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Scientist who helped eradicate smallpox dies at age 89

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Scientist who helped eradicate smallpox dies at age 89

#131

Post by flufluflufluffy »

somenameforme wrote: post #113
epistasis wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps I'm overly an optimist, but I have a feeling we will develop the informational and psychological technology to combat the destructive misinformation campaigns that brainwash people into harming their children with anti-vaccine beliefs. We are not there yet, because the destructive media forces are too new and we haven't developed defenses against information diseases like RFK Jr. But we will get there. Two st…

People can simply have different perspectives on things. Measels has mortality rate of around 0.1% while small pox has a mortality rate of around 30%. So the individual risk from measels is relatively low leaving plenty of room for individual choice. There's less room for the same argument with small pox. In fact small pox is where the term vaccine comes from - it was observed that milk maids weren't getting smallpox…

Your child being vaccinated against measles is 1. yes, protecting them, but 2. also protecting all the other children at school they interact with, and vice-versa. It isn’t just an individual choice. You should definitely fault people for going the other direction because they are willingly increasing the chance of your child or your child’s friends getting measles.

Re: Scientist who helped eradicate smallpox dies at age 89

#132

Post by lukan »

NetMageSCW wrote: post #128
Spooky23 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty easy. The only limits are your imagination and depravity. You launch the rocket, drop an orbital vehicle behind, and land. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. That vehicle could deorbit and drop a tungsten penetrator, smallpox, a nuclear device or any number of things. All funded by a combination of government spending and defrauding the public via the Tesla Ponzi scheme.

Dropping a tungsten penetrator from orbit is an idea only science fiction can justify. In the real world the economics never close.

Huh?

In the real world we so far just managed to keep space free of military weapons not because they are expensive, but because of treaties. I just don't expect those to last much longer.

And frankly I never looked into the concept, but why do you think, a space base tungsten penetrator would be way more expensive, than a nuke on a missile?

Re: Scientist who helped eradicate smallpox dies at age 89

#133

Post by jfengel »

somenameforme wrote: post #119
jfengel wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that if people observed what a 1 in 1,000 chance of a dead child looked like, they'd have a much easier time making the decision.

A friend's favorite Wiki page is on the micromort. [1] I found it kind of banal, but perhaps that's my more casual attitude towards death. I suspect the average person doesn't realize, or doesn't accept, how brief life truly is. One micromort is something with a 1 in a million chance of death. So with measels, we're talking about 1000 micromorts, if you're infected - which is also extremely unlikely. So if you give y…

In a world with a low vaccination rate, infection with measles is practically 100%. It spreads more easily than COVID.

You can take your risk with herd immunity if you want. That works well now, with a near universal vaccination rate. But if the rate drops below 90%, then you will get infected.

Re: Scientist who helped eradicate smallpox dies at age 89

#134

Post by Mordisquitos »

WalterBright wrote: post #126
Mordisquitos wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure that GP commenter was referring to the other stuff.

He shouldn't leave people guessing what he was referring to.

Maybe not, but one can always converse curiously and ask them what they meant. It's nicer to respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize.

Re: Scientist who helped eradicate smallpox dies at age 89

#135

Post by Y-bar »

adastra22 wrote: post #120
Y-bar wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not alone, but as a team I bet he did. Just as Fritz Haber did not personally save countless millions with his discovery, thousands of other people had to be involved there as well.

Billions. The total carrying capacity of the Earth maxes out at 4bn people, even with maximally optimized agriculture and a vegetarian diet. The extra half of the Earth's population today owe their existence to Haber-Bosch. It really was a two-man team that discovered nitrogen fixation - the other being not Carl Bosch, but Robert Le Rossignol who assisted Haber in developing his bench-scale nitrogen fixing reactor. C…

Please not that this was in relation to whether or not a general doctor saves lives… A lot of work is indirect.

The Haber–Bosch process was never a two‑man mission to “feed the world.” Haber devised a laboratory method to fix nitrogen, and Bosch led the first industrial‑scale implementation, but neither of them was personally producing, optimizing, transporting, and applying fertilizer across the globe. Turning that reaction into most of the world’s nitrogen fertilizer required teams of chemists, engineers, metalworkers, factory operators, agronomists, logistics workers, and farmers, and an entire century of industrial expansion. If it truly were a two‑person accomplishment, we would only need a handful of farmers per country, which is obviously not how agriculture or industry work.

Re: Scientist who helped eradicate smallpox dies at age 89

#136

Post by throw20251220 »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #108
throw20251220 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why does it matter if it was Obama or Bush in power? How can you open a war crime case against a guy who already got a Peace Nobel Prize? And what war crime? Was there a war? Maybe some special military operation against Bin Laden.

> How can you open a war crime case against a guy who already got a Peace Nobel Prize? Henry Kissinger (1973 Nobel Peace Prize together with Lê Đức Thọ) can be considered a war criminal: > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trial_of_Henry_Kissinger Yasser Arafat (1994 Nobel Peace Prize together with Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres) was also very likely a war criminal.

Should’ve could’ve. If the grandma had a moustache she would be the grandpa.

Re: Scientist who helped eradicate smallpox dies at age 89

#137

Post by belorn »

atoav wrote: post #116
belorn wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the period of 2010-2012, the president at the time was Barack Obama. It does not seem realistic that people would accept opening a criminal case.

I would accept it if it even if it was done by Ghandi.

It is approaches like that which gives some hope to the future. War crimes are indeed something which should never be allowed or overlooked. Being a political leader doesn't make people immune to criticism, but rather should be someone held to a higher expectation.

Re: Scientist who helped eradicate smallpox dies at age 89

#138

Post by WalterBright »

Mordisquitos wrote: post #134
WalterBright wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He shouldn't leave people guessing what he was referring to.

Maybe not, but one can always converse curiously and ask them what they meant. It's nicer to respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize.

My replies ended in question marks.

Re: Scientist who helped eradicate smallpox dies at age 89

#139

Post by andrewflnr »

WalterBright wrote: post #138
Mordisquitos wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe not, but one can always converse curiously and ask them what they meant. It's nicer to respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize.

My replies ended in question marks.

You're really going to play the "just asking questions" card? You're smarter than this. Or should be.
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