Notices by Hilary (regordane@mastodon.me.uk)

@bmacDonald94

Erm, human diversity doesn't consist only of young, beautiful women with regular features . The image is really inappropriate.

@peachfront @stux

In SANE countries, sidewalks and pedestrian routes do exist. Including footbridges or underpasses where necessary for crossing major highways.

@inthehands

To be completely pedantic, it's three letter acronym, not abbreviation

@digitalraven

Yeah, but it is best to check carefully that they don't have a pulse before doing CPR.

(Someone recently told me how her brother had been seriously injured after he had only fainted.)

@infobeautiful

We should stop quoting the vaccinated rate and start quoting the unvaccinated rate.

As in, the proportion of children unvaccinated has nearly doubled*, from 5% to 8%! Shock horror alarm.

*In journalistic terms it's sort of ok to describe 8 as nearly twice 5.

@noodlemaz @Radaghaz @inthehands

No. Seriously no. Stolpersteine have been laid in many places. AFTER NAZISM WAS DEFEATED. Fuck off with your putting down stones, that does nothing at all right now. Concentrate on actually combatting and defeating your Nazis FIRST.

@noodlemaz @Radaghaz @inthehands

And yes, it may cost lives. It probably will. It did back then as well

@Radaghaz @noodlemaz @inthehands

No. They really really don't. The street stones serve as a memorial and a reminder to those who already know, after the enemy has been defeated. At this stage they would be a complete irrelevance and would not even be noticed by those who need to be mobilised

@BinChicken @overholt

Immunity tests are often unreliable in vaccinated individuals. Antibody levels wane over time, and may fall below the limit of detection. For many infections that does NOT mean the person is no longer immune.

Yeah, people will sell you tests and re-vaccinations, for profit.

But generally, I'd suggest following vaccine schedules from developed countries with good health systems (not the US). If testing/re-vaccination is not advised, don't bother.

@dalias @luckytran

I agree that the evidence already existed.

But not that there was willful ignorance. Stupid mistakes are more common than evil.

@luckytran

It confused the hell out of me, because my expertise is in sexual transmission so at first I thought I should defer to public health colleagues with more experience in respiratory infection.

Plus, I was aware of historical contagion/miasma debates about the nature of infection, but had understood them to be superseded by germ theory. Pre-covid, I had not realised how much germ theory was interpreted as... contagion.

@luckytran

I'd always assumed that germ theory meant germs. Which could spread by contagion, or via aerosol (equivalent to miasma).

Early in the covid pandemic I was just perplexed. Thinking... have these "experts" never done housework? Never dusted stuff? How can they possibly believe that particles larger than 5 µm can't stay airborne?

I was right and they were wrong.

But that whole "wash your hands" and "no you don't need to wear a mask" error came from that.

@luckytran

Yeah... up to a point.

But pre-covid there was also a WRONG dogma which was widely accepted by western public health professionals.

It was assumed that airborne transmission doesn't happen (instead it's all by contact, so "wash your hands"). Pre-covid, this was the mainstream view among westerm infectious disease specialists, but it's WRONG.

The error came from confusing two particle size thresholds: 5 µm to enter the lung directiy, and 100 µm to remain airborne.

@quinn @breiter @jeffjarvis

It's unusual to get shingles so soon after the initial infection ie chickenpox. I'm sorry you were so unlucky.

One of the imponderables about routine childhood chickenpox vaccination is how it will affect shingles in younger adults. There's a huge population of adults who've had chickenpox which could re-activate as shingles. Allowing chickenpox to circulate means many get re-exposed when their kids get chickenpox. Which acts like a vaccine. Preventing shingles.

@breiter @quinn @jeffjarvis

I think it's more complicated. Chickenpox in adults can be severe, whereas in children it's a nuisance but almost never serious.

100% vaccine coverage isn't achievable, and partial coverage pushes up the typical age of first exposure. Introducing chickenpox vaccination could therefore paradoxically increase the number of severe adult cases.

I'd guess that the balance of risks does now favour vaccination but it's not as straightforward as one might imagine.

@mekkaokereke @carlosrodriguez

Seems to me there are two separate conversations going on here. One is about fast, direct transactions. In the UK we take this for granted. People in the USA tend not to realise how primitive their banking systems are in comparison with civilised countries.

The other, more fundamental, conversation is about what defines money and gives it meaningful value. Only governments can do that. Bitcoin doesn't qualify, and its supposed value is spurious.

@kyonshi @adelinej @kagan @cykonot @servelan

Good, but please in future be a LOT FASTER to accept and learn when people are telling you that you have got something wrong.

@cstross @alexproe @ChrisMayLA6

This. There might, possibly, be a few marginal cases where hydrogen generated on site is a sensible fuel for energy generation (I'm not actually aware of any).

But it is obviously daft and a complete non-starter for things that move (trains, road vehicles etc) or distribution over wide areas (eg for domestic use).

Hydrogen is total hype and the sooner the idea gets knocked on the head the better.

@ryanc

On hols right now, will try to remember to do this when I get back and can figure out how to send it.

Meanwhile, have boosted.

Might be worth re-posting in a few weeks when people are less likely to be halfway up a mountain.

@ianhecht @mentallyalex @TonyStark

Kids need to be fed. For the benefit of the hard of thinking, I'll repeat that. Kids need to be fed.

In any civilised society, one of the key roles of government is to ensure that kids get fed, regardless of who their parents are or what they may have done.