Ending respiratory infections

> Why haven’t we already seen the same kind of transformation with respiratory viruses?

My favorite conspiracy-adjacent theory is that pharmaceutical companies don’t have any intention to give up the multi-billion dollar market of cold and respiratory infections palliatives. Even if there is no ill intent, there are just no market or capitalistic incentives, because a one-shot solution for these pathogens is not going to create a market as rich as the previous one.

To me this is the perfect representation of why believing the market is a positive force is wrong. If not for external pressure, in this case the market clearly signals that it’s best for us all to keep getting colds.

No idea of whether those people ar competent, or if it's a PR stunt. Good luck to them. I've joked often enough that "a vaccine for common cold" would have changed my life.

Also, I'm:

- happy that they don't claim the breakthrough will come from AI or Blockchain, for once

- a bit surprised that they got founding by both openAi and Anthropic (so of course they'll try to solve a few things with ai and Blockchain, but,who knows.) Aren't those companies loosing vast amount of money at the moment ? What are they doing philanthropy with ? Just borrowing ? Or are investors for their Series XYZ usually ok with the owner using the money to fund pet projects (even if here, the "pet project" is a good idea, and potentially a good customer/ ?

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For me personally, I never was so sick in my life as when my children were between starting nursery school and 3. It was not just respiratory diseases: It was also the time in my life I and my wife had frequent digestive infections. Ohh my...How many times I could not move for 2 days. It felt like I was 80 years old, mixed with the hardest symptoms of food poisoning.

I got sick so often it limited a lot my general life: I stopped practicing sports regularly and started being very careful with sleep(sleep deprivation likely increased the chance of infection), because I knew if I did not lead a perfectly balanced lifestyle I would get sick. I am quite upset I stopped running 15km per week, even with snow. I never fully went back to it, due to fear of getting sick, and having to take care of toddlers while being feverish or nauseated.

In those years I think I was not disease free more than 3 months at a time. In a year where many people decide to not have children, it does not help the cause of having children seeing other parents suffer so much, in those early years. I have non parent friends that get sick after meeting us, resenting meeting us and asking if we are sick, because they spent all the night in the bathroom or with fever. Fortunately it feels we are already immune because we are not sick very often anymore.

The tricky part is that the benefit is invisible. If it works, nothing happens: people just get sick less often. That is a hard thing to sell to building owners and employers unless the evidence and standards are really solid