4 ms·

Isn't everything? I don't think we've completely eradicated ANYTHING other than smallpox.

a_c_s 12y ago
We've gotten smallpox and rinderpest, and we are getting close (a few hundred cases per year) on others, including Polio and Dracunculiasis. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eradication_of_infectious_diseases http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eradication_of_infectious_disea...
mikeash 12y ago
It's a different problem, though. The solution to polio is known, and has been for decades. It's just ("just") a problem with implementation. Given sufficient resources, not all that much really, and polio could be gone in a year. HIV, on the other hand, still has no cure nor vaccine. Even given, say, the entire GDP of the United States put towards solving it, there's no guarantee it could be wiped out.
- serge2k 12y ago
  HIV has very preventable transmission. Given resources properly allocated you could potentially drastically lower the transmission rate.
  - mikeash 12y ago
    Indeed, but i think it would be really hard to actually eliminate it entirely. Infected people can still live for decades with it and slip-ups happen, especially if the disease becomes much more rare and people stop thinking about it. In contrast, most of us will never be able to contract polio no matter what we do, because we're immunized.
    - hga 12y ago
      There are also occasionally mass casualty events where some of the rigorous safety protocols are ignored in favor of saving lives. My home town of 55K was hit by an EF5 tornado, killing ~155, hospitalizing over 1,000, with I don't know how many outpatient wounded. And it trashed one of our two hospitals.... Read http://stormdoctor.blogspot.com/2011/06/first-response-mode-may-22-2011-joplin.html http://stormdoctor.blogspot.com/2011/06/first-response-mode-... for the ugly details, the relevant parts are: "Almost all patients were covered in some form of debris which tended to accumulate in skin folds or in the ears or mouth. On more than one occasion, shards of glass cut my gloves (but thankfully, never me). The floor was covered in so much blood in places, that it was a matter of throwing down towels to minimize the risk of slipping and falling. All my career I’d been trained about fluid precautions to avoid transmission of disease, yet in Joplin that night, the ER was a fine mist of all kinds of fluids—infectious and non—and the only thing that mattered was forward motion." Finished with an intense shift in ER, on his way to deal with uninjured patients evacuated from the other hospital: "[...] then we hit the waiting room. There were hundreds of people, blood on every surface, bandages outnumbered clothes...." And there were other places probably like that, e.g. lots of the personal of the other hospital set up operations in one of our main event venues.
      - mikeash 12y ago
        Scary. And a good point. So much emphasis is placed on sexual transmission of HIV that it's easy to forget that there are other ways.
      - sdrothrock 12y ago
        > There are also occasionally mass casualty events where some of the rigorous safety protocols are ignored in favor of saving lives. This is an old comment now, but I remembered it when I read about the Ebola specialist contracting Ebola. It just goes to show that bad things can happen even to experienced experts in the field.
hga 12y ago
Note the only candidates for eradication are those without a non-human reservoir. I.e. smallpox and polio yes, influenza no. See the link a_c_s provided for more.

a_c_s 12y ago

We've gotten smallpox and rinderpest, and we are getting close (a few hundred cases per year) on others, including Polio and Dracunculiasis. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eradication_of_infectious_diseases http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eradication_of_infectious_disea...

mikeash 12y ago

It's a different problem, though. The solution to polio is known, and has been for decades. It's just ("just") a problem with implementation. Given sufficient resources, not all that much really, and polio could be gone in a year. HIV, on the other hand, still has no cure nor vaccine. Even given, say, the entire GDP of the United States put towards solving it, there's no guarantee it could be wiped out.

serge2k 12y ago
HIV has very preventable transmission. Given resources properly allocated you could potentially drastically lower the transmission rate.
- mikeash 12y ago
  Indeed, but i think it would be really hard to actually eliminate it entirely. Infected people can still live for decades with it and slip-ups happen, especially if the disease becomes much more rare and people stop thinking about it. In contrast, most of us will never be able to contract polio no matter what we do, because we're immunized.
  - hga 12y ago
    There are also occasionally mass casualty events where some of the rigorous safety protocols are ignored in favor of saving lives. My home town of 55K was hit by an EF5 tornado, killing ~155, hospitalizing over 1,000, with I don't know how many outpatient wounded. And it trashed one of our two hospitals.... Read http://stormdoctor.blogspot.com/2011/06/first-response-mode-may-22-2011-joplin.html http://stormdoctor.blogspot.com/2011/06/first-response-mode-... for the ugly details, the relevant parts are: "Almost all patients were covered in some form of debris which tended to accumulate in skin folds or in the ears or mouth. On more than one occasion, shards of glass cut my gloves (but thankfully, never me). The floor was covered in so much blood in places, that it was a matter of throwing down towels to minimize the risk of slipping and falling. All my career I’d been trained about fluid precautions to avoid transmission of disease, yet in Joplin that night, the ER was a fine mist of all kinds of fluids—infectious and non—and the only thing that mattered was forward motion." Finished with an intense shift in ER, on his way to deal with uninjured patients evacuated from the other hospital: "[...] then we hit the waiting room. There were hundreds of people, blood on every surface, bandages outnumbered clothes...." And there were other places probably like that, e.g. lots of the personal of the other hospital set up operations in one of our main event venues.
    - mikeash 12y ago
      Scary. And a good point. So much emphasis is placed on sexual transmission of HIV that it's easy to forget that there are other ways.
    - sdrothrock 12y ago
      > There are also occasionally mass casualty events where some of the rigorous safety protocols are ignored in favor of saving lives. This is an old comment now, but I remembered it when I read about the Ebola specialist contracting Ebola. It just goes to show that bad things can happen even to experienced experts in the field.

hga 12y ago

Note the only candidates for eradication are those without a non-human reservoir. I.e. smallpox and polio yes, influenza no. See the link a_c_s provided for more.