Well by that logic, why stop at masks? Let's make everyone wear rubber gloves whenever they leave the house. Let's legally mandate that everyone carry antibacterial handgel on them at all times and wash their hands after touching any surface. Let's ban handshaking - hell, why don't we just permanently ban everybody from ever leaving their homes? That'll be sure to stop the spread of respiratory viruses and thus totally worth it, amirite?
And why stop at respiratory viruses? Sexual infections cause all kinds of harm too - the obvious response is to ban sex. When people want to reproduce they can just use IVF - thank God we live in the modern era.
And by the way, do you have any idea how many people are killed every year in road accidents? I propose we ban cars. Let's also ban walking in case anybody trips over. And let's ban eating so that no-one ever chokes on their food.
It's also worth mentioning that private health care and insurance both exist in the UK.
Individuals still get the choice to go to any private doctor they want, they'll just have to pay for it themselves. Just like the US, except the NHS provides an excellent safety net for everyone without private insurance or the means to pay for private care.
And in some cases it involves NHS facilities too. There are definitely some questionable aspects of our public/private healthcare. But again, this isn't always how it works, and the ethics involved are also complicated.
I know someone whose condition rapidly deteriorated while receiving treatment in a private hospital and when things were looking really bad they got transferred to an NHS hospital.
I hope the person you know was OK. That transfer is actually not surprising. Emergency/intensive care is almost always NHS here.
Private options tend to be better in situations like having multiple treatments available where one is significantly more effective or more reliable but also costs a lot more. Sometimes the NHS will only offer a cheaper but inferior alternative, which sounds horrible until you think that there is a huge but ultimately pooled budget and any time policy allows more spending on one treatment there is always someone losing out somewhere else.
Agreed on both points. The UK system is far from perfect but for balance we should also say that it is not normal or expected for something as bad as that to happen here. Even in recent times, with the extra pressures of COVID, critical care has mostly kept up and the emergency overflow facilities that were built very quickly in case of overwhelming demand mostly went unused.
Obviously there will always be limits and the available resources will run out if one of them is reached. In the aftermath of a major incident or an unusually busy period it can happen. I expect a lot of us from the UK might agree that the limits need to be raised further by investing more into the NHS. But I would still choose this type of system over a US-style one every time. I've never heard of anyone here dying because they couldn't afford tens of thousands for routine medication to treat a common condition.
I searched. I can't figure out what these videos are about from the titles/thumbnails, and I'll be damned if I'm actually going to watch these things. Can you summarize?
If you read the article you'll see that Hubbard is top 10, but not top 3 in her weight class, and in no way a favorite to win. Even her scores pre-transition wouldn't guarantee her gold at the Olympics.
Yes, comparing a 43 years old who is in no way at the peak of their physical performance to a bunch of 20s shows the degree of unfairness.
And no, Hubbard doesn't need to win gold for this to become unfair.
I'm assuming it is accurate, it is still misleading. It makes it look like she should be breaking records and crushing the competition, when in truth she is doing neither.
She is crushing the competition by winning 95% of the time and got placed 4th at the age of 43, stealing the place & glory of another top-tier athlete at their peak performance.
How is that not an extraordinary feat had she been a biological female? So no, there's nothing misleading about that chart, you just read it wrong.
And she's just the one who was brave enough to speak out.
Considering that voicing your support for Hubbard comes with basically no personal or professional cost, while voicing your opposition can cost you dealy, I'm going to assume that since most people have remained silent then the majority agrees with Anna Vanbellinghen.
I'd guess anything where hip area strength is critical. male bodies are at an advantage in terms of overall muscular and bone structure.
the larger point is its wiser to treat it as a competition between individuals. because. anytime we exclude someone based on non-individual traits then it means we are discriminating against them. and "discrimination is bad", no matter what.
Really? The most basic definition of "discrimination" is "to note or distinguish as different." Are you saying we should never be allowed to observe that, in reality, sometimes two things really are different from each other?
> So, are you SURE that an individual that "lived in the prime of their life as a man" is just as strong as they once were once they have spent years on hormone therapy?
Yes. Male puberty confers lifelong physical advantages on the body in terms of muscle mass, heart size, lung capacity and bone density. That's why men dominate women physically in every sport, which is why women have their own special sporting categories so that they stand a chance. Hormone therapy reduces these advantage but it doesn't eliminate them.
> Is it fair to trans athletes?
Probably not, but then is it fair to wheelchair-bound athletes that they're physically incapable of competing with Olympians and so need their own separate event? Maybe the cruel reality of life is that we can't always accommodate everybody?
I don't believe men dominate women in ultra-endurance racing. IIRC though the sample size is quite small it may be that extremely long distance racing actually favors women.
Agreed. Though in this case it seems to me OP is just providing an interesting tidbit. They didn't try to morph that fact into hand-waving of the vast difference in all other sports.
And why stop at respiratory viruses? Sexual infections cause all kinds of harm too - the obvious response is to ban sex. When people want to reproduce they can just use IVF - thank God we live in the modern era.
And by the way, do you have any idea how many people are killed every year in road accidents? I propose we ban cars. Let's also ban walking in case anybody trips over. And let's ban eating so that no-one ever chokes on their food.
Am I doing this right?