Alfred001

I'm wondering of there is an explanation in evolutionary psychology (or some other field of science) to the curious phenomenon that red hair in men is regarded as unattractive while in women it is neutral or attractive. Seems to me, from an evolutionary psychology perspective, however it is regarded, so it should be regarded in both sexes, because both have an equal chance of passing the trait on and whatever fitness effect it has it should be equal in both sexes.

I got symptoms Sunday afternoon (chills which evolved into a fever and general weakness which was later joined by a headache). At one point I collapsed on my way to the bathroom. By Monday evening, the symptoms were largely gone and this morning I'm symptom free. We did a COVID test, but my mother rubbed the q tip inside my nose cavity, not the area behind the nose, so, although the test came back negative, I don't know whether I can trust it. I'm double Pfizer vaxxed, though ma last dose was in July. With all this in mind, do I need to get tested before going outside, or can I take my absence of symptoms to mean that if this WAS COVID, I'm no longer contagious? Can I go outside tomorrow? (I have an appointment with a doctor, unrleated to this)

That was helpful, thanks.

So you're saying it's not supposed to feel painful or uncomfortable?

I recently had my first sexual experience and was surprised by how painful I found penetration. Once my penis was inside, there was no pain, but the entry was quite painful, to the point I was wary of it and I'm wondering, is this normal? I would say I am of average size, certainly not large, my partner was wet, so dryness was not a problem (and the problem was narrowness, not chaffing), my partner has given birth to two children (to the extent that says anything about her narrowness, not to be crude). Is entry supposed to hurt? Is this just me not being used to the experience? Could my partner be particularly narrow?

I know placebo can have sensory or psychological effects like reducing pain or anxiety or fatigue and some effects that are sort of physical like increasing heart beat rate or blood pressure, but these can be controlled by psychological factors (like being upset), is there any evidence that placebo can have effects that are entirely physical?

I was reading this interesting article about the ethics of so called "tactical fouls" in sports and the article brings up one specific example from the 2010 soccer World Cup quarter final in which Uruguay is about to concede a goal that would eliminate them from the World Cup and, in a last ditch attempt to stop it, Luis Suarez (who is not a goal keeper and therefore not permitted to handle the ball) very blatantly reaches his hands out and stops the ball. His calculation was that this was the end of extra time and the penalty for handling the ball blatantly like that (a red card and being sent off out of the game) was far lesser than the downside of conceding the goal, which would have meant Uruguay's elimination from the WC. And, importantly, because this was the end of extra time, Uruguay didn't even have to suffer the normally severe penalty of a red card, which means playing the rest of the game with one player less - the game was over anyway. There was basically no downside. Was this wrong to do? Would you have done it?

You'll often find charts like this that express the risk of various medical x-rays by relating it to levels of radiation from other sources. I'm wondering, is this a valid way of thinking about the risk? Because it makes a chest x-ray seem pretty trivial - exposes you to no more radiation than just 5 days of normal living (natural background radiation). Is it really valid to think of risks of chest x-rays in that way or are there additional factors here that would change the equation? Does the fact that a chest x-ray is 50 msc in one instant make it different and more dangerous than the 50 msc you are exposed to over five days of normal living from background radiation?

I was under the impression the N95 masks are the best, but recently I heard from someone (who tends to be knowledgeable about these things, but, of course, not beyond scrutiny) that the masks with the filters/valves on them are the best. Is there any science that settles the question of which type of mask provides the best protection? There's a table giving stats for various types of masks here, but I can't really make heads or tails of these metrics, maybe someone can explain. Flow rate? Inhalation and exhalation resistance? Is more or less better? etc. EDIT: I see now that both the N95 and the european FFP2 come in valve and valveless varities. Anyone know how they differ in performance? Is an N95 with a valve better than one without it? EDIT #2: Apparently, there is a higher standard yet FFP3/N99/EN149/P3 (different name in different regions). I'm still wondering whether valved or valveless varieties are better, assuming this higher standard has them, as well.

What is the latest evidence on how long it takes for a person who catches COVID to be no longer able to transmit the virus? I'm sure there's variability, but what's the upper limit of how long a person can be a transmitter?

I was not implying with my question that a person's politics can be reduced to their IQ and that's not something I believe. I'm just curious about whether there are differences. I DEEPLY, DEEPLY appreciate that and commend you for it. In my view, keeping one's personal politics out of apolitical discussions (this topic is tangentially related to politics, but it is not politics that is the topic) is a matter of basic civility, yet it is violently violated constantly today. I've had people slap me over my political views in music reviews. Pardon the soapbox moment. Thank you!

Is anyone aware of any studies looking into the IQ of various political groups? Just left vs right would be interesting, but if there's a study that slices the groups more finely than that, that would be even better.

I've heard so much conflicting information on this topic and it seems like there are studies to prove every position you want to take on it. The most popular view seems to be however that the standard surgical masks that people most frequently wear stop you from infecting others, but don't protect you, whereas there's some other type of mask that protects both you and other people, is this in fact what the science suggests? What kind of protection do the cloth masks provide?

Physicsts known to the general public are rare. Newton, Einstein and Hawking would be known to everyone and then after that, at a lower level, you got Feynman, who would probably not be known to everyone, but a lot of people with some interest in intellectual topics would know his name. I'm sure there are a lot of physicists with great achievements whom no one in the general public has heard of. You'd probably be hard pressed to find a person who's heard of Ed Witten and I'm sure there are great physicists yet more anonymous. Now, supposing Feynman had never written any popular science, how well known do you think he would be? He appeared in a lot of television programs, but would that have happened if not for his popular books? Do you think he would be another anonymous physicist or would he be somewhere close to his current level of popularity?

Well, that's a little glib, exchemist was making a valid point and I'm curious whether the point can hold up when evidence is examined. The point being that, yes, advanced maternal age increases the chance of chromosome related issues, but is it so that children of older mothers who do not end up having chromosomal problems will suffer no negative health effects relative to children of young mothers. Or, in brief, does maternal age make no health difference if a chromosomal issue doesn't happen. Does anyone know whether there's evidence refuting this hypothesis? Now, John Cuthbert referenced a study that shows non-chromosome related health effects, but the study is in rats. It's not nothing, it shows that at least in rats there can be some non-chromosome related mechanism, still it's not humans.

I won't press this any further, thanks for the responses and the patience. Let me just ask you something unrelated to the vaccines, if we can take the thread on a very brief digression and if this is a topic you know about: This business about eliminating lipids got me thinking about something I've often wondered (and worried) about, which is mercury in fish. You'll usually hear that you SHOULD eat fish, but not more than x servings of such and such fish a week. Is that because if you don't cross a certain threshold of mercury in a given time it will get eliminated without having an effect, whereas if you go beyond that it doesn't get eliminated quick enough and could have some negative effect?

I thought that the forum might automatically display the links as tweets, as it had done with some of the earlier links I posted, that's why I just left them as tweets. This is what the first link says: "Tissue to plasma exposure requires calculation of AUC. The sample period did not go out long enough to calculate it since the Cmax looks like it occurs at >48h . Typically these studies measure out to 7 days." To be honest with you, I don't even fully understand what they're saying, but they seem to be referencing the fact that peak values for some of the organs are reached after 48 hrs, which did not permit the calculation of AUC, whatever that is. So, my question with regard to that is just if you could explain to me what the person is saying lol The other two just ask why the lipids are ending up in the ovaries and bone marrow and whether those organs can clear them, but I guess you've answered that, although you didn't specifically address bone marrow, I don't know if anything different than what you've said about the other organs applies to it.

But if that is the reason, I don't understand why they monitored for 48 hrs only. And there's this: https://twitter.com/TailFirefly/status/1404474619923476484 Ok, I take your point, but what about this: https://twitter.com/mrich0312/status/1404399263975608320 https://twitter.com/Wildbranch/status/1404421593049321475 Do the ovaries and bone marrow qualify as inert tissues that you mention might not clear the lipids? To be clear, this is not a rhetorical question, I don't know whether they do. The adrenals also show just a steady climb through 48 hrs. Well, I'm not worried by the fact that they did these studies, I DO accept that this is the standard approach (except, as it turns out, why only 48 hrs), it's more the results that worry me, although I accept your point about liver concentrations not being a cause for concern since it's the filtration organ. It's the bone marrow, ovaries and adrenals that worry me. Now, again, if you tell me that it's known that those organs clear them, too, I'll accept, but I have to ask the question. Yes, although I'm not sure what you mean by the values being established. The rate of elimination? Yes, that does assuage my concerns quite a bit. I am not set in my beliefs at all, in fact there isn't anything I DO believe yet about this, except the points I've said I accept.

Well, if it's a foregone conclusion that the LNPs are gonna get eliminated, I don't understand why they measured how much of them gets accumulated in the various organs to begin with and if mRNA is terribly unstable and is only gonna stick around for 2 days max anyway, why did they bother to track where it goes? I don't know enough to know who has and hasn't got expertise on the matter, so I have to ask. What I know is that he's engaged in a debate with three people on Twitter who do seem to be acknowledged as experts in the filed and none of them have been able to refute his concerns. Again I have to ask, if there's no such concern, why did they measure where the LNPs end up to begin with? If it was simply sufficient to measure excretion routes, why did they measure this stuff at all? And doesn't excretion only tell us that the stuff is being eliminated, but not where from? So it doesn't rule out the possibility that there's somewhere where it's not getting eliminated from and where maybe it would stick around longer. And, again, I don't have any expertise on this topic and I'm merely asking questions because I want to get educated on the topic, so I don't understand why you have to be hostile about it. I'm not claiming expertise, I'm not claiming to know better than you, I'm asking.

The discussion has kept going on Twitter and it seems like Chris Masterjohn has been able to poke holes in any refutations of his concerns. The discussion has branched off into too many threads to catalogue here, I'll just post one tweet and anyone interested should look back through the tweets to find the various threads branching off at various points (or go to Chris Masterjohn's timeline and look at his replies, that may be even better): https://twitter.com/ChrisMasterjohn/status/1409220193683976192 Ok, now, let me try to argue with you based on some of the stuff Chris said on Twitter: 1) Here's his objection to this argument https://twitter.com/ChrisMasterjohn/status/1409224095011590146 Now, this would not be applicable to your point if when you said "test mRNA" you were referring to some other experiment they performed than the one discussed here involving luciferase mRNA. Perhaps you're talking of some experiment where they used test mRNA which is known to have similar stability to the spike protein mRNA, IDK. 2) I'm not sure what you mean by "between say hour 2 and 48 h we see a loss of ~30% of the total signal," the value for liver goes up in that time. Or are you referring to the cumulative value for all the organs? You say that there appears to be a steady state with elimination balanced out by additional accumulation, but the only timeframe where we see a drop in value that we could take to be elimination is between 8 and 24 hrs and then the value goes up again at the 48 hr mark. Granted it only goes up by 1/5 of what had accumulated in the previous 24 hrs, but we don't know what happens after this very short time frame of 48 hrs and the last observed change is in the upwards direction. That said, you could be right, it could be that if we had data for an additional 48 hrs that we would se see-sawing and basically a steady state, but that's a hypothesis, we don't know for sure. 3) Well, as I mentioned in relation to 1, we can't be sure the mRNA is gone in 2 days, but also there's the issue of lipid accumulation and I'll post a message from a different covno I'm having where someone mentioned evidence that they might not be being metabolized (and this bears on 2, as well and your hypothesis that they're being eliminated):

But what about their accumulation in other places like adrenals, ovaries and bone marrow? What do you make of the concerns expressed in this thread? His concern is (and I'm a layperson, so I hope I don't mess it up) that they only studied up to 48 hrs and at that point the LNP is still accumulating in the ovaries and adrenals, so we don't know what happens beyond that point, how much accumulates. He also says accumulation of the protein and the mRNA wasn't even tested and he's concerned about that, too.

But what about the point about the possibility of accumulation of the protein or the vaccine in ovaries, adrenals and bone marrow?

I think you mistyped something in the last part of the sentence, could you clarify?

Any comments on this:

You often heard about how a mother being advanced in age is bad for the child she is bearing and I'm wondering, is that exclusively because it raises the risk of miscarriage or are there actually negative health effects that are passed on to the child as a result of the mother's age and what are the negative effects specifically?