SoleInvictus

Seriously, he gives me major whiplash. Like 90% of his opinions are pure bullshit, but I often agree with the remainder.

Haha, I wondered!

The American Republican Party and CDC would like to have a word with you about that.

AKA many in the West only believe their governments when they say what they want to hear.

Back when I started beekeeping, none of us wore any PPE and we kept getting stung. We started wearing PPE and it was better, but recently I've been stung a few times so I'm just going to do back to raw dogging it.

Yeahhhhhh.

Oh shit, sorry! My attention to detail yesterday... It was not good.

Tl;dr: too much pressure can result in an unwelcome "deep clean", not recommended as a surprise.

You really have to limit the pressure to the bidet. We ultimately installed a little in-line valve but raw dogged it initially. I thought I'd be fine. "It has a dial," I thought to myself, "I just won't crank it up all the way." I'm an idiot.

The next time I was really sick was when it happened. I was little kid sick, the kind of sick where you're feverish, nauseated, and delirious, barely able to function, yet still have to drag yourself through the house and half-assedly slap your arms at things until they work, just to fulfill basic functions like drinking water and using the toilet. A toilet with a bidet.

I had just finished power blasting the porcelain for the umpteenth time and I wanted nothing more than to wash it away and ooze back into bed. I gathered all my willpower to swing an unwilling appendage over and twist the knob, but I twisted much too far and my aim... my aim was perfect. Bullseye.

In martial arts, they teach you not just to strike your target, but to strike through your target. The bidet didn't just blast my anus, it blasted through my anus. If we were at the fair, my bidet would have popped the balloon and taken home the big bear. My wife claims she heard me cry out a high-pitched "eeeep!", but I don't remember it. I just remember shock and confusion as I pawed at the bidet knob. The bidet had slammed its way straight to home plate and beyond, on to the "fifth base" of legend.

I ordered a valve online that day and installed it as soon as I was able. Never again, not without intent, preparation, and a safe word.

You are a master of imagery.

You can't transfer (to the best of my knowledge), so you just start a new name on a different instance. I used to be on .world but hopped to Blåhaj for various reasons. When I want to reduce my internet drama for a bit, I block .world temporarily. It's great.

I personally haven't seen you stir all that much shit, and sometimes the shit needs a good stirring anyhow.

My wife and I, very early in our relationship, bought cheap tungsten carbide rings to prank my parents by telling them we had eloped. When we actually did get married, we decided to use those same rings. I like her.

This goes beyond "show you sources" to "you need classes in genetics, microbiology, organic evolution, and maybe statistics". For what it's worth, I'm an educated and experienced microbiologist with experience in public health. I'm not sure how to cite what's effectively a semester of college education and four textbooks into one comment. I can explain the basics and you can verify details if you'd like. I am more than happy to answer questions and point you towards where you might find more information on specific topics but citations for all of this would be a huge endeavor.

There are two main reasons H5N1 isn't human-to-human: specificity and, by its effect, low transmission. I'll try to keep this super high level.

Regarding specificity, viruses don't infect cells at random. Instead, there's basically a "lock and key" effect where the virus attaches to an external component (receptor) of the soon-to-be infected cell, then it releases its genetic payload. Much like how it's pretty easy to pick most locks, it doesn't need to be a perfect match, just close enough to get the job done.

This is how you get some splash over between species, as there's variation in both the virus and potential receptors due to mutation, and through random chance you might get a good enough match. The more exposure a virus has to potential receptors, the more likely it is that this will happen. If it happens, the particular mutation making this possible will be selected for in that individual or population, creating many more copies of a mutation that otherwise may have just died out. This is exactly what happens when a human gets infected with a zoonotic virus.

Next we have transmission. Not all cells in the human body have the same receptors, so viruses can infect different parts of the body. This is partly why people get "head colds" and "stomach bugs" - that's the region with the most cells with the target receptor. H5N1 isn't particularly good at infecting human airway cells, so infected humans are fairly well dead ends as this blocks airborne transmission, its primary mode of spread.

Currently, H5N1 is one point mutation, vastly the most common type of mutation, away from switching specificity to humans and infecting our airways. This is incredibly small and viruses churn out point mutations like crazy. Every time some dingus swills down raw milk, we're rolling evolution's random chance mutation dice. If just one virion has that single mutation and successfully infects that moron's airway, it's game on for a potential new pandemic. Evolution is just a numbers game and the more chances you give it, the more likely it is to happen.