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I think I tried to see what the criteria are for identifying someone as a hunter, but I think most evidence is based on archeological finds. There is unlikely to be a way to look at the body themselves. Moreover, many are not in a shape to figure out much about the lifestyle. One aspect I think is the presence of specific work kits (e.g. cutting tools, weapons etc. that are buried together with the body indicating that it may be personal belongings. It would be a bit strange to add these specific tools just randomly because someone died (but not e.g. tools associated with food processing toolmaking or other specializations).

From what I have read it appears the going hypothesis is that simply put it is a matter of necessity. Early societies did not have the luxury to split folks according to perceived suitability. Rather they needed all the protein they could get. So if hunters were needed whoever was available (and perhaps somewhat able) joined in. I.e. it is possible that they did not have the luxury to discriminate. On speculation was that potentially it was related to the use of a spear throwing device, the atlatl, which can be mastered at a fairly young age. I.e. women could have become proficient in this hunting method before they start having children. Later, bows became the dominant hunting tools, which take longer to master and may have resulted in the job discrimination that we still see in current hunter-gatherer societies. I would also highlight that the evidence level for male hunters is also mostly based on buried hunting material. The assumption that they were all male is based on a) speculation (or inductive reasoning) and b) projection of current populations, which may or may not have held true in former times (in the Americas). In fact it is the archaeological find that oppose these assumptions. They identified female hunters a number of burial sites of the late Pleistocene and early Holocene, indicating that it is not a unique finding. The authors argue that it is more likely that it was fairly common in the Americas.

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Well that is always assuming that one expects a singular target. As far as I can tell it is unclear what kind of assay it was in the first place.

Fundamentally I do not think that there is a much wrong with your gel (for most purposes that is). The left pocket might have been damaged a bit. You have a bit of a frowning effect going but nothing too worrisome (though I would add ladder at the last lane to address that a bit.

True enough. On top they obviously have massive influence over lawmakers, so they can make things easier for them either way.

Yes and I think it is one of the few things were empirical studies have consistently shown that trickle down just does not happen. I mean, it is one of those things folks might have really believed in, it has been tried to various degrees for a few decades and the verdict is pretty clear at this point.

So, how about not negotiating with terrorists now?

I think it is important to acknowledge at some point that immigration politics has little to do with worker rights per se. It has more to do to provide a scapegoat for economical woes. Xenophobic tactics have been a time-proven tactic to do just that an by now we have plenty of evidence that it has been a driving factors within the right populist movements (which does include the current GOP). On the scientific side of things, several decade of research in multiple industrialized countries have failed to find consistent evidence of immigrants depressing wages on native (well, not native, native, but you know...) workers. At best, some studies found that new immigrant workers might depress wages of slightly earlier, but uneducated immigrant workers. There are sorting effects at play that, at times can locally decrease but also increase wages, so it is slightly tricky. Yet the simple formula more immigrants = lower wages is in its essence wrong or at least incomplete.

Exactly, it enrages me if folks say something is "just" like flu. Actual influenza is a deadly disease for many folks resulting in thousands of deaths every single year. Moreover, other diseases (including COVID-19) even if not deadly can in increase in morbidity, loss of quality of life and so on. And on top, even otherwise harmless organisms can cause deadly sepsis when they get into the wrong areas (e.g. wounds) or if exposed to too high dosages (as in the above mentioned run-off). Also one should add that the hygiene hypothesis regarding early childhood exposure is mostly looking at the development of allergies, not resistance against pathogens. Fundamentally, low-level exposure can have a similar function as a vaccine, but as in the case of mononucleosis it is not the case for quite a few pathogens. There are plenty that circumvent or hide from the immune system quite effectively, for example.

Also, most extinctions are driven by habitat loss, which impacts prey and predator...

And even those voting against mentioned that what the president did was not right, but he learned his lesson. This time even McConnel has mentioned that the are impeachable offenses... Potentially because a Trump 2024 run could make the GOP implode.

Well there is probably more need for nuance but I think it is not quite fair to say that say European conservatives are more progressives than US conservatives or Republicans. For example, Europe is for much of it fairly left when it comes to the financing social programs. However, many areas are very socially conservative. I think it is fair to say, though that in the US being fiscally conservative is not really associated with the GOP anymore. It has always been a talking point, but never a policy point. There are also certain aspects that are universal among conservatives, though perhaps differently scaled. But again fiscal conservatism is in most areas of the world not really a defining aspect. Fundamentally we are talking about political identity here and what the worldview of folks are that consider themselves conservative vs those that do not. There are of course common themes, such as traditionalism, often associated religiosity (to various degrees) but various surveys and studies indicate that born of these there are also certain traits that are more common. Such as admiration for strong (often father-)figures, an assumption of how things should be (basically assuming a natural order of sorts) and so on. Republicans are obviously just a certain (somewhat crazy) flavour of conservatism and I take your point that one should separate those in most contexts. I will say especially in the Western world the political movements (such as social Democrats, Liberals, Conservatives etc.) are not that isolated anymore that they used to be and there crazy flavours popping up everywhere.

If you go through the headers there is a line somewhere indicating the original submission, as well as another line stating whether the sequence has been updated at some point. If you are interested about variants, I think the GISAID database is more helpful (https://www.gisaid.org/).

I was more thinking back to 9/11 (and to some degree to the more recent terror attacks in Europe) and how it galvanized the population with anti-Muslim sentiments and, among others, resulting in endless wars. Also how a fairly open society managed to become fearful and increasingly restrictive. The main reason I thought about this are because of the parallels some see between Islamic extremists and the radical white evangelical movement (https://nyti.ms/2LHNB5u). They even got their martyrs among the QAnon believers. Also one should not underestimate how deep they are in conspiracy theories. There is a good chance that folks would think that the deep state got to him and that they need to be even more violent to liberate their savior.

These are very different mechanisms. Mononucleosis is mostly caused by the Epstein Barr virus. There is no immunity per se. You get infected and then you carry it. About 90% of adults carry the virus. However, if you only shed low level of viral particles, so often transmission requires intimate contact. So yeah, college. However, childhood infections are often subclinical. However, infection amog kids is often associated with poor hygiene, shared utensils etc. That is why folks in cleaner homes might not get infected as children and therefore develop symptoms. But it is not because the body gained or lost resistance or immunity. Also, fecal transplants are generally screened for potential pathogens, so that is quite a different matter than ingesting manure.

That is not fundamentally wrong, but I am a bit confused how that relates to vaccination hesitancy (also, I would counsel against using manure as an attempt to adapt to unsafe drinking water).

Well, I am certain you are wrong. I have looked at the sequence days after it was published mid-January (well, and the rest of the community even earlier). I suspect you might have looked at the revision dates rather than the original posting date (I remember that there were a few bases being corrected after more sequencing, but I might be misremembering). There are also many more sequences out there and perhaps updates to RefSeqs. But either way, your premise is clearly wrong. Edit: I quickly checked the entry: the date in the header of Genbank entries signifies the date of last modification, not the date of submission and I think that is what you looked at. It is the right sequence, though, but you can look at the history and see where it was originally posted. IIRC it was originally submitted early January and I think it was available about a week after. Double edit: apparently lack of sleep significantly reduces my already poor spelling abilities. I should call it a day at some point.

It is unfortunately a bad example. If there was really significant runoff from manure there is no way to get used to that level of exposure. In fact, similarly contaminated water sources are a source for lethal infections throughout much of the world, there is only so much the immune system can fight off. One can develop a certain amount of resistance to infections, but only by low-level exposure. Also, I am not sure how that actually relates to being vaccinated. I.e. do you mean that low level exposure to pathogen is similar to vaccination? In principle it is, though obviously it carries more risks as the pathogens are still viable.

Just imagine how the mood would be different if there were Muslim groups throughout USA who threaten to conduct violence on social media. I suppose will take the threats a bit more seriously now. However, similarly to Europe, right-wing (white) terrorism was often not considered to be real, until they start investigating it (the scandals in Germany was an admittedly almost laughable example).

Yey, as if a raging pandemic which folks still kind of ignore was not enough.

Fundamentally being vaccinated only means that a person is exposed to an additional antigen (or set of antigens) compared to an unvaccinated persons. However, since everyone is exposed to many, many antigens every day day simply by eating or breathing, the overall immune system won't look fundamentally different. Likewise, an unvaccinated person can remain healthy, provided they never encounter the pathogen in question. But in return it means that a non-vaccinated person simply won't have antibodies to a disease and are susceptible to infection. There is no mechanism how a healthy lifestyle can prevent that. But the more people are around who are susceptible (e.g. not vaccinated) the less likely it is that you can keep away from folks might infect you. That is precisely what we see with measles and mumps and a few other diseases that were almost eradicated, but are now making a revival among unvaccinated communities. And no, drinking kelp won't save you. There have been a number of studies on vegans and if you look at some immune markers, either there is no difference to non-vegetarian diets in certain factors (e.g. natural killer cell ctyotoxic activity) or lower (e.g. lower leukocyte and lymphocyte counts) (Haddad et al. Am J Clin Nut 70:3 1999; . This is not necessarily a fundamental problem, but shows no indication of actually increasing the body's ability to deal with infections. They are likely better off than very unheathy folks (e.g. obese folks) but there is not benefit over non-vegetarian folks within healthy BMIs, for example. While it goes on a tangent, I should add that during pregnancies vegans have to monitor themselves more than usual with respect to micronutrient deficiency (see e.g. Sebastiani et al. Nutrients 2019 11:3 557 https://doi.org/10.3390/nu11030557) However, I think there is fundamental flaw of that thinking, because a) vaccines are a targeted protection system but perhaps more importantly they are b) a means to maintain population health. You see, it is as at least much about as not infecting someone else and spreading the disease as it is to keep yourself healthy. Focusing exclusively on the health status of the (un)vaccinated is therefore missing at least half the picture. From the public health perspective, vaccinations do at least the following: - curb disease related effects (including mortality, death, loss of quality of life etc.) - maintain public health and reduce strain on the health care system (loss of work and hospitalization- the latter is one of the reason why COVID-19 mortality spikes in overstrained systems) - protect susceptible folks (e.g. folks with weak immune systems, undergoing chemo, elderly and kids, etc.) - reduce the risk of new strains (the more a disease circulates, the more likely it can acquire mutations against which vaccines might not work anymore, potentially happening right now with SARS-CoV-2). - have the potential to eradicate disease entirely. In other words, not vaccinating counters above effects.

Yes, but I would argue that it took a minimum of effort , buy-in from the establishment and elimination of other voices. Nowadays apparently all you need to do is post fiction somewhere and folks are going to run with it.

I think it may be related to getting old, but what gets me is the lack of effort in many of these things. The lies (e.g. QAnon conspiracy) are so obviously absurd and made with no real effort. And conversely folks simply believe even the most absurd of claims without making the effort of double-checking. Trump rose to the top without really putting the works in and was even able to incite an attempted coup. And all without even trying or at least preparing a proper speech. Their whole effort of usurping the power was just lazy and cumulated in a press conference on the parking lot of a gardening centre. Yet folks that are so obviously inept and lazy obviously have no problem getting what they want and, even worse, get support from other folks. I really have trouble understanding that (and the world at large). To me, social media seems intrinsically connected to that, somehow. I am just not sure what is cause and what is effect.

No doubt, I think it has crystallized that really burning out the case numbers is absolutely necessary and surfing the curve is not a good strategy. Provinces such as Manitoba which did well for a time were rather quickly overwhelmed once the numbers surged.