Results of new NYT poll being called into question
Ranvier @ Ranvier @sopuli.xyz Posts 9Comments 928Joined 2 yr. ago

Lol, when this first came out I joked about them skipping ammendments they didn't like. I wasn't actually expecting them to do it. I mean no one who buys this is going to be spending any time reading the thing.
What I mean is even now these sporadic cases happen every once in a rare while and always will as long as beef is farmed. It is impossible for cases to go to 0 anywhere because very rarely a cow can spontaneously develop prions. Like the last case in the UK detected two years ago didn't result in massive culls and restrictions and things. A prion case in a cow was found in the US just last year as another example.
The 90s were a bit different because it was very widespread due to feeding of animals to other animals, and it was hard to track exactly how far it would have got. Same for humans, most human prion disease is extremely rare and sporadic, but if humans start consuming each other it can become common. In humans the sporadic form is called CJD (creutzfeld jakub disease), the kind believed to be transmitted by cows is called variant CJD, and there was a kind that developed due to a funerary cannabilism practice in a certain tribe in papau new Guinea called Kuru. Because of the cannibalism practices it was able to become very common, similar to what happened in cows when they were fed waste products from other cows.
Do they not use the word country as a synonym for rural? I checked the Cambridge dictionary, it's their second definition listed, even higher than where that definition is listed in Merriam Webster. It's like complaining rock music is made with guitars instead of boulders. Does he also think that country is like the only genre of music made in America? Though some country singers do like to put a lot of nationalism in their music which does kind of confuse things.
I'm a firm mayo by itself as a sauce hater though so I'm with him there. Even more abominable are the jello (or jelly for those in the UK) "salads." It's not a salad!
This probably won't affect beef prices. Rare isolated cases of prion disease in cows happen and can develop spontaneously. The epidemic resulted when the remains of cows/sheep with it were fed to other cows allowing it to propogate.
The surveillance systems that are used to make sure cases don't get into the human food supply though do cost something and contribute some to beef prices, but those systems are always going on, so no change.
Bird flu on the other hand is super contagious and spreads like wildfire, especially in factory farming conditions, resulting in the need for culls of large amounts of birds, that can very quickly affect prices.
Not exactly. In the cases you're referring to Biden wasn't bypassing congress to give tax dollars to Israel (presidents can't just allocate money willy nilly, congress does that). He bypassed them to approve a sale of weapons to Isreal (Israel spending their money to buy American arms). Usually arms sales also get submitted to congress so they can review them beforehand but currently the president can bypass that. And yeah it's doubtful congress would have stopped it, they would have needed to pass a law restricting the sale to do so.
What the current article is describing is US tax dollars going to Israel, since congress has now allocated funding to buy Israel weapons. It also mentions some republican lawmakers are still so enraged the large bombs are being held back, that they're attempting to create laws to prevent him from withholding any further weapons in the future. Unlikely to pass with democratic control of the senate though, and Biden has said he would veto it if it did.
We have made H5N1 avian flu vaccines many times before. We have one developed as recently as 2020 that's been approved by the FDA for use in humans, not sure how great it is against the current incarnation though. Flu is quite good at evading vaccines, hence the need for frequent updates.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/H5N1_vaccine
The US government funds vaccine development for viruses that might become a problem at some point. There's also work into expanding rna vaccine technology, which can allow for very quick updates as viruses change. We need way more work and funding on pandemic prep and surveillance. We've all seen how devestating a global pandemic can be. Even if the vast majority developed never end up needing use, one of them may save millions of lives.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/vaccine-makers-are-preparing-for-bird-flu/
Anyways, if an H5N1 pandemic started tomorrow, there's a vaccine that would probably be helpful already made. Would need to be scaled up massively in production of course though.
The spectrum of human thought is astounding some times.
On the one hand you have people adamant that viruses don't even exist against all rational thought, reason, the almost daily experience of their existence, and over a hundred years of scientific research around the world learning more about them in detail and cataloguing at least 15,000 distinct species.
While simultaneously you have people who know so much that they can manipulate viruses into becoming our own little machines to deliver working copies of genes straight into particular types of cells in someone's body and treat their deadly genetic illness with gene therapy.
They never even really stopped! Dang zombie fires
Yeah it also says don't cut for stones (kidney stones), but I don't see us casting urology out of medicine and letting people die of ureter obstructions. Doctors also don't generally worship Apollo anymore, to the best of my knowledge.
Turns out standards of care and what is possible or safest have evolved since ancient Greece.
Doctors don't take the literal original hipppcratic oath. There's a ton of junk in there no one would want doctors to follow. It's most common for each medical student class to create their own oath in the spirit of the hipppcratic oath when entering medical school, and then take that, or use a modernized version. And yes, vowing to do no abortions would absolutely conflict with "do no harm" in the modern age, and would lead to the needless suffering and death of pregnant individuals.
That's because abortions and the procedures used for them are a necessary part of obstetrics care that every obstetrician needs to know to be competent in their field. Doctors don't want to be in states where they can't give the care that patients need, being forced to watch as they suffer knowing they could have been able to do something about it if not for the laws. And they especially don't want to train in states where they won't get exposure and training in all of their field. Many obgyn programs are now having to scramble and try to do things like add out of state rotations so that their trainees can still get some experience. Doctors especially don't want to worry about being thrown in jail because ill informed prosecutors and members of the general public decided that a pregnant person wasn't critically ill enough to get their life saving abortion yet or some other nonsense.
There are more women going into medicine now then men. They understand how critically important access to abortion is, and that they may need one, potentially to protect their health or their ability to have more pregnancies in the future, even if it was a planned pregnancy they had every intention of carrying to term. And men of course have female loved ones they care about and want to have access to proper medical care as well. And every specialty has female patients that they want to have the best care in any eventuality.
Unfortunately abortion opponents have pushed many different fantasies about pregnancy and obstetrics, I think usually out of ignorance. But doctors are well educated on these matters. You'll continue to see an exodus of trained medical professionals from these states, not just in obgyn but across all of medicine. And I think across all of medicine they see the writing on the wall, that republican states are determined to get more and more invasive in getting between patients and their doctors. I doubt it would stop at just banning abortions and transgender care if Republicans have their way, and people are already suffering across the country because of it.
Even if you can't get pregnant and somehow don't know or care about anyone that can, you're going to have worse access to health care and suffer as an indirect result of abortion restrictions too.
An early indication of that impending medical "brain drain" came in February, when 76% of respondents in a survey of more than 2,000 current and future physicians say they would not even apply to work or train in states with abortion restrictions.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/26/us-abortion-ban-providers-doctors-leaving-states
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/06/abortion-maternity-health-obgyn/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/22/abortion-idaho-women-rights-healthcare
Here's an article with her being asked about wearing the outfit:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/rebel-saudi-women-shun-obligatory-abaya-robe/
Also beginning in 2019 tourists are allowed to go without an Abaya, at least officially. And apparently in some cities more than others it's at least somewhat common to see women without. Jedda especially it sounds like? Still very much the norm though.
https://www.businessinsider.com/female-solo-traveler-went-to-saudi-arabia-heres-what-i-saw?op=1
Clothes were another concern. Though foreign women are no longer required to wear an abaya (robe) by law, I was uncomfortable not wearing one. Outside of Jeddah and diplomatic areas of Riyadh, I did not see any women without abayas. Most women also wore hijabs and niqabs. In villages and towns, despite wearing a hijab, I still stood out because I didn't fully cover my face.
Yes you're both correct. It was during that three month period (late January to April) after the version with border security got killed by Trump's meddling, where Republicans were trying to push a stand alone Israel aid bill without Ukraine aid, and Biden issued his veto threat to any standalone Israel aid bill. The article the person you're replying to linked was in February, after the border security version one with everything together had failed.
Turns out doctors prefer helping people, providing needed medical care, and being adaquately trained. They don't like being thrown in jail. And they want access to obstetrics procedures like abortions for themselves or their loved ones when needed.
Technically those are describing UK rockets and bombs being being used against a US fort in the war of 1812. But yes.
I found the study if you're curious on more details. It was basically done because there was a series of relatively poor evidence case series articles pushing the idea of mifepristone antagonization (the first pill in the two step process) with high dose progesterone to try and stop a medical abortion after the first pill but before the second pill. But case series are just basically cherry picked cases and very limited in what they can show. This practice was becoming more common though because of these, and so researchers wanted to learn more about what risks it would pose to women who did this, and if it was even effective in the first place (though this situation is very rare, less than 0.005% of women who take the first pill choose to try and continue their pregnancies).
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31809439/
This is how participants were recruited:
We conducted this randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial at the University of California, Davis Medical Center. We approached patients who had completed counseling and consent for a surgical abortion and were 63 days of gestation or less about study participation. Inclusion criteria were 18 years or older, English-speaking, singleton pregnancy, and willingness to delay the abortion by approximately 2 weeks. Exclusion criteria were medical contraindications to medical abortion per the mifepristone U.S. Food and Drug Administration label, an allergy to mifepristone or progesterone, or a peanut allergy (on-label contraindication to oral progesterone). The University of California, Davis, Institutional Review Board approved this study and all participants gave written study consent before beginning any study procedures.
Twelve people were enrolled, though two chose to stop the study early and were given surgical abortions before the planned two weeks. Three had to be transported by ambulance for bleeding, and further enrollment was halted.
What they found was:
Although the study sample size was powered to demonstrate a difference in continuing pregnancy rates between progesterone and placebo treatment after mifepristone ingestion, we could not evaluate this outcome owing to stopping enrollment for safety reasons.
Patients who use mifepristone for a medical abortion should be advised that not using misoprostol could result in severe hemorrhage, even with progesterone treatment. We stopped the study because of these complications and, thus, could not quantify the full extent of this risk. Because of the potential dangers for patients who opt not to use misoprostol after mifepristone ingestion, any mifepristone antagonization treatment must be considered experimental.
So basically, don't do this, and any "crisis pregnancy center" that advises this is putting pregnant individuals in clear danger. The American college of obstetricians and gynecologists knows what they're talking about when they say this should not be done.
Until recently I would have been fine giving that data in the census. However:
https://www.npr.org/2022/01/15/1073338121/2020-census-interference-trump
I'm not to keen on giving it now. One election gone wrong and some very unsavory people who mean lgbt individuals harm now have all that info.
I gotta imagine that thing will dump before Trump's shares get out of lock up. If not, we'll see Trump himself will do the dumping I think as soon as he can sell.
Public companies that have hired BF Borgers will need to find new accounting firms, the SEC alerted companies in a separate statement on Friday.
Trump Media announced plans to do just that.
“Trump Media looks forward to working with new auditing partners in accordance with today’s SEC order,” Trump Media spokesperson Shannon Devine told CNN in a statement.
And audit of their firm from a legitimate company is going to be interesting. Surely they didn't pick hire these sham auditors to help them hide stuff...
There's no one that can make the estimate accurately right now. Any calculation like that is going to rest on lots on many wild estimates and unknowns. Happy to look at it if you have a source though.
People really need to take these polls seriously, and some misunderstanding of the win probabilities really contributed to everyone's shock in 2016 and I think their disbelief in current polls.
A 70% chance based on the summation of multiple polls per five thirty eight was Hillary's chance of winning. Considering the end result was an extremely slim electoral college victory only for Trump, that's pretty reasonable. I think the problem here is just a misunderstanding of 70% probability, a lot of people thought that implies something way more sure than it actually does. That's just a slight favoring of Clinton, closer to a 50/50 chance than a sure thing. A 30% chance is like saying, I'm going to get at least three heads when flipping a coin four times. Or pretty close to getting a pair on the flop in poker. It's really not that unlikely, happens all the time.
It was the NY times upshot trying to copy five thirty eight that had some really bizarre math creating numbers way up in the high 90s of percent that clearly couldn't be right and especially didn't help with the false confidence.
It also doesn't help that those win probabilities often get mentioned in the same breath as polling numbers. 70% in a poll is an insane advantage that would translate to a basically 100% win probability, while a 70% win probability is just a slight edge. I think some people that see those numbers close together can't help but unconsciously conflate them.
Another important thing to consider is when polling errors happen, they tend to be correlated with each other, not independent. And it just so happened that the polls across multiple upper Midwest states were consistently underestimating Trump's support. Not to mention a bunch of last minute news events that took place after many of the last polls that could have moved them.
Anyways, it still would be much better to be up in battleground polls than down. We shouldn't be complacent when there's in actuality only a slight advantage, and we definitely shouldn't be complacent when we're down. These numbers should be a cause for major concern.