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Ask HN: How to get Bill Gates's attention?

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Re: Ask HN: How to get Bill Gates's attention?

#51

Post by danieltillett »

keanzu wrote: post #50
danieltillett wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you looked into my background? I know all about how the how the system works. I am not looking to avoid hard work. As for why Bill Gates I specifically said I am looking for people with the clout to make this happens - while I am sure Bill would understand my proposal so would lots of other smart people. I don’t wish to be snarky, but yes you have misunderstood my proposal.

> people with the clout to make this happen You said you are in Australia? The Australian government has the clout to make this happen.

But we don’t have the cases. I am not the Australian government, but if you happen to have the direct line to our PM I will be most happy for you to make a call and set up a meeting.

Re: Ask HN: How to get Bill Gates's attention?

#52

Post by danieltillett »

certera wrote: post #43
danieltillett wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes this is true, but it has nothing to do with finding an attenuated strain. I addressed this in my post and yes many people who have a mild symptoms are infected with a dangerous strain, but an attenuated strain will only cause mild symptoms. If you want to find an attenuated strain you have to look in people with mild symptoms.

> If you want to find an attenuated strain you have to look in people with mild symptoms Shouldn't we be looking at people with no symptoms? I know this is not ideal as we're likely only testing symptomatic people.

Yes we want to test asymptomatic people too. Some countries like Germany and South Korea are doing are better job of testing widely and so they have many more mild/asymptomatic samples that can be screened.

Re: Ask HN: How to get Bill Gates's attention?

#53

Post by newsbinator »

IMTDb wrote: post #19
hannob wrote: post #10

So I'm no expert in medical sciences, but have some basic knowledge. Here's what I think: You're basically proposing a form of vaccination. Essentially everyone knows that a vaccine would be the way out of this mess. There's loads of research on Vaccines for Covid-19 right now. Your idea isn't exceptionally surprising, as you write yourself it's close to how some of the early vaccines worked. I am reasonably convince…

> Given that you want to give it to potentially almost everyone on the planet, you want to be really sure. This is why I have a hard time with the current crisis. We are in what is now universally called a "global health crisis". Measures are being taken to help prevent the virus that are incredibly costly for the economy, which will cost hundreds of thousands of jobs, and that will indirectly kill thousands of peopl…

If you give people a vaccine that doesn't work, or worse a vaccine that does more harm than good (or appears that way), then you explode the anti-vax movement into the rule rather than the exception.

No subsequent vaccine, even an effective one, would be tolerated.

It's not worth getting wrong.

Re: Ask HN: How to get Bill Gates's attention?

#55

Post by danieltillett »

toxot wrote: post #41

Chinese researchers on findings of a less deadly strain, preprint March 10: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.10.20033944v... We found, in our 788 confirmed COVID-19 patients, the decreased rate of severe/critical type, increased liver/kidney damage and prolonged period of nuclear acid positivity during virus dissemination, when compared with Wuhan. To investigate the underlining mechanism, we isolated…

Yep this is exactly the sort of mutant we want to look for, but ideally we want a strain with a gene deletion not just point mutations to lessen the chance of back mutations. It does prove that there are less pathogenic strains out there, there just needs to be an effort put into finding them.

Re: Ask HN: How to get Bill Gates's attention?

#56

Post by danieltillett »

sjg007 wrote: post #36

Seems overly complex. Why not just inject live virus into people's glutes? At dose low enough to trigger a response hopefully not enough to cause pathogenesis.

It is actually extreme simple. You suggestion of injecting virus into people’s gluts is a vaccine, just one that is unlikely to work well and be dangerous as well. I have explained why vaccines are not the answer.

Re: Ask HN: How to get Bill Gates's attention?

#57

Post by m33k44 »

danieltillett wrote: post #49
m33k44 wrote: post #34

I read somewhere that Bill Gates is very active on social media e.g. Reddit and Twitter. Here is one of the AMAs he did on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5whpqs/im_bill_gates_... A recent AMA related to covid-19. There are references to his team and adviser: https://www.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/comments/fksnbf/im_bill... His Reddit handle is: https://www.reddit.com/user/thisisbillgates His Twitter han…

Yes in an ideal world I should just be able to write to Bill and he will have the time to consider my proposal seriously. In the real world the only way to get the attention of someone like Bill is to have someone he takes seriously bring it to his attention. Hence the post here.

In the last AMA on Reddit he did provide information about the people to whom he listens. I am posting the link to the AMA again here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/comments/fksnbf/im_bill...

Dr. Trevor Mundel[0], who leads the Gates Foundation’s global health work, and Dr. Niranjan Bose[1], Bill Gates' chief scientific adviser.

[0] https://www.gatesfoundation.org/Who-We-Are/General-Informati...

[1] https://www.linkedin.com/in/niranjan-bose-014b00

Re: Ask HN: How to get Bill Gates's attention?

#58

Post by sjg007 »

danieltillett wrote: post #56
sjg007 wrote: post #36

Seems overly complex. Why not just inject live virus into people's glutes? At dose low enough to trigger a response hopefully not enough to cause pathogenesis.

It is actually extreme simple. You suggestion of injecting virus into people’s gluts is a vaccine, just one that is unlikely to work well and be dangerous as well. I have explained why vaccines are not the answer.

It might be a lower risk to innoculate in the the glute then getting a primary infection in the lung first. We do not know yet and that's what vaccine trials are for. We know that the spike protein is probably the target though. That protein and fragments can be amplified and expressed and tested as vaccines.

Your search for a live attenuated strain would probably take 18 months minimum and probably longer. You need widespread testing and sequencing which are both in short supply. You also need outcome data. You would also need a sufficient sample size and then hope that your predicted attentuated cohort is say not just all young people.

Sars-Cov2 mutation rate is https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global?l=clock

Re: Ask HN: How to get Bill Gates's attention?

#60

Post by mrfusion »

danieltillett wrote: post #29
singularity2001 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a good idea, but just like the other dozens of possible vaccines it still needs to go through all trial phases, so it's not quicker than the other vaccines which could 'potentially be deployed today' (RNA etc)

No it doesn’t which is the reason why the idea is more than an idea for another vaccine. Even if it did it, it would be a ecological solution that would mean we could stop vaccinating in the future - a bit like how we were able to stop vaccinating for smallpox once the attenuated viral vaccine drove it to extinction in the wild.

Why would it need less trials than a vaccine? Are there special regulations?
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