As interesting as this is, it's kind of got my spidy-sense tingling. How many non-significant outcomes did test and not publish before seeing traffic accidents? The perfect dose-dependence gives more credence (increasing odds ratio at increasing titers), although the sample size is small.
The paper states high up that it's been well studied that Toxoplasmosis infection increases reaction time - this study was basically just showing that that laboratory-viewed metric has real-world consequences.
As far as mechanism of action, T. gondii infects both neurons in the brain and glial cells.
Your reminder that if you own cats that don't go outdoors they are not a risk factor for toxoplasmosis. Only outdoor and stray cats get the parasite. Most cases of toxoplasmosis come from eating undercooked meat in any case.
Latent toxoplasmosis is literally insidious, hidden inside body fat cells where antibiotics won't reach and only occasionally it gets out to infect more cells. So one round is not enough, you have to take antibiotics for years until all the infected cells die.
It sounds a lot like the explanation for chronic Lyme disease (except with nerve tissue and not fat cells), which is apparently still quite controversial despite having lots of anecdotal evidence to support it.
Also if the parasite is hiding in your fat cells, does that also mean that you can't detect it in a blood test?
Hmm. I wonder if there is an antibiotic prodrug that would mimic glucose enough for it to be recognised by beta cells, get metabolised and release the antibiotic payload inside a fat cell.
Cat ownership doesn't even come up as a major sources of toxoplasmosis infection when studies are done. Wild cats can have it but the source of infection is the dirt they've used, which means house cats are unrelated and no risk.
"A total of 252 women with toxoplasmosis, along with 748 controls from Naples, Lausanne, Copenhagen, Oslo, Brussels, and Milan, were interviewed by telephone or in person. Overall, eating raw or undercooked beef, lamb, or other meats; contact with soil; and travel outside the country were major sources of infection."
Cats don't even make the list of major sources of infection. Further,
"The association of cats and human toxoplasmosis is difficult to assess by epidemiological surveys because soil, not the cats, is the main culprit. Oocysts are not found on cat fur and are often buried in soil along with cat faeces.11 Therefore, direct contact with cats is irrelevant with respect to T gondii transmission, and soil contact is universal and difficult to avoid."
What you mean by how unimpaired various BACs are? I would think there would be a fairly tight curve of BAC to reaction time for an individual.
Of course most of driving is so easy that I’m sure a huge percent of the time drunk driving has no consequences, but haven’t we all been in an occasional situation that requires fast reaction to narrowly avoid a crash?
Cat ownership doesn't even come up as a major sources of infection when studies are done. Wild cats can have it but the source of infection is the dirt they've used, which means house cats are unrelated and no risk.
"A total of 252 women with toxoplasmosis, along with 748 controls from Naples, Lausanne, Copenhagen, Oslo, Brussels, and Milan, were interviewed by telephone or in person. Overall, eating raw or undercooked beef, lamb, or other meats; contact with soil; and travel outside the country were major sources of infection."
Cats don't even make the list of major sources of infection. Further,
"The association of cats and human toxoplasmosis is difficult to assess by epidemiological surveys because soil, not the cats, is the main culprit. Oocysts are not found on cat fur and are often buried in soil along with cat faeces.11 Therefore, direct contact with cats is irrelevant with respect to T gondii transmission, and soil contact is universal and difficult to avoid."
the dichotomy between "dog people" and "cat people" had always been interesting and telling to me.
dog people will go as far as blame you for their "reactive" dog who can "tell when your nervous around him."
not-cat people mostly don't like cats because..the cats are "rude" to them?
In a way, these are similar experiences. You are behaving in a way the animal doesn't like, and the animal is reacting negatively.
With the dog, there isn't much you can easily do about a dog who doesn't know you and feels threatened when you stand up. You're dealing with a few steps removed from a beast in that situation.
But for cats, you can probably just be more cat-polite if you actually want the cat to be nice to you. Same goes for people haha
The joke to me seemed to be poking fun at correlation and causation.
In a literal sense, people get pets for different reasons. A lot of people get cats because they're more independent where dog owners cite "having a companion" because dogs have a closer relationship to humans through domestication.
Animals are still animals, domesticated or not. They'll get fearful or angry based on correlation of past experience just like you and I will. The only difference is that they can't explain themselves like you and I can. Anecdotally, I know my dog is terrified of fireworks, but I also know she's not gun-shy. I also know she doesn't like full face masks (like motorcycle helmets), and that she's ready to defend the house if there's a knock at the door. All of which sound relatively terrifying to the average person when she reacts to them, however, when she is actually confronted with the person on the other side of the door, the person behind the mask, or seeing the fireworks that go "bang" she'll flop on her back and ask for belly rubs.
I think you're going for a glib lil' fun quip, but that really just sounds like sexism one-step-removed to me. The stereotype of the cat lady, mixed in with the stereotype of women being bad drivers. Unless there's some stereotype about men who like cats I'm not aware of?
> It’s common now for people actively seeking any opportunity to be offended on behalf of someone else.
I never understood why people get so angry at other people for showing solidarity, even if they aren't part of the oppressed group.
Why does it make you so mad? Seriously, I don't get it.
Is it because no one stands up for you?
Standing up for a minority group that you are not part of is called being part of a community, it is literally what solidarity is all about. I know that is hard for a lot of people on HN to understand, this place is rife with mythology of bootstraps & rugged individualism.
By your insane logic, the only person who can stand up for someone is that one person. Maybe that is what you want?
>I never understood why people get so angry at other people for showing solidarity, even if they aren't part of the oppressed group.
There's a pretty wide gulf between solidarity and getting offended on other people's behalf. If a slight doesn't effect you then you shouldn't be the first mover. Let the slighted people decide they are in fact slighted before you get all up in arms over it
>Why does it make you so mad? Seriously, I don't get it.
Because it's selfish behavior that makes everything worse. It's the social discourse equivalent of tossing a cigarette butt on the ground. Society can absorb a couple bad actors but if everyone starts doing it the park will be trashed.
>Standing up for a minority group that you are not part of is called being part of a community,
There's a fine line between standing up for others and making the decision for them. A lot of this outrage on others behalf is
>By your insane logic, the only person who can stand up for someone is that one person. Maybe that is what you want?
You're intentionally taking his position to an absurd extreme because that's the only way to make yours look reasonable. Of course we can all get pissed off about known bad things, racial slurs and that kinda stuff. But a quip about crazy cat people being twisted as somehow being a sexist joke? Get the F outta here.
Disagree. OP stated their thoughts on the topic at hand. You are projecting and twisting that into OP “taking charge” and again twisting that into “asserting power” somehow.
No, I'm telling people (of which you specifically are one) to wait until the subject of the slight has indeed confirmed they are slighted before you get offended on their behalf.
Not really “offended”. I was actually more hoping I could make the original author notice some internalized misogyny. I appreciate when people point out when my thinking is based in bad stereotypes and assumptions. I was going for more of a bros-helping-bros kinda thing.
Kind of stereotyping/assumptious to think that because someone posts something about cat people that the person is a man who actually means to say women cant drive.
It was a glib little quip, as you mentioned. That was the entertaining part.
Edit: I’ve just noticed a particularly vile and undeserved comment in reply to you, and to some extent feel responsibility, as it’s part of a comment chain I created. I hope the mods will take action and ban whoever made this comment, although by the looks it’s a burner account. It’s quite jarring to see something like that on HN.
Use the flag feature. If enough people flag it the comment disappears. That's what I did, downvote and flag all comments that don't meet the guidelines for participating in HN.
