jlc

There are probably lots of places where women have an advantage; some of these are yet to be discovered. Some that come to mind is being a jockey, fighter pilot, or astronaut. These are all endeavors where women have been categorically eliminated - but note that only one is a sport. Bullfighting is another sport where women could do well - the difference between the strength of a woman and a man pales in comparison to the strength of a bull.

The most puzzling sports where women have traditionally failed to excel (or just been disqualified) are racecar drivers and pilots.

We are doing well, overall, at eliminating the artificial barriers, but it will probably take a few more generations before we throw off the liabilities of social conditioning and see what women can actually do physically.

Jan

What do you mean "women will never win"? Brigid Kosgei ran faster than 45,933 people. Presumably, at least some of those were men...

The winners of >70% of the marathons iin the world are generally from the Kalinjin tribe in Kenya. By your logic, there should then be a 'blacks only' marathon, or maybe even a Kalinjin-only marathon.

Jan

I agree with Thoritsu. I am a woman, and I have competed against men (sometimes very strong men) in martial arts for over 40 years. Yes,most men are stronger than most women, but some women are stronger than some men - and some men are stronger than most other men.

The sport I compete in is quasi-full-contact. You strike blows that are strong enough to dent 14 gauge stainless steel, but men who are stronger than that have to hold back and cannot use their full strength. There are also rules that keep a bigger person from simply punting his opponent out of the arena.

Skill counts. I can take many guys who are a lot stronger than I am. I do not have to worry about whether my opponent is trans or male or female - I just try to win the fight.

So no, not only does this not 'frost' me, but it is a step in the right direction. If you really want to separate out categories of competition, then do so by a non-gender-based category, such as is used in boxing, ie 'welterweight'; you could even include the strength differential on an individual basis and sort people into categories based on muscle density, which would automatically sort the Y-chromosome trans into higher competitive levels while their therapy was still taking effect, but into lower ones after they had fully transitioned.

The idea that 'all men are stronger than all women' is Victorian and inaccurate. We need to move away from that. It is also good psychologically for women to compete in sports against men, and win or lose depending on their individual skills and abilities.

Jan

Thank you for posting this. I have missed them (but then, I may just have missed some).

I sent the Volcano one on to some friends.

Jan

Thank you again. I sent 2 of these on to friends who needed cheering up.

Jan

A very similar article (a lot of the same wording) in the Washington Examiner cited further precautions being taken by the military:

"But that only partly accounts for the dramatic difference in outcomes, especially if you consider that the Pentagon’s comparative success did not require any major disruptions in worldwide operations.

“We've placed tough restrictions on our people — all to protect the force and all to preserve our mission readiness,” said Defense Secretary Mark Esper at a recent virtual town hall for DOD workers worldwide.

While many have questioned the efficacy of masks and have begun to consider social distancing guidelines excessive, the Pentagon has doubled down on safety measures that have proven demonstrably effective in slowing the spread of the virus.

Over the course of three weeks in March, as the threat of the COVID-19 became clear, Esper ordered that Pentagon workers maintain 6 feet of social distancing, allowed anyone who could to telecommute, issued a 60-day stop-movement order restricting travel, imposed self-isolation quarantines for anyone who had potentially been exposed to the virus or who was returning to the U.S., and mandated face coverings at all times for anyone who could not maintain social distancing while outside their homes.

“We've been very successful. Our numbers relative to the broader population, or relative to any other population, have been very good,” Esper said. “Tragic for those who have lost folks or who have been hospitalized, but those numbers are far, far lower because of the measures we've taken.”

The Pentagon has taken extraordinary steps to keep the U.S. missions worldwide on track while dealing with a virus-stricken aircraft carrier that was sidelined and pausing basic recruit training to adopt new safety protocols.

“There seems to be this narrative out there that we should just shut down the entire U.S. military and address the problem that way. That's not feasible,” Esper said at a White House coronavirus task force briefing April 1.

“The world is a big world. There's a lot of things out there that are not necessarily in the United States’s interests that happen every single day, from terrorists to Russia to China to Iran and North Korea and all kinds of other threats and challenges that are out there,” said Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, addressing the virtual town hall. “We have to operate within a COVID-19 environment.”

The sometimes onerous restrictions, especially a worldwide ban on travel, imposed real hardships on military families, many of whom have been frozen in place for months, unable to move to their next assignments or do simple things like sell their houses.

“It's all about protecting our force, our people,” said Esper. “I know for some, it may seem like we're being too cautious, and for other folks, it seems too risky.”

But Esper is warning that the new normal will be different, at least for a while, from the old normal — based on the lessons learned from the pandemic.

Late last month, Esper visited Parris Island to observe Marine Corps basic training under the new coronavirus guidelines.
“I noticed as they were going through the training, they were appropriately socially distanced when it made sense. And at all times, they wore face covering,” he said.

But what Esper found most interesting is that the measures designed to prevent the coronavirus's spread were also preventing the spread of other respiratory tract infections.

“They've seen sick call go down remarkably across the board, and they've seen a higher number of recruits available for training day in and day out,” he said. “So there is good coming out of this, lessons learned, I think, that will make us even more effective and better well into the future.”

Thank you again.

Jan

I do not believe in an afterlife, but if I imagine one, it has green fields and rolling hills with trees on them. May you be able to see your father, young and healthy again, in such a setting.

Jan

We are pretty sure that in New Zealand and Hawaii and the SE islands, the Polynesians were the first. Over in the Western areas of the Pacific, you get more layers as far back as Homo floriensis - who was pre H. sapiens. Homo floriensis is now thought to be a branch of H. erectus, but I am still excited by the thought that H. floriensis might be a separate branch that goes back to Australopithecus (because of the foot structure).

Jan

Not really. We consider the nene to be indigenous to Hawaii - but of course it came from 'somewhere else' because 400,000 years ago, Hawaii was just a bunch of molten rock. "Native" "Indigenous" and "Endemic" are all terms that refer to something that is local.

You do point out that these terms are used unevenly. We consider the Maori to be indigenous to New Zealand but not the Mongols to Eastern Europe - and yet they both have lived in those places for about the same amount of time:750 years.

Jan

Well...if we also consider that 'the very first people who set their feet on a place' to be indigenous, then much of Polynesia qualifies. But the current American Indian tribes do not, because we have at least two layers of predecessors identified.

Jan

(Possibly with the accent on "simple"!)

It is an interesting thread, Thoritsu.

Jan

In a classic free market exchange, I knap 12 arrowheads and exchange 6 of them to you for 6 arrow shafts, feathered and nocked. We both specialize at our skills, and we each get 6 complete arrows faster than we would working alone.

This system breaks down when I no longer know how to make the arrow shafts. At that point, even if you are crummy at knapping arrowheads (as long as you can still make them), if I am not able to make the shafts at all, I am now at your mercy.

We either have to trust each other or we have to have backup capabilities. China is not trustworthy (unlike Taiwan, who is) and the US is perilously close to 'not still being able to make arrow shafts'. That is where free market and national self interest both come into play.

Jan

Thank you again for posting these. Happy Monday.

Jan

But, but, but...this is not accurate.

We know that there are people who are immune to some viruses (ie HIV). We know that there are carriers of bacterial infections (ie Typhoid Mary) who are asymptomatic. And we can see that this virus is not 'just going away' because it is summer.

I am baffled.

Jan

Bush does not look pleased with his mask.

I just want to register that I object to the Sherwin-Williams picture not being in spectral order. What were they thinking?

Thanks again for some fun viewing this morning.

Jan

I thought I would share this nice graphic depiction of how behavior can mitigate the spread of a disease. I like the way the article explicitly states that this is an 'example disease' called "simulitis" (because we do not know enough about Covid-19 to accurately simulate it yet). Enjoy.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphi...

There are two aspects to this question: sensitivity and specificity. Sensitivity means that 'you correctly recognize all of the positive events'. Specificity means 'you do not falsely recognize any events that are not true'. There is also a matter of timing, since even the best test kit in the world cannot recognize something that is not present (yet).
The current kits seem to be very specific for SARS-CoV-2 virus, but they may not be as sensitive as we could hope for. Additionally, many viral diseases take a while to output the viral elements into the blood (they are present in the cells, but not in high numbers in the blood yet). It has turned out that if someone is negative 'now' and you test them again in a few days, they may be positive 'then'.

Jan

Thank you for the addition data on the R-naught. I have not had a chance to check recently. Ya know: I am working from home right now and am as busy as the proverbial cat in the rocking chair room. You'da thought that I would have time hanging heavy on my hands...

I think you are correct about the social changes too.

Jan

Please do NOT pass that advice on - about half of it is incorrect. Most importantly, while fever is an important symptom of Covid-19, it may or may not be accompanied by symptoms such as a runny nose. Having a 'runny nose' does not rule out Covid-19; while statistically, the lack of a fever is a counter-indicator, some individuals with no fever have tested positive.
The virus loves to live in a human whose body temp is 37C (98F) - How can it be killed by temps of 26C???!! Think about it!
We do not know how long it is viable on most surfaces. Comparisons with other coronaviruses may not apply due to high variability.
The precautions and advice in the above missive are dangerously wrong, with the exception of 'wash hands' and 'drink water'.

Please be careful about passing along such missives.

Jan

No, wmiranda, it is not the flu - though some types of flu are due to a related species. We know this because we test for the genes of the virus...that is what the Covid-19 test kits to: they test for unique genetic sequences that this particular virus has.
Whatever other decisions you make, please do not base them on the idea that this 'may be just the flu'

Jan

As you also probably know, I am a Medical Technologist - though I have not worked at the bench for ~27 years now. I started working at home and self-isolating this Monday past. Here is what I know:
-Every carrier infects X number of other people (and we do not know what X is yet or what all of the means of transmission are)
-Of those X people, Y become sick enough to go and be tested and turn out positive for Covid-19. If we artificially make Y = 100...
-Then, of that 100, ~20 become significantly ill
-And between 1-3 people die

We originally hoped that the X population was not infective, but it looks like many of them are. That means that the community contagion is spreading rapidly through our general population: your own immune system, age and general health will determine your personal risk.

H.sapiens is actually making a surprisingly good showing of rationality in terms of low-granularity decisions to self-isolate and to close public events. People are not waiting for the authorities to do this, eg HIMSS (big medical show) voluntarily canceled last week.

I admit that I have felt a bit like Cassandra, talking to my co-workers about this, though I was able to get some of them to a position of less risk.

Jan

I have heard this info too - but not from a good source, so it is one more thing to add to the 'hearsay' pile of info.

One of the factors that could make a huge difference is if we find an effective antiviral. Many are currently being tried, but I have not heard anyone shout, "Bingo!"

Jan

The genetic evidence indicates that the transmission path was originally from bats to pangolins to humans.

The salient factor in the spread of Covid-19 is that 80% of the people who get it are non-symptomatic. The bad thing about this is that we do not know what portion of the virulence is due to the patient's genes vs the virus' strain. The good thing is that if the virulence is related to the strain of the Covid-19 and NOT to the patient's genes, then catching the virus from a non-symptomatic carrier means that you have caught a less virulent strain and therefor there is less of a chance that it will do significant harm.

Since Covid-19 is an RNA virus, it mutates rapidly and there is no guarantee of immunity any given strain if the strain you caught was genetically different. There will probably be cross-reacting immunity of some degree...this is on of the things we don't know yet.

Since the virus is transmissible both before the symptoms are evidenced in the symptomatic- now cases and - now probably - by the non-symptomatic carriers, it is spreading through the population and it will eventually be present on a friend, co-worker, or cashier near you.

Jan

The gulags/guns one was frightening in its accuracy - right on target. The Russian agent/Communist nominee is very funny.

Thanks for the Monday morning humor.

Jan