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.
"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.
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.
Considering that strep A deaths are probably 100x easier to prevent than cancer deaths, this means that’s we should focus on Strep A at least as much as on cancer.
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.
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.
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...
SMH and Zendesk responds the wrong way on his post. Guys, just pay the kid instead you're making business owners like me start recommending my friends and clients against using Zendesk...
I don't know where you're based but if you're out of the US, then by design the clients you're working with want it cheap. But between cheap and ridiculously pricey, there is a world of freelancers that are just reasonably priced but not cheap -- and similarly, clients who have those budgets (even if for short durations).
all the lessons would be way too long to write, but here’s a fun crazy one:
I had a stalker once who complained to my employer (this was after I rejected her) that I was harassing them.
Her mom came down to our office to complain about me - what ended up happening was even crazier.
My team was behind me because it was impossible for me to harass her and kept telling her to leave me alone, but my manager called me in to the office anyways.
I told him to ask the team and that it was false, but he gave me advice that I still utilize to this day.
“Vlad when cleaning a mess, use the lightest detergent first”.
It was very simple, so I apologized to her and surprisingly things smoothened out a bit. All it took was for me to be more cordial towards this girl.
Now here’s the crazy kicker - my boss who gave me that exact same advice was later kicked out of the school on sexual abuse charges so sometimes I wonder if his detergent lesson wasn’t a metaphor.
> "We regard political conservatism as an ideological belief system that is significantly (but not completely) related to motivational concerns having to do with the psychological management of uncertainty and fear."
This whole article is about how & whether to grapple with uncertainty & fear. There's a disposition to try to convince ourselves that the other sciences can give us good data, that research beyond just doing it is good & valuable. Get validation! That's a business cry, from people who believe in business ends. But whether these lo-fi facimilies of data really represent what the real answers are is the question.
This article tries to sell just doing it. But really, it's a hit job against the business types. It's a hit job against the non believers. Either get on the wagon & try for it, or get the heck out. Don't make the process of doing it worse. That's what most searching for validation is. This is entirely an issue of political alignment, of positive versus negative politics.
