SirBillybob

The question invites a yes/no level of advice. There is no point repeating mitigation measures over and over, and that gym fitness is AYOR. Given that mitigation is a generally known component, for me it comes down to probability of contagion based on CoV prevalence at any given point of time, assuming the gym co-bunnies are representative of the epidemiological trend in Palookaville or wherever you and possibly a spiky virion or more co-exist. I prefer quantitative specificity to complement my own fretful recognition that we are continually ramming up against an ambiguous grey area in our decision-making. What is your risk tolerance, 0-100% that another gym member is on site with (typically unknown) contagion potential? Such calculations are possible using a mathematically anchored binomial algorithm. You can position your acceptance of risk, that is, your own % comfort, against real world CoV surveillance that changes daily and gets plugged into the formula. I make all my various bubble aversion decisions integrating these sorts of data. Better than Sudoku for brain fitness cuz it has prevention pertinence. A propos of relative regional risk this week novel coronavirus loves Iowa and The Dakotas but has never much cuddled up to Maine, Vermont, or New Hampshire. Where your gym lives is relevant.

Personally I find the competitive pissing contests, however friendly vs hostile, among real and often prolific posters more off-putting. That is: writing about how others write or think. It tends to fizzle through exhaustion rather than armistice or resolution. It can be like a study seminar from hell. Yet outside of signs of antipathy the participants may be whip smart and are paradoxically eroding the value of their input. It is also a challenge to follow a lengthy thread that has good input throughout but you have to intensely study some parts and scroll through vast quantities of written text to try to integrate the gist of what is discussed. Sometimes at the basis of some exchanges is a construct outside of reference points (cultural, specific, etc) that I can easily relate to ... a bit of a glossary approach might be useful when a new complex concept is introduced ... I know I know that also adds to the volume. Unless you are a daily board consumer, arriving early at each party, some really valuable threads with dozens of posts can be lost on you. But I think much of this is just par for the course for message media. I have to say that I have not flagged any bots so that part is a bit mystifying to me. The majority of what I consume appears to have a personal flavour indicative of a real person not an invariant artificial mechanism.

Never have I ever ... not blown my load at a YUL stripper venue. One local guy here, gorgeous, was told by the female Gaiety owner he had to trim his gut when he was in bulking mode of training cycle, if he wanted stage access. He was not insulted and took it to heart. She must have run a tight ship.

Hahaha, we are likely historical DNA bros by virtue of saliva swapping (etc) in common. In those days many of the dancers had periodic sideline gigs, zipping down to The Gaiety. Too bad memory lane is pushing aside the recommendations agenda due to the present reality.

My current favourite provider in São Paulo, from Spring, is looking even better in his socials, though I don’t understand how improvement on perfection is even possible. His images are not done professionally though he is a natural physique competitor, more well built model than traditional bodybuilder. Admixture of four continents. He just comes at the lens hot in any random pose. Today he is mugging with a few fit female friends at their gym. He is functionally bi. Sigh. Fuck this pandemic. Hope to return with a vengeance.

I am doing the same amount of formal exercise as ever, and diet even more balanced than previously, but just went out to buy four pairs of pants a size up. I have a lot of wiggle room to slack off due to a lifetime of care and restraint, but the additional time seated activities at home must be adding a molecule of fat per click.

In the past 19 years of being in Montreal I have hired less than 1% of paid meet-ups from ads. As far as individual separate guys on RM or less prominent ad sources, can count on one hand. They have been generally good, but not worth repeats, yet their ads met my tastes. Most of the images do not match my expectations. The available pool from clubs has extremely dwindled if you are determined to go that route.

He is also under ... everyone’s feet. Trudeau is barely OK but just doesn’t really get in the way. My province Quebec has been a shit show; regional leadership counts. There is ineffectual and there is ineffectual with a dollop of loopy. There are two male Québecois and one male American I wanna punch in the face whenever they appear.

Most foreign nationals with whom I am friends hail from and reside in subSaharan Africa, so my quality-of-life reference point as a privileged White developed world inhabitant is a bit of a different perspective. Can’t complain. These folks would be appalled at the idea of risking so much to maintain access to experience beyond basic necessities.

Applying Harvard’s colour code model, wherein many USA zones are red, only Northgate in Edmonton reflects the next (lower) level of risk: orange. So it is this week’s hotspot, unless a recent Globe&Mail article imported slightly dated info. Most of Canada outside urban areas is coded green (least prevalence). Like most cities, Toronto and Montreal have a patchwork of yellow and green. For all intents and purposes a visitor to these two urban centres is depositing himself into a code yellow sitch. Some of this stratification is directing school operational strategies. Short of green or zero transmission potential, many parents and teachers are in gridlock with local Ed boards. I have seen a few folks considerably junior to me in age in my lofts building wheeled out by paramedics, and this has occurred in the frame of but a few minutes a day I am passing through the lobby; otherwise I have no clue as to the true rate in my ‘hood. I go out with a mask and shield and do not interact with anybody in person.

He could be a Labradoodle City boy? Squeaky clean but himself vulnerable.

The guys I know are in hiatus mode because they seem to grasp reality, but are also keeping in shape for the sake of the as yet not foreseeable horizon of resuming trade. So I am collaborative with them in my own reluctant cock-blocking. Most of them had not recently been bright-eyed and bushy-tailed newbies barely out of adolescence and leasing expensive muscle cars, etc, that only cavalier decision-making can sustain.

It will undoubtedly not make zero difference. In health there is the notion of number needed to test or treat to prevent one death for a given malady. There are limits to funding, and the ratio of effort to reducing mortality is a big factor in determining standards of screening and care. Life is precious but life also hinges on distribution of limited resources. Vast amounts of capital are withheld that essentially enables circumventable death. Moreover, vast amounts of funding are spent to prevent illness and death that is preventable if people behaved in a manner that mitigates poor outcomes. I loosely name this phenomenon: squandering based on blameless human frailty. I am personally connected to a large volume of outcomes where natural human deficiency in self-regulation was instrumental in life erasure. The sharing of approaches to life choices may be catching. Example, the synergy of two unfortunates behaving in a way that beckons the grim reaper. The pandemic has flipped this on its head ... the broad potential reach of any individual’s careless dismissive attitude. This is an enormous game-changer. There are too many shooters to track. People criticize lack of formal pandemic playbook preparation but I think the human system factor will always have driven the outcomes we see far more than a structured pre-emptive plan. A plan would not have nullified the cognitive distortions and societal malaise to which the current patterns are attributable. In contrast to health utilities mentioned above, it is extremely challenging to comprehensively evaluate the application of resources for pandemic control. It is inarguable that some death will be averted by sending in authority to reduce anomie. It is philosophically justifiable in that we largely support the idea of the means justifying the ends. But there is no real world precedent for literally spending every iota of general societal resource capital to spare a life. I say this figuratively, theoretically. Of course it is multiple lives and the clinical algorithms quantify for a single case because numbers are interpretable and often valuable in complex decision trees. I am just trying to make a point about the vicissitudes of trial-and-error and the impediments to efficacy evaluation in the current out-of-control context. I oscillate between affirming “go for it; throw everything we have at it” and a jaded “sheesh, when does the resource well run dry?” I come at this as a person not yet dead and must defer the answer to the question: is what is allocated worth it? Obviously not if I end up debilitated or biting the spikey bullet.

Well I don’t know the OP’s origin story, but I am glad that you added the part I missed: returning Canadian’s obligation to self-isolate as well. Same bin of apples, not an added bin of oranges. Reading between the formal lines of the law, it may seem unfair, but a foreign national however exempt or Canuck however pre-quarantine endpoint is restricted relative to a slutty local punter. I am not going to the ‘homeland security’ site for confirmation of the fine print. One episode is negligible risk but there is no point to our sacrifice if many look to the next guy to conform. The Western tendency is to differentially value individualism or collectivism. That has become a huge liability for overall population health and safety in the developed world where economic advantage has not been a substantial bonus that might have been expected to affect pandemic incidence in our favour.

Damn inflation. The price of a ticket to pandemic management theatre is bound to shift around. The thing is, likely well under 20% of infractions anywhere are detected. Could be in the ballpark of 99% under the radar; who knows? When has aversive behaviour modification ever appreciably altered human inclinations towards self-efficacy. Someone dies after gasping how reckless they were, someone gets an infraction invoice, what have you, it all appears to be newsworthy. ‘That’ll learn ‘em’. The curve tells the story. It is far too overarching epidemiologically to quantify the effect of fines on it. Correlation is not causation but at this point there seems to be an association, likely spurious, between criminalizing disregard and upswing in CoV incidence in Spain.

Interesting and controversial topic. Could not bite my tongue here in Montreal.

You must be Canadian if you are able to be in Toronto or Montreal and hook up with a commercial service without an initial 2-week quarantine. Even if you are a foreign national and have some exemption to be here, it is not the provider’s or your prerogative to green light the transaction. Perhaps you are Canuck and unfamiliar with these two cities, hence, your inquiry. If you do not fit the permissible criteria or have immunity (not a criterion but mitigates the situation) you may not pose a true CoV risk or get pulled over, but the regulations exist for a reason irrespective of your level of respect for them. There is concrete evidence that the rules are reducing death here and that a juvenile or misinformed attitude militates against the goals of pandemic control. If you are actually going to end up flaunting our laws ... I don’t know the full context of your plan ... why indirectly post the intention here and/or possibly reinforce a stereotype of entitled privilege? Moreover, you may not be aware, depending on your true status and your grasp of Canada’s pandemic management intent and legislation, that your asking for names of providers amounts to their ending up in collusion with the types of protocol breaches that are showing demonstratively the emerging tidal ripples of a second wave. Can’t we all just use our heads?! My objection is obviously appropriately backpedalled if the plan has built-in viable impunity. Have fun; don’t give or get novel coronavirus. If and when this is over I may share some local skinny on the the query.

You missed the point. I am partially to blame. Event risk can be calculated using a binomial equation that incorporates rolling incidence, an accepted duration of contagion potential, and an ascertainment ratio of likely incidence over reported incidence based on what available antibody surveillance exists. This provides a probability from above absolute zero to below absolute one hundred percent for any arbitrary number of persons in the event. Risk management decisions are easier to apply with single to double digit percentage figures because the relatively small fractions of point prevalence are such that large differences (following a decimal point and zeros) appear deceptively small and do not incorporate the variable that is often known or anticipated: number of persons in the event. For many events, all that is important to know is the probability the active virus resides within it. Personally, I do not consider regional point prevalence on its own particularly useful. I had hoped to generate a more in-depth discussion since there are a lot of questions about risk, but there has been little to no discussion that incorporates clinical utilities akin to standard gamble, time trade-off, and currently the evolution of event risk probabilities that have emerged in a more sophisticated way as more is known about the mysteries and ambiguities of CoV prevalence. The trend seems to be people asking whether they should engage in a particular behaviour and respondents contributing pretty much the same input repeatedly, ranging from well-meaning cock-blocking to hedged reassurance. If that is all there is, so be it. How many punters the escort has is not totally without pertinence but the arbitrary selection of 25 was not intended to shut down a discussion that may hold interest to a few message board readers.

I calculated event risk probabilities with the applicable algorithm as the OP privately shared the location. We likely have individualized margins of risk tolerance/aversion. If the escort tricks with 25 clients over the course of a week, assuming he has first-exposure strain immunity, what percentage likelihood of a minimum of one actively contagious client among the 25 would you accept? Please chime in. I am late 60’s and healthy. I would tolerate a 5% chance that at least one of 25 clients prior to me exposed the escort to this week’s flavour of CoV.

My story a bit long about Montreal. I am not shocked. My background in Ontario was healthcare and my reputation meant something. Providers would bear with my input as a respected researcher. One problem is that good luck and connections did not transfer across the border. Now I am the average Joe and I empathize with the masses in terms of quality. I pay for some components of care because physicians in QC can now delist and the higher caliber ones tend to go that route. I am jaded about the quality of public-payer providers and have yet to intersect with the professional interpersonal finesse I had grown accustomed to. Yes, there is an evolving have-have-not divide here.

Every reason to not be dismissive. My father died quite old of metastasized prostate cancer but was a lifetime smoker, an independent risk factor. There are options evolving other than radical prostatectomy, such as imagery-guided focal laser ablation. Quebec has poor health coverage compared to my time in Ontario ... apples, oranges. I will not have my prostate removed if I can avoid it and will pony up a great deal of cash for other viable and reasonably proven options if needed. Quebec is no model for advanced standards of care. It is not uncommon for one’s pelvic nerve plexus to be traumatized and yield irreversible genital dysfunction. The impediment to access to out of province-or country services of greatest concern to me now is the pandemic.

I cannot see any evidence that the presiding Justice used the term “rape”, because the poorly conceived and seemingly hyped media reports do not reference the transcripts or the specific criminal code. It may be that no better term legally exists for negation of consent based on deception. She said sexual episodes were unpaid and the crime was neither sophisticated nor uncommon for commercial sex workers. The media translates this as the loser having “raped“ a few dudes. I don’t think the judge would use rape as a verb in this case, and maybe not even literally as a noun, depending on the code, but it is not her role to disabuse the press of their choice of wording in reductively spinning the terms of a situation more nuanced than forcible sexual assault as it is conventionally understood. Rape is his silly games but on a much more pronounced figurative steroid cycle than actually transpired. The dudes could not pay their bills and will be anxious about a common occupational hazard. Will they psychologically dissociate with revivified trauma when engaging in future sex? Commercial sex workers are prone to dissociate anyway as an artefact of sexualizing with punters out of sync with subjective attraction. The media is doing a big favour for commercial sex workers including the escorts in this case. It is financially lucrative to conceptualize and portray sexual exchange that is consensual (at the basic level outside of the parameters of deception, etc) but is taboo enough to exaggerate its differential worth relative to nonsexual services. Male sex workers in Brazil would be rolling on the floor, splitting their sides, incredulous at the notion that there is a transactional hierarchy in which they could be considered assault victims. You would get your lights punched out if it was insinuated that compensation manipulation was tantamount to rape and you had better hope they have no friends in your prison wing. lol

At this point a rape, explicit or implicitly by any other name or politicized context, is looking pretty appealing. Just sayin’. Profuse apologies all round for the abject insensitivity. I do, however, need a few days notice for on-demand PrEP, so staged is best though flexible about setting. Naturally I realize I digress.

Good point from 7829V about test reliability. It is a shit show. I had a very sore throat this past Wed and got PCR tested on symptom Day 2 (Thurs) with a 75%-100% probability of false negative. The result was negative. For good measure I just completed a do-over today (Day 5), about the lowest anticipated false negative potential, 20%. And this is an easy exercise compared to random testing without any symptoms. I suspect it is still negative but cannot understand why I felt like crap a few days back since I am considerably confined. The nurse today barely grazed the back of my throat (frustrating!) but at least seemed to take a deep adequate nasal swab. More failsafe is sexual partners that are not cohabiting to self-quarantine for a few weeks prior to hook-up, not practical for escorts and perhaps the same inconvenience level for many clients.

Usually, generally, provisionally a lesser risk but not zero risk. Many variables are involved. Personally, I would want to see evidence of a previous positive test result, or positive for antibodies. The prevalence in his (your) jurisdiction is a relevant factor independent of exposure status and immunity status FWIW. I can show you how to calculate probability in your geographic area, if in the USA simply tell me the county, if you are comfortable, or DM me privately, or outside of USA state the country. Jury is still deliberating on reinfection phenomena and whether these ‘second helpings‘ may be a different strain for the host that he can manage with preexisting defences, yet a newbie might not do well with initial exposure to the strain. Animal models suggest it is possible to transiently host and shed the same virus even if immune, as the pathogen spends a bit of time attempting to get a foothold thru subsequent exposure, while the host’s antibodies and other immune system components kick into action. Such research is not done with humans. However, this is relevant from my point of view given the higher reexposure potential of escorts from clients.