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Comment by perardi | Hacker News Reader

There’s a lot of literature about sex hormones and immune response.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6119719/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4701921/

And then extremely anecdotally: the only people I personally know who have gotten sick† in my ~25–35-year-old social circle have been guys who are, as they say, “on the bike”. Geared up, if you know what I mean.

†and they’ve all recovered well; they had about a week of pretty nasty flu-like symptoms, but then bounced back with bed rest

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I wonder if guys who are taking steroids are also guys who are less careful about social distancing, and perhaps they are people who go to a public gym or work out in groups in private ones.

A very reasonable line of questioning.

Especially since at least one of them was at this early super-spreader event:

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article24194165...

You'd almost expect this; taking steroids, particularly without medical supervision, is inherently rather dangerous, so it's fairly reasonable to assume that people who do it are on average more reckless than normal people.

The next question: what's the incidence of Covid among base jumpers and cave divers?

You might expect some difference, but I think people who take steroids for recreational or cosmetic purposes or to cheat at sports are a bit different; base jumpers would generally know and accept that base jumping is dangerous, but do it because they enjoy it, whereas steroid abusers are often self-deluding; they don't acknowledge that it's dangerous at all.

That's a lot of broad generalizations about the personalities and intelligence of a lot of different people. It would be more fair to say that with both base jumping and steroid abuse, each person personally find the risk (as they perceive it) worth the potential benefits (as they perceive them).

Steroid risks are maybe a bit murkier than the risks of jumping off of things, so it's possible there are more people with inaccurate perceptions of the risks, which might explain your perception of that group.

Since base jumping is way more dangerous than steroid use, wouldn't that make base jumpers more deluded?

Inherently dangerous in what way? Who is the last person who you know of who met an untimely demise due to their steroid use?

Dangerous isn't always fatal: https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/anabolic-st...

Steroid use is linked among other things with embolism, stroke, heart attack and sudden death.

If I based my risk of death on people I personally knew, I'd believe that I was immune to dying from, say, being hit by a car, and would almost certainly die of either heart disease or suicide. That's a ridiculous way to do things.

I don't know that many people in the steroid-abusing demographics (it was less of a thing in my age demographic than it is with the youth of today), but I am aware that it's dangerous.

A real, robust knowledge of the relative danger of steroids is tough to develop.

Because you can’t plausibly do a long-term blinded trial where you take a healthy population and dope them up. The in vitro data is enough to make any institutional review board blanch.

So you have to rely on self-reported usage. Which is incredibly unreliable, and full of confounds. (My bias, my fairly well-informed bias, is that nobody is just doing steroids. There is always another drug or high-risk activity.)

So yeah. Steroids are dangerous. Do we know exactly how bad, especially in comparison to other drugs of abuse? Not as far as I can tell. But bad enough that you should absolutely be wary of steroids. (Also there’s gradations of dangerous. You stay away from trenbolone.)

What are some common high risk activities that coincide with steroid usage, that you mentioned?

Everyone I know on gear also rides a sports bike, though N does only = 2

I would look at the many early deaths of professional wrestlers as a good example of deaths due to steroid usage.

I'm actually not sure what you mean by "on the bike." Is that a slang?

Anabolic-androgenic steroids.

Presumably this is an on-the-nose reference to the widespread use of dopants in cycling. In completely unrelated terms, the Tour de France started this saturday :)

I don’t really know the etymology. I have just always seen steroids called “gear”, and then figured “on the bike” derived from that.

But also how dare you suggest that the highest levels of competitive sport, where the margin of victory is razor-slim, and you only have a few years of peak performance, are infested with drugs? How crass. How immoral. I miss the simpler days of my youth, when Hulk Hogan told us we just had to take our vitamins.

Ah, minor linguistic differences. In Ireland, 'gear' means heroin.

Gear is generally used for IV drug paraphernalia worldwide, and yes heroin users use that term as well.

Perhaps because steroids for muscle growth are meant to be "cycled" (i.e. used in a cycle of A, then switch to B, then C, etc.)

it's not because of the Tour de France type of "cycling", but rather because of this:

"Steroids are often used in patterns called "cycling." This involves taking multiple doses of steroids over a specific period of time, stopping for a period, and starting again."

https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/research-reports/ster...

"Steroids are often used in patterns called "cycling." This involves taking multiple doses of steroids over a specific period of time, stopping for a period, and starting again."

https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/research-reports/ster....

I'd actually prefer you use clear language than expect everyone to get or look up your metaphor.

Steroids

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