Right, and not only are those strains all different but even identical strains could produce different sorts of disease in different people, based on things like prior immunity (or cross-immunity from a similar strain), the amount of infectious material that was ingested, how fast the digestive system is moving etc.

Do we actually know for sure the virus infects and propagates in non-nerve cells in these individuals? Viral particles can stimulate an immune response without ever infecting a cell (as in the way vaccines with dead virus work) so it doesn’t require propagation to stimulate antibodies in theory.

As to whether the immune system can stop rabies once it enters a nerve: animal bites take varying lengths of time to progress to symptomatic disease based on where they occur, with bites around the neck and face progressing to symptomatic rabies infections in days or weeks, but bites on the feet taking up to a year to reach the brain.

However, vaccination for rabies is effective at any time before symptoms appear. So it would seem that the body has ways of clearing the infection from nerve tissue. It is less effective at detecting the virus there and mounting a response, but when a response is stimulated by a vaccine, it seems to work.

On this list, rabies is the only disease that has the same end outcome for everyone who shows symptoms.

However it’s possible that some people could get exposed to rabies and don’t get an infection—that’s something that is difficult to measure, because you don’t know if viral particles entered the body and were cleared before establishing an infection, or if there just weren’t any particles that entered the body for some reason.

As for the others, the severity of the infection, and the ability for the immune system to clear it before it gets too advanced, will have a major role in affecting the outcome.

For most diseases, we’ve lived most of our lives assuming that somebody who never shows symptoms just didn’t get infected. With COVID we hear more about asymptomatic infections because of the emphasis on not exposing others, but most infections produce asymptomatic cases, and epidemiologists are aware of them. They just don’t get into the public consciousness because people aren’t too concerned when they have an infection that doesn’t affect their day to day life.

Even if hydroxychloroquine had some marginal tiny benefit with the original strain (slowing reproduction by 10 or 15% or whatever—idk that is a hypothetical figure), I wouldn’t expect it to work with the hyper-efficient new strains that build up viral loads so quickly even the pre-existing immune memory can’t stop it.

Obviously evidence supersedes logic. But based on that I really would not expect HCQ to do anything at all.

How can you so easily say you know the answers to these questions when it is one of the most controversial unknowns in science? Especially when your analysis seems to focus on the U.S. while obesity levels are creeping up as a global phenomenon.

I suspect that scientific research interest and funding has been too fixated on obesity itself as a catch-all target for all the health issues associated with obesity.

There might be more value in understanding why all these conditions are connected to obesity, and whether microbes play a role in them.

But that’s just conjecture on my part. Given the complexity of this phenomena and our very limited current understanding of the microbiome, we have not come close to exhausting all the options.

But again, we won’t know what questions to ask until we get a wider base of information to use to find patterns.

The studies are literally being done to accumulate data to be able to test this logic.

You have your logic in that you suspect diet is the primary causative factor, and changes in microbiome follow, and it’s perfectly reasonable logic.

But it’s also possible that the microbiome affects things like hormone levels, creates fermentation byproducts like lactic acid and acetic acid that change blood sugar profiles and the speed of digestion, it’s possible the microbiome affects appetite, and different microbes could cause people to tend to eat less without conscious thought about it.

Or a sudden change in microbiome could induce metabolic changes quickly, which would eventually revert to baseline without behavior changes, but remain robust if people keep supplying the different microbes.

Or there could be a combination of multiple factors and inputs that are more complex than anyone has thought of so far.

Logic can make perfect sense and still turn out to be wrong—that’s why the studies are being conducted.

Even if diet comes first and microbial changes follow, studying the microbiome could someday identify a causative link between obesity and things like gastrointestinal cancers.

It will take many studies and a large accumulation of data before people are able to draw any conclusions or even figure out what the more important kinds of tests are.

I don’t know about ancient mars, but it can come from biotic and abiotic processes and the atmosphere on Mars has a bit of methane on it right now, and that’s been subject to a lot of inquiry.

Methane doesn’t last long because it reacts with oxygen. If there’s no free oxygen, methane can be a major component of the atmosphere (ie the gas giant planets).

Yeah, a lot of people mock LGBT activists for adding letters without seeming to realize that it’s harmless, and we make fun of it too.

LGBT, LGBTQ, LGBTQIAA+ etc are all sort of interchangeable. There are also about a thousand different pride flags. People keep adding new Pride flags every year. It’s all about self-expression, and not taking things too seriously. If you are not causing harm, violating consent, or excluding someone (which to be fair can be complicated topics), we’re a community that frowns on saying people shouldn’t do what makes them happy.

When I heard someone had disarmed the gunman with their bare hands and knocked him out, I have to admit I was looking forward to finding out it was a butch lesbian or a drag queen and being able to point to the tenacity of our community.

Turns out it was a married straight man there with his family. But I’ll take that anyway. LGBTQIAA includes straight allies, and we’ve been consciously including straight allies in our community for decades for a reason. LGBTQ spaces are meant to be inclusive. Even when people make fun of us for having such a long acronym (and we make fun of ourselves for it too), we still do it for a reason.

LGBTQ+ is a community based on many different kinds of experiences. It’s not just the gay community. It’s not just the trans community. It isn’t defined by having only one kind of experience. It’s defined by people with many experiences, with a similar goal of allowing people to be who they are and being there for each other in that. When somebody puts themselves on the line and stands up for us the same way we’d aspire to stand up for ourselves, they are truly part of our community.

My sense from this question is that it depends.

They reduce some kinds of inflammation which would include neuroinflammation when there cross the blood brain barrier, but they don’t have the same action as other anti-inflammatory drugs like antihistamines and steroids.

The answer, if taken literally, is yes, but the question would be whether it is useful and beneficial to prevent or treat various conditions, and I don’t know if that’s conclusive.

Ok but what about the extreme pressure?