04-24-2021, 01:13 PM | #1 |
The Grand Mouse 高貴的老鼠
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Malaria Vaccine - good news for once!
There's very encouraging news from a trial of a new malaria vaccine. It gave 77% protection. There's a bigger trial taking place to confirm the results, but this is excellent news. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-56858158
Malaria infects around 200 million and kills around 400,000 people every year. (For comparison, SARS-CoV-2 has infected around 150 million and killed around 3 million over the past year) If this vaccines turns out to work as well as this result suggests, it could make a massive difference to the incidence of malaria. This is not only because people will be directly protected against the disease by the vaccine, but because malaria requires mosquitos to have bitten an infected human before they can pass the parasite on to other humans. If the number of people infected with malaria drops, so will the transmission rate. If enough people are immune to the disease, we might wipe malaria out altogether. |
04-24-2021, 01:33 PM | #2 |
Grand Sorcerer
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I'd like to caution that humanity doesn't have a good track record when it comes to completely eradicating diseases.
But even if we reduce malaria deaths by, say, 50% that's a big thing. |
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04-24-2021, 03:25 PM | #3 |
The Grand Mouse 高貴的老鼠
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Yeah, only done one so far. Polio's nearly there. The Guinea Worm is even more nearly there. Let's hope the 2020s will be the decade when another human disease is made extinct.
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04-24-2021, 07:54 PM | #4 |
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I'll second that!
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04-24-2021, 08:20 PM | #5 |
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04-25-2021, 11:06 AM | #6 |
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That is good news. My dad contracted malaria in the SW Pacific during WWII. According to mom, he had uncontrollable chills and issues with it for many years thereafter. It is a bad disease even if you survive it.
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04-25-2021, 02:49 PM | #7 |
The Grand Mouse 高貴的老鼠
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Unless the disease is only rare because of human attempts at eradication. Polio and Guinea worm are rare now only because of attempts at eradication. If we stopped trying to eradicate them, they would swiftly return in large numbers.
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04-25-2021, 08:23 PM | #8 | |
null operator (he/him)
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Quote:
Let's also hope that Boris Johnson's initiative to develop effective treatment for Covid-19 bears fruit - we did it for HIV/Aids. BR |
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04-25-2021, 10:57 PM | #9 |
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We had nearly eradicated malaria in the early 1960's. Then people started paying attention to Rachel Carson.
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04-26-2021, 01:09 AM | #10 |
The Grand Mouse 高貴的老鼠
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A gentle reminder to everyone, including me, that this thread is in the lounge.
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04-26-2021, 01:38 AM | #11 |
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Yep, I can relate. My father contracted malaria in India before Partition, had his last bout in the early 60s, nearly 20 years later.
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04-26-2021, 09:23 AM | #12 | |
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Quote:
https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/history/index.html and quote from it: (US government documents are PD on inception; hence quotable here.) "With the success of DDT, the advent of less toxic, more effective synthetic antimalarials, and the enthusiastic and urgent belief that time and money were of the essence, the World Health Organization (WHO) submitted at the World Health Assembly in 1955 an ambitious proposal for the eradication of malaria worldwide. Eradication efforts began and focused on house spraying with residual insecticides, antimalarial drug treatment, and surveillance, and would be carried out in 4 successive steps: preparation, attack, consolidation, and maintenance. Successes included elimination in nations with temperate climates and seasonal malaria transmission. Some countries such as India and Sri Lanka had sharp reductions in the number of cases, followed by increases to substantial levels after efforts ceased. Other nations had negligible progress (such as Indonesia, Afghanistan, Haiti, and Nicaragua). Some nations were excluded completely from the eradication campaign (most of sub-Saharan Africa). The emergence of drug resistance, widespread resistance to available insecticides, wars and massive population movements, difficulties in obtaining sustained funding from donor countries, and lack of community participation made the long-term maintenance of the effort untenable. Completion of the eradication campaign was eventually abandoned. " It was abandoned in 1969. also from The Lancet: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/l...612-1/fulltext See particularly paragraph 6 and 7. From the World Health Organization: https://www.who.int/whr/1999/en/whr99_ch4_en.pdf From the early 1950's to 1963, cases in Sri Lanka fell from over 1 million to 23. (See section "Control Strategies 1950-1990s) All these sources are non-political and are considered factually reliable. Now I have nothing but good wishes for the vaccine. But I am not optimistic that it will solve the problem over the long term. Last edited by Greg Anos; 04-26-2021 at 09:25 AM. |
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04-26-2021, 04:22 PM | #13 |
The Grand Mouse 高貴的老鼠
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I agree that it probably won't lead to eradication. But I do expect, if the early results prove accurate, that it will lead to a massive reduction in the number of Malaria cases in the world.
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04-26-2021, 07:57 PM | #14 |
null operator (he/him)
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04-27-2021, 02:10 AM | #15 | |
The Grand Mouse 高貴的老鼠
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Quote:
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