5 ms·
Eliminating malaria may or may not be possible. If you look at the work that Jimmy Carter and others have done to eradicate Guinea Worm -- reaching a low of 14
by x0x0 12y ago
Eliminating malaria may or may not be possible. If you look at the work that Jimmy Carter and others have done to eradicate Guinea Worm -- reaching a low of 148 people infected in 2013, down from 3.5e6 in 2013 -- it is now primarily a political problem. The last infections are in south Sudan.
If Gates can accomplish this, eradicating malaria is a worthy coda of a life.
- cma 12y agoAnd on the other side, the fake vaccine drive used to locate Osama bin Laden (or at least the leaking of it) might turn out to dwarf the September 11th attacks--it may keep polio from being eradicated. Hopefully it just delays the eradication. Back on topic: how does Gates want to address animal vectors for malaria? Nothing in the blog post.
- x0x0 12y agoIt's one of the things that makes me wonder what useless worthless fuckwit thought that was possibly okay to do. We have enough -- and often for good reason! -- problems getting vaccines to certain countries; indisputable evidence the cia was testing identities subverts all the trust people have worked to build.
- rmc 12y agoI don't think it was a fake vaccination, they just got some extra blood. However it does prove that "it's all a CIA plot" is an actual possibility. Some charities (like MSF) are incredibly anti-political for exactly this reason. Some charities (like US AID) are not/
- peteretep 12y ago> Some charities (like US AID) US Aid is neither a charity, nor an NGO. They're a government agency, their employees go to countries on diplomatic passports, and the whole point of a government International Aid program is politics.
- cma 12y agoI should have been clear--it isn't that it was fake, it was that it caused many people in Pakistan to stop getting vaccinated.
- rmc 12y agoAh, it was a fake drive to give out vaccines, not that it was a drive of fake vaccines. If English allowed better adjective orders, we could say a vaccine fake drive.
- thaumaturgy 12y ago> Back on topic: how does Gates want to address animal vectors for malaria? Nothing in the blog post. This is only a guess, but Gates has been funding several different efforts to combat the mosquitoes themselves. One of them was something the HN crowd might appreciate: a "laser fence", an automated sentry that was remarkably able to detect mosquitoes in the air and cook them to death.
- bglazer 12y agoAssuming that you're referring to the "Photonic Fence" by Intellectual Ventures[1], you're actually going to get a pretty cold reception from many on HN. Intellectual Ventures and their founder, Nathan Myrhvold, are considered to be patent trolls by many HN'ers. [2][3] [1] http://www.intellectualventures.com/inventions-patents http://www.intellectualventures.com/inventions-patents /our-inventions/photonic-fence/ [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1134762 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1134762 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7090524 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7090524
- DanBC 12y agoNot just detect mosquitos, but discriminate between the female of the particular species that spreads malaria and all other bugs. Sadly, myhrvold. https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Photonic+fence#!/comment/forever/0/Photonic%20fence https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Photonic+fence#!/comment/forever/0...
- tim333 12y agoShould be 3.5e6 cases in 1986