We have many places in the codebase where we perform logic based on

whether there are entries found in a queryset. Many of these use

.count() and compare to 0, which requires actually counting all the

rows first in the database.
As an optimization, we now use .exists() instead. This is an

optimization provided by Django that limits the results to 1 row, clears

any fields and ordering, and just checks for the existence of one row of

data. This is more efficient, speeding up these checks and reducing work

on the database.
There's also a couple places where we were checking the contents of a

Many-to-Many table before adding or removing an item, which was redundant

as Django was already doing this. Those have been simplified, reducing

queries.

Unit tests passed.
Went through the affected parts of the product. Didn't hit any regressions.