4 ms·

Probably because a half million a year is a rounding error in global mortality. It sounds like a lot but the daily global mortality rate, when last I checked, w

Probably because a half million a year is a rounding error in global mortality. It sounds like a lot but the daily global mortality rate, when last I checked, was something like 170,000 per day.

vladmk 2y ago
That's easy to say, but not productive. What are the diseases that kill the most people we should be working on?
- Traubenfuchs 2y ago
  Cardiovascular diseases, cancers, respiratory infects. Strep A is technically solved due to being easily treatable with common antibiotics.
  - kelnos 2y ago
    And yet a half million people still get it and die. Doesn't sound "solved" to me ("technically" or otherwise). I'm not sure if mass vaccination campaigns would be more effective than hoping people see a doctor when they get sick (seems like a lot don't) and hoping they are able to pay for a full course of antibiotics (seems like a lot can't), and hoping they actually stick with it and take the full course (many people in general don't). At least with vaccinations, it's usually one shot every $DECENTLY_NOT_SHORT_INTERVAL, and that's it. Granted, crazy stupid antivax sentiment is on the rise...
- slillibri 2y ago
  Cancer kills over 9 million people per year, or 18x strep A. Tuberculosis kills nearly 1.5 million people per year, or 3x. Over 9 million people die from hunger related causes, which while not a disease is 18x strep A. It's not to demean the people who die from strep A, because to each of their families it's a tragedy, but the scale and the fact that it can be treated with common antibiotics means that we can put the effort and resources that would be spent on a vaccine to better use elsewhere.
  - kelnos 2y ago
    > Cancer kills over 9 million people per year "Cancer" isn't one disease though, it's hundreds, and many of them require completely different approaches to treat. > Tuberculosis kills nearly 1.5 million people per year, or 3x So in other words, yes, it would be "worth it" to develop a vaccine for strep A. It would also be worth it to develop a vaccine for tuberculosis. Let's do both. > Over 9 million people die from hunger related causes, which while not a disease is 18x strep A Not really relevant. The people who have expertise in developing vaccines and the people who have expertise in "fixing hunger" are not the same people. > the scale and the fact that it can be treated with common antibiotics means that we can put the effort and resources that would be spent on a vaccine to better use elsewhere That's not a good way to evaluate where to put resources. To borrow your example, maybe it will take 10x more time and 5x the cost to develop a vaccine for tuberculosis vs. strep A. Then working on strep A sounds like a good allocation of resources. Just offering that as an example; I of course don't know the relative resource requirements here. But things are not so simple. (Though going back to your cancer example: I feel pretty safe in guessing it would take way more than 18x the resources and effort to cure all forms of cancer than to develop a strep A vaccine.) And regardless, resources are usually not allocated in the most simple, efficient way. People work on things because they want to, and can find someone to fund them. Funders might want to fund something because they have a personal connection to the thing they're funding. Certainly government grants are given with a bit more rigor than that, but there's a lot of disease-fighting out there that comes from a variety of sources. And that's ok.
  - fallous 2y ago
    Nearly all hunger-related deaths are due to the political environment they live in (including wars). Of course such environments also disproportionately include those who cannot gain access to antibiotics as well. You could argue that vaccines would be hampered by the same environmental issues, but the window of stability necessary to vaccinate a person for life is much smaller and easier than the repeated stability moments required to gain access to antibiotics in a timely fashion for those infected with Strep A. The question of prioritization of resources is not merely dependent upon the number of those affected, the creation of an effective vaccine is unpredictable. You're better off taking a broad approach in order to maximize the likelihood of success.
- alt227 2y ago
  We shouldnt be trying to erradicate diseases which keep population numbers in check. The world will run out of food fast and there will be widespread famine and starvation like the world has never seen before.
  - pfdietz 2y ago
    Your comments there have no connection to reality. The major population issue facing the world going forward is intractable decline in birth rates leading to population collapse.
Fomite 2y ago
Achieving the equivalent of "What if no one died for three days?" every year is a massive achievement on the same scale of the wildest dreams of most of the people on this site.
- thaumasiotes 2y ago
  In terms of difficulty, perhaps. In terms of significance, it's an achievement on the same scale as sleeping late on the weekend.
  - kelnos 2y ago
    I think it's weird (and a bit callous) that you'd so casually dismiss the idea that saving 500,000 lives a year is something significant.
- alt227 2y ago
  > What if no one died for three days? The world would get massively overpopulated very quickly. Diseases maintain the balance of us with nature, if we eliminate them we are going to run out of food fast.
  - zaptrem 2y ago
    This isn’t true in any way we could reasonably reach. The world has an insane amount of potential food output. A huge portion of the food the US produces goes directly in the trash instead of being used.
    - naveen99 2y ago
      Do you have numbers ? There used to be famines. And countries still fight over water. what is the carrying capacity in terms of food production on earth ? 10 billion, 100 billion ? At a trillion, the world would be at Singapore’s population density I think.
      - 2y ago

Probably because a half million a year is a rounding error in global mortality. It sounds like a lot but the daily global mortality rate, when last I checked, was something like 170,000 per day.

vladmk 2y ago

That's easy to say, but not productive. What are the diseases that kill the most people we should be working on?

Traubenfuchs 2y ago
Cardiovascular diseases, cancers, respiratory infects. Strep A is technically solved due to being easily treatable with common antibiotics.
- kelnos 2y ago
  And yet a half million people still get it and die. Doesn't sound "solved" to me ("technically" or otherwise). I'm not sure if mass vaccination campaigns would be more effective than hoping people see a doctor when they get sick (seems like a lot don't) and hoping they are able to pay for a full course of antibiotics (seems like a lot can't), and hoping they actually stick with it and take the full course (many people in general don't). At least with vaccinations, it's usually one shot every $DECENTLY_NOT_SHORT_INTERVAL, and that's it. Granted, crazy stupid antivax sentiment is on the rise...
slillibri 2y ago
Cancer kills over 9 million people per year, or 18x strep A. Tuberculosis kills nearly 1.5 million people per year, or 3x. Over 9 million people die from hunger related causes, which while not a disease is 18x strep A. It's not to demean the people who die from strep A, because to each of their families it's a tragedy, but the scale and the fact that it can be treated with common antibiotics means that we can put the effort and resources that would be spent on a vaccine to better use elsewhere.
- kelnos 2y ago
  > Cancer kills over 9 million people per year "Cancer" isn't one disease though, it's hundreds, and many of them require completely different approaches to treat. > Tuberculosis kills nearly 1.5 million people per year, or 3x So in other words, yes, it would be "worth it" to develop a vaccine for strep A. It would also be worth it to develop a vaccine for tuberculosis. Let's do both. > Over 9 million people die from hunger related causes, which while not a disease is 18x strep A Not really relevant. The people who have expertise in developing vaccines and the people who have expertise in "fixing hunger" are not the same people. > the scale and the fact that it can be treated with common antibiotics means that we can put the effort and resources that would be spent on a vaccine to better use elsewhere That's not a good way to evaluate where to put resources. To borrow your example, maybe it will take 10x more time and 5x the cost to develop a vaccine for tuberculosis vs. strep A. Then working on strep A sounds like a good allocation of resources. Just offering that as an example; I of course don't know the relative resource requirements here. But things are not so simple. (Though going back to your cancer example: I feel pretty safe in guessing it would take way more than 18x the resources and effort to cure all forms of cancer than to develop a strep A vaccine.) And regardless, resources are usually not allocated in the most simple, efficient way. People work on things because they want to, and can find someone to fund them. Funders might want to fund something because they have a personal connection to the thing they're funding. Certainly government grants are given with a bit more rigor than that, but there's a lot of disease-fighting out there that comes from a variety of sources. And that's ok.
- fallous 2y ago
  Nearly all hunger-related deaths are due to the political environment they live in (including wars). Of course such environments also disproportionately include those who cannot gain access to antibiotics as well. You could argue that vaccines would be hampered by the same environmental issues, but the window of stability necessary to vaccinate a person for life is much smaller and easier than the repeated stability moments required to gain access to antibiotics in a timely fashion for those infected with Strep A. The question of prioritization of resources is not merely dependent upon the number of those affected, the creation of an effective vaccine is unpredictable. You're better off taking a broad approach in order to maximize the likelihood of success.
alt227 2y ago
We shouldnt be trying to erradicate diseases which keep population numbers in check. The world will run out of food fast and there will be widespread famine and starvation like the world has never seen before.
- pfdietz 2y ago
  Your comments there have no connection to reality. The major population issue facing the world going forward is intractable decline in birth rates leading to population collapse.

Fomite 2y ago

Achieving the equivalent of "What if no one died for three days?" every year is a massive achievement on the same scale of the wildest dreams of most of the people on this site.

thaumasiotes 2y ago
In terms of difficulty, perhaps. In terms of significance, it's an achievement on the same scale as sleeping late on the weekend.
- kelnos 2y ago
  I think it's weird (and a bit callous) that you'd so casually dismiss the idea that saving 500,000 lives a year is something significant.
alt227 2y ago
> What if no one died for three days? The world would get massively overpopulated very quickly. Diseases maintain the balance of us with nature, if we eliminate them we are going to run out of food fast.
- zaptrem 2y ago
  This isn’t true in any way we could reasonably reach. The world has an insane amount of potential food output. A huge portion of the food the US produces goes directly in the trash instead of being used.
  - naveen99 2y ago
    Do you have numbers ? There used to be famines. And countries still fight over water. what is the carrying capacity in terms of food production on earth ? 10 billion, 100 billion ? At a trillion, the world would be at Singapore’s population density I think.
    - 2y ago