentation and labelling of other foodstuff. Off. J. Eur. Union 2019, L 130, 1–54) Conversely, other countries, such as US and Australia have a flat limit for all spirits, which is higher than the EU limit for wine spirit and brandy, but lower than the EU limit for fruit spirits. So in these countries it appears to be more a simple balance of safety vs process probably with less consideration for adulteration.

I do not have any expertise in that field, and my knowledge if pretty much limited to talks I heard from colleagues who are work in fields related to invasive species. But from my limited understanding there are various definitions for invasive species, which can vary in use, depending on context (e.g. depending on ecosystem, whether it is a research vs policy vs conservation, etc.). Roughly speaking, in policy terms certain non-native species can be categorized if their introduction has potential to cause economic, environmental or human health harm. Factors can be highly artificial, as for example certain form of agriculture, animal husbandry etc. can be highly sensitive to even somewhat moderate influences, which might not be a factor in a pristine ecosystem. There are a few studies that show reduced biodiversity in forest sites. Not sure about the effect size, though. Another issue with these evaluations is that for risk assessments a variety of factors might be used, e.g. growth rate, behaviour in other habitats, similarity of ecologic niches compared to native species, and so on. IOW, it is difficult to be certain of the damages until at least some damages has been done, at which point it might be too late. To complicate matters, literature often discusses invasiveness outside of these policy definitions, for example if a non-native species spreads into a new habitat, regardless of short or long-term damages to the system (which can be difficult to assess for a wide range of reasons). So what I took home from the these talks is mostly that a) it is important to check carefully the context in which invasive species are discussed b) that often (but not always) proactive strategies are good a idea as in some cases the impact on biodiversity can be rather massive, but c) data is often sparse and there is almost always at least some (necessary) level of extrapolation going on.

From the looks of it, the measures are a fair bit different. I have not read up much on it, but it seems mostly restrict supply, but does not seem to e.g. criminalize private consumption. It is obviously early to tell what the effects are going to be, but considering that the smoking rates have dropped quite a bit in NZ already, there is a decent chance that the smoking rates will decline further just by making it more difficult to get to them.

Generally speaking a larger volume allows more constant temperature and less temperature drop when you add ingredients. Also it results in less crowding, less surface effects and related geometric issues.

That part really seems like procrastination to me. Essentially it is the tendency of folks to seek out activities that makes them feel better right now and putting off tasks that could make them feel bad. This is especially problematic for long-term projects, as the expected reward is only to be found at the end, whereas playing a game will make you feel better right now. There are few ways to handle these kind of things, which can include changing you mindset. But simpler method, e.g. rewarding yourself by setting yourself certain rules can also help, too. For example, you could say set yourself a rule that only after working for a certain amount of time, you get to reward yourself (say take break, have a treat but something that does not distract you too much). Set yourself milestone for the day and if you get to the point you allow yourself to do something you like for a set amount of time.

I would assume that the main issue here is the financing source. Everything else seems to be fairly accepted practice at this point.

Generally speaking, it is not safe to be in close proximity to any predator. Crocodiles are mostly opportunistic hunters and can go for long stretches before feeding. Unless folks have fed them or have observed them feeding I would guess that there is no easy way to predict potential attack pattern. I also doubt that scientists would get into close contact with them without security measures. Jumping into the water with them would not be studying them, it would at minimum interfere with them.

Indeed. Basically any folks with extended contact with animals are at risk of zoonotic spillover. One very common zoonotic disease is toxoplasmosis. Around 11% of the population 6 years and older have it in the US. In Irish farmers that level is around 70%. Farmers are also exposed to many other zoonotic infections with high frequencies including Coxiella burnetii, Borrelia burgdorferi or Leptospira interrogans. Also with regards to gain of function research, the term is not that well defined, and in the broadest sense could include any genetic manipulation of pathogens (animal or human). In that sense almost all microbial and virological lab, including the one in Wuhan would fall under it. In the strictest sense, which is under more scrutiny is to do specific manipulations which are expected to allow or enhance pathogenic interactions with humans. That type of research was not part of the research done in that lab (according to NIH reports, that is).