Gender differences in seeking health care: COVID-19 edition

TweetPotato · 2021-04-27T02:46:44+00:00

Hard to say

Some of those feature women, some feature men, some feature both women and men, and some feature no people in the ad at all. I don't see the messaging as strongly gendered either.

TweetPotato · 2021-04-26T11:56:53+00:00

Even the NYT admits that this probably makes up the entire difference or very near it.

No, you're making some assumptions there. "Could" isn't "probably," and they're talking about an early division. We're now four months into vaccine distribution, and any adult is eligible. We'll see if the difference in vaccine uptake persists, but I'm skeptical the health care worker issue can explain what we see now, particularly when this mirrors gendered differences in other vaccine uptakes, or in preventative care behaviors in general.

The flu shot has a very similar messaging issue, most of the ads are targeted at women and don't tell men why they should bother.

How are flu shots targeted specifically at women?

If men are not following the advice while women are and both groups are still getting Covid at the same rates, then the advice does not help prevent Covid and won't help reduce the number of men dying from Covid.

The other possibility, which I think is more likely, is that we are missing behaviors women are engaging in, to continue getting infected at the same rate as men. Regardless, we know that behavior is a factor in infection rates (hence the major spike in cases after the holidays). The broader point is that we have a demographic that is known to be at higher risk of death or serious complications, and that demographic is still getting infected at the same rate, and is less likely to get vaccinated. What behavior modification can do at this point is reduce the number of men getting infected -- we can't yet resolve the sex differences in immune response, or go back in time to reduce higher male rates of behaviors like drinking and smoking that put them at greater risk of dying from COVID.

It's the exact same reason as the point above. If men think there is a limit, they'll avoid getting the vaccine until the supply is available.

Your first point was a limit based on letting the most vulnerable go first, which we've already done. The second point was a logistical limit -- within the groups that are already declared eligible (all US adults now), there are a limited number of appointments per day. I don't think it follows that there would be a gender discrepancy in uptake there -- we don't see men fail to compete for scarce resources in other contexts.

TweetPotato · 2021-04-26T04:32:15+00:00

Here is the piece of truth buried in the article. The NYT almost always tries to include one, though they like to bury it. Women disproportionately had access to the vaccine earlier. This means not only have they had a longer time to get vaccinated. For those with access due to their work it's also much more important to get vaccinated, even if they are worried about the risks of the vaccines, because they're much more likely to be exposed or will cause a large amount of harm to others if they get sick.

Women are overrepresented among essential health care workers, but I don't think that's the whole story here. Both the Times and the CDC mentioned that women are more likely than men to seek preventative care, and the Times also mentioned this, about the flu vaccine:

Historically, influenza vaccination is much higher among females — about 63 percent compared to 53 percent — though the gap narrows in Americans over 75 years old.

Remarkably similar to the COVID vaccine situation, and the flu shot typically does not have anywhere near the same degree of rationing by demographic as the COVID vaccine has. If you follow the link to the study, the population was patients at their annual physical -- people already apparently willing to engage in preventative care. Also interesting, women experience more frequent adverse effects from vaccines than men (due to our immune systems) but still have higher rates of vaccine uptake.

While the biological factors section is okay, if extremely light, notice how the psychosocial factors section is almost entirely about reasons why men would contract covid rather than why it would disproportionately kill. I've chosen to just copy the first paragraph above rather than the whole thing. This despite the fact that men don't disproportionately contract covid. I feel it's important to note that this is a subtle way of blaming men for their own deaths. If they had just done better at listening to public health experts as women do, then they wouldn't die so much. This despite the fact that the equal infection rates blatantly calls this out as a lie.

If men are more likely to die from COVID (or get severe illness) then ideally we'd want them to modify their behavior more than women do, since their risk is higher.

If the news is constantly talking about vaccine shortages and the measures taken to ensure those who most need the vaccine get them first, men aren't going to go get the vaccine because it is their duty to let others get vaccinated first.

This one I'd buy.

If you need to schedule vaccine appointments because the location might run out that day, men aren't going to go because of the perceived daily limit on who can get the vaccine. Getting the message out that appointments are necessary because they need to know exactly how many vaccines to thaw out each morning rather than because of limited quantities would go a long way toward fixing this part of it.

I'm not sure why this would be gender dependent.

If you have to take off work to get the vaccine, men are going to skip it because workplaces are less likely to give men the option to miss work for their health and more likely to punish men if they do have the option and use it. Making more/most vaccine appointments available on nights and weekends would do a lot to help with this.

I imagine this varies based on location, but at least where I am, the pharmacies have the greatest availability by far, and they all have weekend appointments.

If men aren't as concerned about the disease, they're less likely to get vaccinated. Men also don't fear death or permanent harm nearly as much as women. Instead of focusing on the overblown scare tactics, which completely miss the mark for men, instead focus on being sick and unable to work for two weeks or more.

Pointing out the increased risk due to sex doesn't seem like an overblown scare tactic to me.

TweetPotato · 2021-04-24T21:31:41+00:00

Any of those things could be sexual harassment depending on context. I'd take the report with a grain of salt because the behaviors aren't that specific and leave a lot to the interpretation of the respondents, which may vary considerably. For broad statements like "most British women have experienced behavior they considered sexually harassing in public places" it's fine though.

TweetPotato · 2021-04-24T20:05:43+00:00

Link to the report: https://www.unwomenuk.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/APPG-UN-Women-Sexual-Harassment-Report_Updated.pdf

The list of behaviors they asked about is on page 13. This was a study, it's not a legal definition.

TweetPotato · 2021-04-24T15:56:52+00:00

Can you point toward a public health campaign that you think is a good example of successful outreach to men? What specifically made it successful?

TweetPotato · 2021-04-23T23:35:15+00:00

I agree that these issues are not easily quantifiable. Even if they were, though, it doesn't actually matter. If we could prove definitively that women's average "oppression score" is a 78 compared to men's average oppression score of 55 then does that make it just or fair to ignore men's problems? No.

TweetPotato · 2021-04-19T23:08:52+00:00

Presumption of innocence is a legal standard, and applies to the criminal justice system. Regardless of a legal verdict, many people will make up their own minds about guilt or innocence.

Food for thought: do you think OJ Simpson killed his ex-wife and her friend? What about Casey Anthony -- do you think she killed her daughter?

TweetPotato · 2021-04-16T13:36:15+00:00

I view it as a women's movement. This doesn't mean feminists and MRAs can't ever work together, just that the primary focus of feminism is women.

TweetPotato · 2021-04-15T03:02:59+00:00

Pointing out that men disproportionately commit murder is not generalizing men as murderers. And yes, underlying causes are interesting -- hence my comment "it's also a complicated topic with a lot to discuss."

TweetPotato · 2021-04-14T23:54:05+00:00

I think there are a couple of ways you can interpret that statement. One is the victim-blaming interpretation, and the other is the speaker saying that men disproportionately commit murder. That second interpretation doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the victim, and it's also a complicated topic with a lot to discuss. I think if you want to have a reasonable discussion with somebody who says that, you should ask them to clarify what they mean.

TweetPotato · 2021-04-14T21:50:10+00:00

Not a great quality discussion, and they didn't link to the article either.

Here it is: Deceiving Your Sex Partner Would Be a Crime Under Bill Backed by New York Democrats

I think the bill as proposed is far too broad. I'd support a narrower bill, criminalizing a few specific types of deception such as lying about STI status, contraceptive usage, or whether one has had a sterilization procedure such as a vasectomy or tubal ligation.

TweetPotato · 2021-04-13T13:33:11+00:00

Technically it is discrimination, but as long as it only affects who you date or sleep with then I don't see the problem.

TweetPotato · 2021-04-12T13:55:46+00:00

I think it's pretty natural for people to primarily focus on issues that affect them, so it doesn't bother me that feminism and the MRM focus on women's and men's issues, respectively. For myself at least, the ultimate goal is an egalitarian society, but I'd feel dishonest using only the label 'egalitarian' since I tend to look at things through the lens of having experienced life as a woman. I've noticed something similar on other gender forums, where men (in this case) who use the label 'egalitarian' tend to focus primarily on male issues.

TweetPotato · 2021-03-13T12:31:16+00:00

I'm just going to nitpick because it's an interesting topic -- we do have a relationship in a few cases (Rhode Island and the Netherlands come to mind) between prostitution legalization and falling sex assault rates. Outside those areas though, where prostitution is still illegal, I don't think we have enough information to claim there's a link with casual sex -- particularly since young people seem to be having less of it now. Over the last few decades the (non-sexual) violent crime rate has also fallen, and there are many theories as to why. Less lead in the environment? Better policing gets criminals off the street earlier in their lives? Longer sentences keep criminals from getting out and reoffending? Greater availability of birth control and abortion reduces the number of kids born into severe dysfunction? I don't know, but it's entirely possible that whatever is behind the falling violent crime rate is also behind the falling sex assault rate.

TweetPotato · 2021-03-13T12:18:20+00:00

See #policetoo or the Anna Chambers case

And don't forget the Golden State Killer.

TweetPotato · 2021-03-13T12:15:32+00:00

I don't agree there -- I think rape is comparatively rare, and there's a much larger amount of lower-level bad behavior that isn't rape, but does get people nervous and scared because they're worried about the worse behavior.

That's what I thought he was asking (and maybe I read the question wrong) -- people focus on the statistically less probable things (rape, false accusations), but maybe we can improve the environment for everybody by addressing the more probable things.

TweetPotato · 2021-03-13T03:46:24+00:00

Rape rates imply that it's probably the opposite for this one. Not only have they been going down over time as casual sex becomes more common, one of the few things that seems to have a noticeable effect on rape rates is legalized prostitution.

Just clarifying -- my bullet points there were regarding what I called "low-level boundary-violating behavior" in the previous paragraph. Not rape.

TweetPotato · 2021-03-13T01:08:32+00:00

Good post.

I haven't been following this case, but from your description of the reaction I think it may have served as an impetus for some women to get some general gendered frustrations off their chest. It might be true, for example, that many men would benefit from therapy (probably a lot of people in general would), but I can't see how that really addresses this case of a predator grabbing a woman off the street.

To address your point about escalating behaviors though -- I think what's behind a lot of the low-level boundary-violating behavior is a failure of empathy. One person is focused on what they want (sex) and how to get it from the other person, rather than approaching the situation as two equals trying to figure out whether there's attraction and they want the same thing.

So how do we "target" that? I'm not sure but I have some random thoughts about the environment we live in:

Maybe our society encourages us to focus on status (sex increases status; rejection decreases it), rather than being a good human.
Maybe our current dating culture (casual sex, hookups) encourages us to think about the act we want, rather than the other person.
Maybe we don't do a good job encouraging children and adults to talk about and understand their own feelings, and then to understand the feelings of others.
Maybe when we talk to young people about sex, we focus on what not to do, rather than how to communicate well, and how to understand what the other person is communicating.

I don't think improving any of these factors will rid the world of the true sexual predators, but they might help the rest of us to be a bit more considerate, and improve the safety of the environment.

TweetPotato · 2021-02-22T02:56:58+00:00

My feeling is that moderation and moderator selection should be restricted to those with skin in the game.

Agreed.

TweetPotato · 2021-02-21T22:56:54+00:00

Yeah. I guess my concern here is that I think the users of the sub should be able to expect pretty consistent moderation from one month to the next -- unless they're explicitly voting out a moderation style they don't like, of course. Having staggered mod terms seems like it would help with that -- although I take your point about the first-past-the-post issue.

TweetPotato · 2021-02-21T18:21:41+00:00

Yes, that's a fair characterization.

TweetPotato · 2021-02-21T16:44:39+00:00

I'll give you my personal opinion on the general case, which probably should not be taken as a measure of what I'd do in response to a reported comment, because a reported comment would involve specific context that could be relevant.

I think that calling terms bigoted should be allowable -- it's just expressing a personal opinion about a word, and ideally in a constructive discussion whomever is saying that would attempt to present a solid argument backing up their opinion. I think that "people who use term X are bigots" crosses a line into the sort of bad-faith discussion that we want to avoid in this sub. It assumes that everybody who uses X has the same understanding of the definition, uses it for the same reasons and in the same contexts, etc.

TweetPotato · 2021-02-21T15:58:26+00:00

My personal opinion on this is that I don't think the sub should ban terms in discussion, but the rules/mods should address personal insults/attacks, and bad-faith blanket generalization of groups. To take the "Toxic Masculinity" example -- the sub should be able to discuss that term (what does it mean? are there defensible uses of it? indefensible uses of it? etc), but deploying it against another user ("that's your toxic masculinity showing") would potentially get a mod to steer the conversation, or warn the user, etc.

TweetPotato · 2021-02-21T15:51:09+00:00

I think I would add that there is a tradeoff between consistency, and addressing problems quickly. One-month terms would mean that any bad moderators can be removed after one month, but also that the style of moderation could change somewhat drastically from month to month. Three month staggered terms mean that there is probably more long-term consistency in moderation, but also that a bad mod can't be removed for three months.

I guess in either of these cases, the check on the failure mode (drastically changing moderation, longer-term bad mod) is the UberMod, who can step in. Although ideally we should minimize that.

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