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Now the world needs to go after malaria in Africa. Throughout the world a child dies every 2 minutes from malaria. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/08/infe

Now the world needs to go after malaria in Africa. Throughout the world a child dies every 2 minutes from malaria. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/08/infectious-diseases-covid19-malaria-hiv-aids-africa/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/08/infectious-diseases-c... I’ve been to South Africa twice. Most other Subsaharan countries have large malaria problems. Looking forward to that not being a problem in my lifetime.

coldpie 6y ago
> Now the world needs to go after malaria in Africa. They are. Take a moment to celebrate this victory :)
- melling 6y ago
  We are so close to wiping polio out globally. Bill Gates has been trying hard. A few cases in Asia every year and we’re done. Probably less than 100 globally in a few countries. Bill Gates will get it. Anyway, while it’s great, and we should be happy, 400,000 kids will die from malaria in Africa this year. We could do more to save millions of lives over the next 10 years.
  - hu3 6y ago
    I often see citations of Bill Gates charity being downvoted to oblivion on HN and I can never figure out why. Would appreciate if someone could enlighten me. Surely there must be a good reason.
    - dylz 6y ago
      My assumption is that there are people that dislike how Gates earned his money.
      - koonsolo 6y ago
        By running a successful business? Some people really need to get a proper perspective on this. Did he bribe people? Did he extort people? Yeah, he was running a competitive business where he took advantage of his market position... just like any other business. But oh, "I love my iPhone, and Steve Jobs is therefore my hero. So Apple is good because it loves it's customers".
        dtheodor 6y ago
        He bribed people for sure. Microsoft products had completely overtaken the public sector IT of several countries back in the 90s/00s. To get into the public sector of several third-world and not so third-world countries, bribing is more or less mandatory, business as usual. We've seen scandals like these dozens of times with all kinds of big companies. Bribing to get big public infrastructure projects from companies like Siemens, bribing to get pharma machinery into public hospitals. No such scandal was ever published for Microsoft that I know of, but this is how things work.
    - woodruffw 6y ago
      I didn't downvote this (and don't generally do so), but here's a line of reasoning that might explain it: something has to go seriously wrong in the world for the lives of millions of people to be contingent upon the charitable sentiments of one obscenely wealthy man. Put another way: regardless of whether he's doing good, it shouldn't be the case that polio eradication depends on his material wealth. Celebrating the beneficial outcomes of Bill Gates' charity without reflecting on why he's able to give away billions of dollars without breaking a sweat invites us to ignore the fact that the system that enriched Bill Gates doesn't actually encourage him to do any good (and actually involved him doing quite a lot of harm).
      - rowanG077 6y ago
        I have the opposite sentiment. Things have been going extremely right for a single person to be able to go out and destroy issues that literately thousands upon thousands of people are affected by. Since governments of the developed world are mostly democratic no action to fix those issues in other countries is taken. This would have not otherwise been possible.
        woodruffw 6y ago
        To be clear: it is good, morally speaking, for Bill Gates to contribute to the effort to eliminate polio. The observation is that Gates' ability to do so (i.e., his profound wealth) is completely unfixed to any good he produces: he could just as easily use his wealth for morally bad ends. In others words, we're extraordinarily lucky that this particular ultra-wealthy person has decided to do good things with (some) of their money. But grounding moral and humanitarian progress on a steady stream of luck seems shortsighted.
        rowanG077 6y ago
        I don't think it's luck. A significant part of the very rich are donating huge amounts to charity. With the giving pledge being the most clear example. It's most certainly not a fluke that the mega rich are solving problem governments can't or won't.
    - monetus 6y ago
      I would assume there to be a multitude of bad reasons, but as for a good one.. If you forced me to pick one driving one, the perception that he is laundering his reputation through philanthrophy would hopefully be it. A good act does not wash out the bad, nor a bad the good.
      - strictnein 6y ago
        His reputation didn't really need "laundering". He ran a software company, sometimes aggressively, but people act like he ran a private military corporation and trafficked in blood diamonds.
        vlunkr 6y ago
        Agreed, outside of unix-like tech circles, I don't know that his reputation was ever that bad.
        monetus 6y ago
        I would say the negative perception extends pretty far past unix-like tech circles, now at least.
    - spacephysics 6y ago
      Without disclosing my opinions/take on Bill Gates, I think some see his charity as a means to gain power in specific regions to [insert conspiracy theory]. A tangentially related matter I see cited more often than not in these circles, are about an uptick in vaccine-caused paralysis occurring in India, causing the foundation to be kicked out. The argument being that an uptick in “non-polio acute flaccid paralysis” (NPAFP) was recorded in areas where the oral vaccine was distributed, and this subsequently got the foundation “kicked out of India” (quoted because, as source below states, this is false) [0] [0] https://fullfact.org/online/gates-polio-vaccine/ https://fullfact.org/online/gates-polio-vaccine/
      - AndrewBissell 6y ago
        There's no need to refer to "conspiracy theories" (although Bill Gates's close ties to Jeffrey Epstein after his 2007 trafficking conviction did not do him any favors there). The ulterior purposes of the Gates Foundation are pursued mostly in the open: https://www.thenation.com/article/society/bill-gates-foundation-philanthropy/ https://www.thenation.com/article/society/bill-gates-foundat... https://www.cjr.org/criticism/gates-foundation-journalism-funding.php https://www.cjr.org/criticism/gates-foundation-journalism-fu...
        mullingitover 6y ago
        That The Nation article seems to be implying that Gates is dodging his civic duties to pay taxes and support nice things like public infrastructure, but at the same time he's also avoiding paying for terrible things like funding the military which bombs things like weddings and Médecins Sans Frontières hospitals. Gates has done some shady things in his day, but I can't fault him for that one. His fortune is a drop in the bucket of the federal budget, but being able to control and target his charity makes a hell of a lot of difference in the world. It's not like the federal government was going to cure polio in Africa, but for a few billion more dollars in tax revenue.
    - phenkdo 6y ago
      It is at its core, the issue of the perfect being the enemy of the good. Bill might be an imperfect angel, but he is an angel nonetheless in spending his fortune to help millions/billions out of abject poverty and suffering. That dwarfs almost any effort by other people. You could psychoanalyze this as acts of redemption, guilty conscience, seeking further world domination or whatnot, However it's undeniable he's helped many, many people and far, far,far more than his keyboard detractors ever would or could. And that's a very good thing IMHO.
    - soperj 6y ago
      Because it doesn't just do good. It's completely screwed up public education in the states for instance.
      - manigandham 6y ago
        How so?
        soperj 6y ago
        They're responsible for common core.
    - koonsolo 6y ago
      It has everything to do with people's perspective of the world: rich people cannot be good people. If you gain something, somebody else needs to lose something. So for a rich person to get rich, he must have taken a lot from other, "nicer" people. Bill gates must really love swimming "uncle scrooge"-style in his billions. That's all he cares about. Everything he does must be to gain more billions, so he can swim in a bigger pool. Bill was also super competitive, so let's focus on that and forget that he made his money providing value to users and businesses. It's better to act like he stole the money in an unfair way. I personally feel very sad for a person that can't imagine that someone else could feel happy and satisfied by helping others, by having a huge impact on peoples lives in a positive way. I'm sure Bill and Melinda get more satisfaction of helping other people than looking at numbers on their bank account. But hey, that's not possible because he's rich, and therefore evil.
      - hu3 6y ago
        That makes sense. It's specially telling that the top voted reply to my message says Bill Gates donated Billions "without breaking a sweet". Clearly that person never read about his personal involvement and time commitment to numerous researches and social programs. It's 100% prejudice.
      - phenkdo 6y ago
        Thanks for sharing this viewpoint. This is the cancel culture run amok. While these people might very well be well-meaning, their ideological purity tests often end up being just sanctimonious holier-than-thou rants and tantrums.
    - _jal 6y ago
      People dislike him for a number of reasons. I despised his actions through most of his tenure at M$. He destroyed some things I cared about and tried hard to destroy others, and I was nowhere near them and didn't use their products. I'm not really big on the idea of 'redemption' - my actions today do not erase what I've done in the past. But he has lived a pretty decent life since then, and tried to do good things. So good on him. Others hold grudges longer.
  - strictnein 6y ago
    Bill Gates is also very, very heavily involved with defeating Malaria in Africa. His foundation has spent $2.9 Billion so far on it. https://www.gatesfoundation.org/what-we-do/global-health/malaria https://www.gatesfoundation.org/what-we-do/global-health/mal...
    - EGreg 6y ago
      All these anti vaxxer people are also pushing HCQ ... but it actually does prevent Malaria. If not for the side effects that compound over time, if the body was able to flush it out somehow, it could be very useful, no? That or finding ways to sterilize all anopheles mosquitoes, or do other mosquitoes carry it also
      - dnautics 6y ago
        IIRC malaria in africa is basically totally resistant to HCQ by now. There's places where resistance to Artemisinin is a thing.
      - robbiep 6y ago
        It’s called the advancement of science and it’s one of the reasons it is not generally a frontline treatment (because we have more effective treatments now, as well as resistance). You might as well say that a person is too phlegmatic and needs bleeding when they have gallstones. The world moves, move with it
    - jacobwilliamroy 6y ago
      I dont know how heavily involved he is. The man is a signature on a check. He has no medical credentials. All his fortune is built on stolen ip. He just writes checks.
      - ehsankia 6y ago
        > I dont know Well good thing you started with that since you are clearly not familiar with him at all. He is very very well read and highly involved with the charity.
  - tonfa 6y ago
    > A few cases in Asia every year and we’re done We also need to get rid of a vaccine-derived polio in Africa (and some places in Asia).
    - femto 6y ago
      Details here for the curious: https://www.who.int/westernpacific/news/q-a-detail/what-is-vaccine-derived-polio https://www.who.int/westernpacific/news/q-a-detail/what-is-v... Summary: Whilst initial immunity is developing after vaccination, attenuated polio viruses can be excreted and cause a rare circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus (cVDPV) outbreak. 21 outbreaks have occurred in the last 20 years, with 760 cases, out of 3 billion vaccinated and 10 million polio cases averted. cVDPV is averted by getting as many people in the community vaccinated within a 12-month window as possible. It naturally stops being a risk as the vaccinated population approaches 100%.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
  - HiroshiSan 6y ago
    Not to take anything away from Bill, but why isn't Melinda mentioned just as much in these types of conversations?
    - zapdrive 6y ago
      Why should she be?
    - pm90 6y ago
      He is the public face of the foundation, giving ted talks and tweeting about it etc.
    - JamesBarney 6y ago
      Are you really curious? It's the same reason that if Oprah took her billions to try and solve some global problem with her husband Stedman, many mentions of the work they were doing would not mention Stedman. One is a famous individual who built up an obscene fortune, and the other person is married to them. And despite how involved their partner is deploying that wealth for the good of the world, people are just not going to mention the less famous one who didn't build up the fortune as often.
      - blnqr 6y ago
        Oprah Winfrey is not married to Stedman Graham
        JamesBarney 6y ago
        Whoops, I misremembered.
      - Cthulhu_ 6y ago
        It's the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation, so it would be apt to credit them both; erasing her does not do her, her work and her achievements justice (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melinda_Gates#Awards_and_recognition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melinda_Gates#Awards_and_recog...).
  - MaximumYComb 6y ago
    It's because he is looking long term. Once you eradicate polio then it's gone forever. If he stops now to save more children from malaria instead then polio will return and the work so far wasted.
    - Cthulhu_ 6y ago
      Could a disease (I just read it's a virus, til) like polio "spontaneously" reform or re-evolve if it's eradicated completely?
      - skinkestek 6y ago
        No. Once all "blueprints" of a disease (its RNA or DNA) is gone it is gone. In a worst case nature comes up with a similar one by mutating something similar, but then it is still a new thing.
      - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
        Well, the dodo bird hasn't re-elolved yet, and beither did smallpox.
      - gus_massa 6y ago
        The evolution of exactly the same illness is difficult[1]. Polio is an Enterovirus[2]. There are many virus in that family, and most of them cause only a mild stomachache and fever. A week later you forget that you where ill. Moreover, in the 95% of the case the Polio virus only cause the same symptoms instead of the paralysis. One of the other virus can evolve and start to cause an illness that is very similar to Polio and we can decide to call it Polio, or PolioII, or some acronym like SPGWSPLI or something like that[3]. Nobody is sure about the cause of Acute flaccid myelitis [4], but it is somewhat similar to Polio and it is probably caused by an Enterovirus too. If something like that cause a big outbreak, we will hopefully make a vaccine and eradicate it too. [1] Where "difficult" means "almost impossible, but there is a chance". [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterovirus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterovirus [3] Old illness have cool names. I hope we can eradicate them all, but they have cool names like "Cholera". New illness get a bland acronym. [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acute_flaccid_myelitis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acute_flaccid_myelitis
  - brudgers 6y ago
    Bill Gates got involved with polio via $100 million matching fund to Rotary International about a decade ago. It was one of the foundation’s early healthcare initiatives and leveraged several decades of work by Rotarians around the world...polio eradication was the major project of Rotary at the time. Malaria is different in that there was not the same level of eradication infrastructure to leverage and different because it touches on drinking water and food chains in the non-human environment. Malaria is not mostly a vaccine distribution problem.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
mikorym 6y ago
I grew up in an area that forms part of the general malaria area of South Africa, but I have never had malaria. I know many people who have had malaria and the general observations that I have is: 1. Using malaria medication is advisable if you don't have access to good doctors and good hospitals. If you permanently live in a malaria area, it's not practical. 2. If you have quick access to a good doctors and good hospitals, it's often better to treat yourself once you are sick. ---> NO this is not travel advice <---. The malaria medications have a lot of side effects to use permanently; the expensive ones have less side effects and I believe pilots generally use such ones since risking getting sick has the potential side effect of a plane crashing. 3. The key is detection and treatment. You can easily die in an top EU or US or Singapore hospital if the doctor doesn't ever see malaria and you happen to have it. You have to test until you get a positive---even if it is a false positive, and then you test again. I personally know people who's parent died of malaria in a good hospital in South Africa, but in an area that is far from the malaria areas, and hence has doctors who don't test for it. I am not a doctor so I am not sure how one is treated once tested positive, but I do know many people who recovered very quickly due to the doctors being acutely aware of how to treat malaria. 4. Taking into account said things above, malaria is not a major threat. If you read stories about game rangers in the KNP of South Africa, many of them died from malaria in their later life because they were somewhere deep in the bush/lowveld and far from hospitals and couldn't be bothered with having malaria, yet again, and stopping their fun bush activities to go to the hospital 200km away. 5. My grandmother had malaria 6 or 7 times and died rather healthy in her mid 90s. My family actually actively avoided the malaria areas in the summer back in the late 1800s and early to mid 1900s by living on the higher escarpment. You could also read about Dr. Annecke and the efforts back then to combat malaria. 6. The countries to the north of South Africa don't have the facilities to treat malaria, generally, and with proper treatment and selective DTT application, you should be able to limit the ranges of the parasite. Yes, DTT is a bad chemical. 7. On that topic, malaria is caused by a parasite, so in terms of vaccines it's not clear what the mechanism behind it should be. 8. If you think about the Panama worm exclusion line that featured a while ago on HN, something like that would have made sense if Africa were a more developed continent. But in any case, the point is that the poor state of many things in Africa is part of the malaria problem. 9. Many other things about Africa is way cooler than the other continents. We still have lion and rhino, for one. There were many large predators on the other continents. So, "development" is something of a complicated word. 10. South Africa generally manages malaria well, so it is possible to contain it through holistic management. And no, holism is a word that belongs to Jan Smuts and you cannot steal it for your magic peanut oil business. 11. Yes, a silver bullet would be nice.
mrmonkeyman 6y ago
"The world" doesn't need to do shit.
smabie 6y ago
In my experience from living in Tanzania, malaria is way down in Africa. Almost everyone said that true malaria isn't very common. I started a school there and none of the 200 kids there got malaria over the 4 year span of the school's existence. I think the statistics about it might be overestimating since people constantly say they have malaria, but rarely if ever have it. It means just sick colloquially in Swahili.
Technetium 6y ago
Florida is about to release 750 million mosquitoes genetically modified to die shortly after birth. Hopefully that's progress towards ending mosquitoes once and for all. Source: https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/19/health/gmo-mosquitoes-approved-florida-scn-wellness/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/19/health/gmo-mosquitoes-approve...
- zucked 6y ago
  Is that such a good idea? I find the idea of futzing with nature's systems in this way a bit concerning.
  - nemacol 6y ago
    https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/05/flesh-eating-worms-disease-containment-america-panama/611026/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/05/flesh-ea... A similar story that I found absolutely amazing is the story of the screwworm and its eradication from the US. Not the whole world, mind you (which feels foolish long term). I am not trying to make a point. This discussion made me think of it and I wanted to share.
  - mrfusion 6y ago
    Malaria is nature too.
  - culturestate 6y ago
    We’ve been committing mass murder of mosquitos for decades and, as far as I know, nobody has ever found evidence that it’s problematic. Mosquitos seem to be one of the few truly unnecessary (and universally unwanted) bits of the natural order.
    - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago
      I've read that some bird populations might suffer, but even ecologists will admit that mosquitos aren't particularly vital to any one species, and the elimination of mosquitos as a primary disease vector may even be a net-positive for the animal world.
credit_guy 6y ago
In 2019, WHO started administering a malaria vaccine in 3 countries, Ghana, Malawi and Kenya. The vaccine has already passed Phase 3 trials, and 360k children will be immunized annually between now and 2023 [1]. [1] https://www.who.int/malaria/media/malaria-vaccine-implementation-qa/en/ https://www.who.int/malaria/media/malaria-vaccine-implementa...
grandinj 6y ago
What happened to that laser system to shoot mosquitoes? I soooo want one of those :-)
TempLogsForOne 6y ago
Why does the world need to go after malaria in Africa? Why can't Africans go after malaria in Africa. It's so racist how mostly Europeans treat Africans as children that need to be taken care of and don't let them do things on their own. It's extremely racist, paternalistic and Noble Savage racist to the core. What, you Europeans think Africans can't figure things out for themselves? Stop it.

coldpie 6y ago

> Now the world needs to go after malaria in Africa. They are. Take a moment to celebrate this victory :)

melling 6y ago
We are so close to wiping polio out globally. Bill Gates has been trying hard. A few cases in Asia every year and we’re done. Probably less than 100 globally in a few countries. Bill Gates will get it. Anyway, while it’s great, and we should be happy, 400,000 kids will die from malaria in Africa this year. We could do more to save millions of lives over the next 10 years.
- hu3 6y ago
  I often see citations of Bill Gates charity being downvoted to oblivion on HN and I can never figure out why. Would appreciate if someone could enlighten me. Surely there must be a good reason.
  - dylz 6y ago
    My assumption is that there are people that dislike how Gates earned his money.
    - koonsolo 6y ago
      By running a successful business? Some people really need to get a proper perspective on this. Did he bribe people? Did he extort people? Yeah, he was running a competitive business where he took advantage of his market position... just like any other business. But oh, "I love my iPhone, and Steve Jobs is therefore my hero. So Apple is good because it loves it's customers".
      - dtheodor 6y ago
        He bribed people for sure. Microsoft products had completely overtaken the public sector IT of several countries back in the 90s/00s. To get into the public sector of several third-world and not so third-world countries, bribing is more or less mandatory, business as usual. We've seen scandals like these dozens of times with all kinds of big companies. Bribing to get big public infrastructure projects from companies like Siemens, bribing to get pharma machinery into public hospitals. No such scandal was ever published for Microsoft that I know of, but this is how things work.
  - woodruffw 6y ago
    I didn't downvote this (and don't generally do so), but here's a line of reasoning that might explain it: something has to go seriously wrong in the world for the lives of millions of people to be contingent upon the charitable sentiments of one obscenely wealthy man. Put another way: regardless of whether he's doing good, it shouldn't be the case that polio eradication depends on his material wealth. Celebrating the beneficial outcomes of Bill Gates' charity without reflecting on why he's able to give away billions of dollars without breaking a sweat invites us to ignore the fact that the system that enriched Bill Gates doesn't actually encourage him to do any good (and actually involved him doing quite a lot of harm).
    - rowanG077 6y ago
      I have the opposite sentiment. Things have been going extremely right for a single person to be able to go out and destroy issues that literately thousands upon thousands of people are affected by. Since governments of the developed world are mostly democratic no action to fix those issues in other countries is taken. This would have not otherwise been possible.
      - woodruffw 6y ago
        To be clear: it is good, morally speaking, for Bill Gates to contribute to the effort to eliminate polio. The observation is that Gates' ability to do so (i.e., his profound wealth) is completely unfixed to any good he produces: he could just as easily use his wealth for morally bad ends. In others words, we're extraordinarily lucky that this particular ultra-wealthy person has decided to do good things with (some) of their money. But grounding moral and humanitarian progress on a steady stream of luck seems shortsighted.
        rowanG077 6y ago
        I don't think it's luck. A significant part of the very rich are donating huge amounts to charity. With the giving pledge being the most clear example. It's most certainly not a fluke that the mega rich are solving problem governments can't or won't.
  - monetus 6y ago
    I would assume there to be a multitude of bad reasons, but as for a good one.. If you forced me to pick one driving one, the perception that he is laundering his reputation through philanthrophy would hopefully be it. A good act does not wash out the bad, nor a bad the good.
    - strictnein 6y ago
      His reputation didn't really need "laundering". He ran a software company, sometimes aggressively, but people act like he ran a private military corporation and trafficked in blood diamonds.
      - vlunkr 6y ago
        Agreed, outside of unix-like tech circles, I don't know that his reputation was ever that bad.
        monetus 6y ago
        I would say the negative perception extends pretty far past unix-like tech circles, now at least.
  - spacephysics 6y ago
    Without disclosing my opinions/take on Bill Gates, I think some see his charity as a means to gain power in specific regions to [insert conspiracy theory]. A tangentially related matter I see cited more often than not in these circles, are about an uptick in vaccine-caused paralysis occurring in India, causing the foundation to be kicked out. The argument being that an uptick in “non-polio acute flaccid paralysis” (NPAFP) was recorded in areas where the oral vaccine was distributed, and this subsequently got the foundation “kicked out of India” (quoted because, as source below states, this is false) [0] [0] https://fullfact.org/online/gates-polio-vaccine/ https://fullfact.org/online/gates-polio-vaccine/
    - AndrewBissell 6y ago
      There's no need to refer to "conspiracy theories" (although Bill Gates's close ties to Jeffrey Epstein after his 2007 trafficking conviction did not do him any favors there). The ulterior purposes of the Gates Foundation are pursued mostly in the open: https://www.thenation.com/article/society/bill-gates-foundation-philanthropy/ https://www.thenation.com/article/society/bill-gates-foundat... https://www.cjr.org/criticism/gates-foundation-journalism-funding.php https://www.cjr.org/criticism/gates-foundation-journalism-fu...
      - mullingitover 6y ago
        That The Nation article seems to be implying that Gates is dodging his civic duties to pay taxes and support nice things like public infrastructure, but at the same time he's also avoiding paying for terrible things like funding the military which bombs things like weddings and Médecins Sans Frontières hospitals. Gates has done some shady things in his day, but I can't fault him for that one. His fortune is a drop in the bucket of the federal budget, but being able to control and target his charity makes a hell of a lot of difference in the world. It's not like the federal government was going to cure polio in Africa, but for a few billion more dollars in tax revenue.
  - phenkdo 6y ago
    It is at its core, the issue of the perfect being the enemy of the good. Bill might be an imperfect angel, but he is an angel nonetheless in spending his fortune to help millions/billions out of abject poverty and suffering. That dwarfs almost any effort by other people. You could psychoanalyze this as acts of redemption, guilty conscience, seeking further world domination or whatnot, However it's undeniable he's helped many, many people and far, far,far more than his keyboard detractors ever would or could. And that's a very good thing IMHO.
  - soperj 6y ago
    Because it doesn't just do good. It's completely screwed up public education in the states for instance.
    - manigandham 6y ago
      How so?
      - soperj 6y ago
        They're responsible for common core.
  - koonsolo 6y ago
    It has everything to do with people's perspective of the world: rich people cannot be good people. If you gain something, somebody else needs to lose something. So for a rich person to get rich, he must have taken a lot from other, "nicer" people. Bill gates must really love swimming "uncle scrooge"-style in his billions. That's all he cares about. Everything he does must be to gain more billions, so he can swim in a bigger pool. Bill was also super competitive, so let's focus on that and forget that he made his money providing value to users and businesses. It's better to act like he stole the money in an unfair way. I personally feel very sad for a person that can't imagine that someone else could feel happy and satisfied by helping others, by having a huge impact on peoples lives in a positive way. I'm sure Bill and Melinda get more satisfaction of helping other people than looking at numbers on their bank account. But hey, that's not possible because he's rich, and therefore evil.
    - hu3 6y ago
      That makes sense. It's specially telling that the top voted reply to my message says Bill Gates donated Billions "without breaking a sweet". Clearly that person never read about his personal involvement and time commitment to numerous researches and social programs. It's 100% prejudice.
    - phenkdo 6y ago
      Thanks for sharing this viewpoint. This is the cancel culture run amok. While these people might very well be well-meaning, their ideological purity tests often end up being just sanctimonious holier-than-thou rants and tantrums.
  - _jal 6y ago
    People dislike him for a number of reasons. I despised his actions through most of his tenure at M$. He destroyed some things I cared about and tried hard to destroy others, and I was nowhere near them and didn't use their products. I'm not really big on the idea of 'redemption' - my actions today do not erase what I've done in the past. But he has lived a pretty decent life since then, and tried to do good things. So good on him. Others hold grudges longer.
- strictnein 6y ago
  Bill Gates is also very, very heavily involved with defeating Malaria in Africa. His foundation has spent $2.9 Billion so far on it. https://www.gatesfoundation.org/what-we-do/global-health/malaria https://www.gatesfoundation.org/what-we-do/global-health/mal...
  - EGreg 6y ago
    All these anti vaxxer people are also pushing HCQ ... but it actually does prevent Malaria. If not for the side effects that compound over time, if the body was able to flush it out somehow, it could be very useful, no? That or finding ways to sterilize all anopheles mosquitoes, or do other mosquitoes carry it also
    - dnautics 6y ago
      IIRC malaria in africa is basically totally resistant to HCQ by now. There's places where resistance to Artemisinin is a thing.
    - robbiep 6y ago
      It’s called the advancement of science and it’s one of the reasons it is not generally a frontline treatment (because we have more effective treatments now, as well as resistance). You might as well say that a person is too phlegmatic and needs bleeding when they have gallstones. The world moves, move with it
  - jacobwilliamroy 6y ago
    I dont know how heavily involved he is. The man is a signature on a check. He has no medical credentials. All his fortune is built on stolen ip. He just writes checks.
    - ehsankia 6y ago
      > I dont know Well good thing you started with that since you are clearly not familiar with him at all. He is very very well read and highly involved with the charity.
- tonfa 6y ago
  > A few cases in Asia every year and we’re done We also need to get rid of a vaccine-derived polio in Africa (and some places in Asia).
  - femto 6y ago
    Details here for the curious: https://www.who.int/westernpacific/news/q-a-detail/what-is-vaccine-derived-polio https://www.who.int/westernpacific/news/q-a-detail/what-is-v... Summary: Whilst initial immunity is developing after vaccination, attenuated polio viruses can be excreted and cause a rare circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus (cVDPV) outbreak. 21 outbreaks have occurred in the last 20 years, with 760 cases, out of 3 billion vaccinated and 10 million polio cases averted. cVDPV is averted by getting as many people in the community vaccinated within a 12-month window as possible. It naturally stops being a risk as the vaccinated population approaches 100%.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- HiroshiSan 6y ago
  Not to take anything away from Bill, but why isn't Melinda mentioned just as much in these types of conversations?
  - zapdrive 6y ago
    Why should she be?
  - pm90 6y ago
    He is the public face of the foundation, giving ted talks and tweeting about it etc.
  - JamesBarney 6y ago
    Are you really curious? It's the same reason that if Oprah took her billions to try and solve some global problem with her husband Stedman, many mentions of the work they were doing would not mention Stedman. One is a famous individual who built up an obscene fortune, and the other person is married to them. And despite how involved their partner is deploying that wealth for the good of the world, people are just not going to mention the less famous one who didn't build up the fortune as often.
    - blnqr 6y ago
      Oprah Winfrey is not married to Stedman Graham
      - JamesBarney 6y ago
        Whoops, I misremembered.
    - Cthulhu_ 6y ago
      It's the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation, so it would be apt to credit them both; erasing her does not do her, her work and her achievements justice (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melinda_Gates#Awards_and_recognition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melinda_Gates#Awards_and_recog...).
- MaximumYComb 6y ago
  It's because he is looking long term. Once you eradicate polio then it's gone forever. If he stops now to save more children from malaria instead then polio will return and the work so far wasted.
  - Cthulhu_ 6y ago
    Could a disease (I just read it's a virus, til) like polio "spontaneously" reform or re-evolve if it's eradicated completely?
    - skinkestek 6y ago
      No. Once all "blueprints" of a disease (its RNA or DNA) is gone it is gone. In a worst case nature comes up with a similar one by mutating something similar, but then it is still a new thing.
    - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
      Well, the dodo bird hasn't re-elolved yet, and beither did smallpox.
    - gus_massa 6y ago
      The evolution of exactly the same illness is difficult[1]. Polio is an Enterovirus[2]. There are many virus in that family, and most of them cause only a mild stomachache and fever. A week later you forget that you where ill. Moreover, in the 95% of the case the Polio virus only cause the same symptoms instead of the paralysis. One of the other virus can evolve and start to cause an illness that is very similar to Polio and we can decide to call it Polio, or PolioII, or some acronym like SPGWSPLI or something like that[3]. Nobody is sure about the cause of Acute flaccid myelitis [4], but it is somewhat similar to Polio and it is probably caused by an Enterovirus too. If something like that cause a big outbreak, we will hopefully make a vaccine and eradicate it too. [1] Where "difficult" means "almost impossible, but there is a chance". [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterovirus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterovirus [3] Old illness have cool names. I hope we can eradicate them all, but they have cool names like "Cholera". New illness get a bland acronym. [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acute_flaccid_myelitis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acute_flaccid_myelitis
- brudgers 6y ago
  Bill Gates got involved with polio via $100 million matching fund to Rotary International about a decade ago. It was one of the foundation’s early healthcare initiatives and leveraged several decades of work by Rotarians around the world...polio eradication was the major project of Rotary at the time. Malaria is different in that there was not the same level of eradication infrastructure to leverage and different because it touches on drinking water and food chains in the non-human environment. Malaria is not mostly a vaccine distribution problem.

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mikorym 6y ago

I grew up in an area that forms part of the general malaria area of South Africa, but I have never had malaria. I know many people who have had malaria and the general observations that I have is: 1. Using malaria medication is advisable if you don't have access to good doctors and good hospitals. If you permanently live in a malaria area, it's not practical. 2. If you have quick access to a good doctors and good hospitals, it's often better to treat yourself once you are sick. ---> NO this is not travel advice <---. The malaria medications have a lot of side effects to use permanently; the expensive ones have less side effects and I believe pilots generally use such ones since risking getting sick has the potential side effect of a plane crashing. 3. The key is detection and treatment. You can easily die in an top EU or US or Singapore hospital if the doctor doesn't ever see malaria and you happen to have it. You have to test until you get a positive---even if it is a false positive, and then you test again. I personally know people who's parent died of malaria in a good hospital in South Africa, but in an area that is far from the malaria areas, and hence has doctors who don't test for it. I am not a doctor so I am not sure how one is treated once tested positive, but I do know many people who recovered very quickly due to the doctors being acutely aware of how to treat malaria. 4. Taking into account said things above, malaria is not a major threat. If you read stories about game rangers in the KNP of South Africa, many of them died from malaria in their later life because they were somewhere deep in the bush/lowveld and far from hospitals and couldn't be bothered with having malaria, yet again, and stopping their fun bush activities to go to the hospital 200km away. 5. My grandmother had malaria 6 or 7 times and died rather healthy in her mid 90s. My family actually actively avoided the malaria areas in the summer back in the late 1800s and early to mid 1900s by living on the higher escarpment. You could also read about Dr. Annecke and the efforts back then to combat malaria. 6. The countries to the north of South Africa don't have the facilities to treat malaria, generally, and with proper treatment and selective DTT application, you should be able to limit the ranges of the parasite. Yes, DTT is a bad chemical. 7. On that topic, malaria is caused by a parasite, so in terms of vaccines it's not clear what the mechanism behind it should be. 8. If you think about the Panama worm exclusion line that featured a while ago on HN, something like that would have made sense if Africa were a more developed continent. But in any case, the point is that the poor state of many things in Africa is part of the malaria problem. 9. Many other things about Africa is way cooler than the other continents. We still have lion and rhino, for one. There were many large predators on the other continents. So, "development" is something of a complicated word. 10. South Africa generally manages malaria well, so it is possible to contain it through holistic management. And no, holism is a word that belongs to Jan Smuts and you cannot steal it for your magic peanut oil business. 11. Yes, a silver bullet would be nice.

mrmonkeyman 6y ago

"The world" doesn't need to do shit.

smabie 6y ago

In my experience from living in Tanzania, malaria is way down in Africa. Almost everyone said that true malaria isn't very common. I started a school there and none of the 200 kids there got malaria over the 4 year span of the school's existence. I think the statistics about it might be overestimating since people constantly say they have malaria, but rarely if ever have it. It means just sick colloquially in Swahili.

Technetium 6y ago

Florida is about to release 750 million mosquitoes genetically modified to die shortly after birth. Hopefully that's progress towards ending mosquitoes once and for all. Source: https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/19/health/gmo-mosquitoes-approved-florida-scn-wellness/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/19/health/gmo-mosquitoes-approve...

zucked 6y ago
Is that such a good idea? I find the idea of futzing with nature's systems in this way a bit concerning.
- nemacol 6y ago
  https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/05/flesh-eating-worms-disease-containment-america-panama/611026/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/05/flesh-ea... A similar story that I found absolutely amazing is the story of the screwworm and its eradication from the US. Not the whole world, mind you (which feels foolish long term). I am not trying to make a point. This discussion made me think of it and I wanted to share.
- mrfusion 6y ago
  Malaria is nature too.
- culturestate 6y ago
  We’ve been committing mass murder of mosquitos for decades and, as far as I know, nobody has ever found evidence that it’s problematic. Mosquitos seem to be one of the few truly unnecessary (and universally unwanted) bits of the natural order.
  - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago
    I've read that some bird populations might suffer, but even ecologists will admit that mosquitos aren't particularly vital to any one species, and the elimination of mosquitos as a primary disease vector may even be a net-positive for the animal world.

credit_guy 6y ago

In 2019, WHO started administering a malaria vaccine in 3 countries, Ghana, Malawi and Kenya. The vaccine has already passed Phase 3 trials, and 360k children will be immunized annually between now and 2023 [1]. [1] https://www.who.int/malaria/media/malaria-vaccine-implementation-qa/en/ https://www.who.int/malaria/media/malaria-vaccine-implementa...

grandinj 6y ago

What happened to that laser system to shoot mosquitoes? I soooo want one of those :-)

TempLogsForOne 6y ago

Why does the world need to go after malaria in Africa? Why can't Africans go after malaria in Africa. It's so racist how mostly Europeans treat Africans as children that need to be taken care of and don't let them do things on their own. It's extremely racist, paternalistic and Noble Savage racist to the core. What, you Europeans think Africans can't figure things out for themselves? Stop it.