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Ending respiratory infections

blog.interceptfund.com

101–110 of 146 posts

Re: Ending respiratory infections

#101
post #66

> Why haven’t we already seen the same kind of transformation with respiratory viruses? Because it’s a lot easier to control the supply of a material that has to be actively transported into people’s houses for them to use? I struggle to take them seriously when I didn’t see this basic and fundamental difference even mentioned.

Came here to say the same thing. It's simple to clean all the water you consume, cleaning all the air you breathe is impossible unless you want to walk around like Bane. Bizarre that they don't mention this when comparing respiratory infections to waterborne infections.

But you’re not carrying around your own water treatment mechanism either (unless you’re out hiking). It is relatively easy to install air purifiers or UVC lights in offices, schools, grocery stores, etc. The problem is that people don’t care enough about air quality and the ROI isn’t clear. Increasing the ventilation rate in an overstuffed co-working space has cost implications for the operator, but it doesn’t increase revenue.

Re: Ending respiratory infections

#102

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,w…

Your post is equalising the utility of blockchain and AI which means you have no idea about the utility of either of them.

My post should have used quotes around "AI and blockchain" (or maybe read "AI and blockain and VR and whatever").

By that I meant "they don't pretend they're going to solve a hard problem by vaguely handwaving at trendy buzzwords".

More seriously speaking, I suspect (and hope) that some form of machine learning / data generation could help in such an effort (AlphaFold is a thing, not a buzzword.)

The blockchain part is much more tongue in check, of course.

Re: Ending respiratory infections

#103
post #24

It's sad we're resorting to philanthropy to solve problems like this. $500M is chump change. NASA spent something like $300B in today's money on the Apollo program, and Artemis has exceeded $90B already. I'm much more keen on never getting sick than prepping for Mars.

The Iran war is going to cost us at least $200 billion dollars and you’re over here complaining about NASA spending?

Add to that more than $300 billion that the US has given to Israel as "aid". And as a thanks, a lost war with Iran with global economic implications.

https://www.cfr.org/articles/us-aid-israel-four-charts

Re: Ending respiratory infections

#104
post #69

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

It seems like implementing HEPA filters in every classrooms has the biggest effect. The kids are spreading disease, infecting their parents, who then infect their coworkers.

Nice to see they mention UV, too. Aerolamp[0] is down to ~$500. If it were $100, it'd be easy to get into offices, too. Heck, if I worked in person, I'd buy a $100 one as an employee.

[0] https://aerolamp.net/pages/about-aerolamp

Re: Ending respiratory infections

#105

> Healthy people spend roughly 15-25 days each year—about 5% of their lives—sick with respiratory infections like the common cold and influenza This seems completely unbelievable to me. Totally outside of my personal, professional, and family experience.

Being sick ~20 days per year was the norm for me before remote work (and using N95 masks after it ended). Some people are lucky, others are not. (well, "luck" actually encompasses many factors such as population density, presence/lack of children, mandatory office presence, proper infection countermeasures in public places (air filtering, aeration), and I assume sufficient sleep or not (the only time I did not get sick as often without masking was when I managed to sleep 8 hours a day for a few months))

Re: Ending respiratory infections

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry for your loss.

Thank you. It's crazy how quickly life can change. She filled out a healthcare directive when she was 24. Either she never gave it to her clinic or it didn't get transferred with her other files or something when she started going to a different hospital system. Anyway, the hospital she was in didn't have it. She was hospitalized for like 5 days before she passed. I found that healthcare directive that morning, just…

Heartbreaking. Sorry for your loss.

Re: Ending respiratory infections

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 li…

> I never fully went back to it, due to fear of getting sick Does running long distance increase the chance of getting sick?

Running requires resting for me, and I often do not have time to rest longer with the kids. Meals still need to be prepared, and kids need to be minded. Kids have a strict time to go to kinder garten so I still need to get up at 7.00 or 7.30AM. I don't have grandparents around, just me and my wife.

So if I am exhausted of a run and cannot rest or sleep, it is almost sure I get sick soon after. Just my experience.

Re: Ending respiratory infections

#108
First we need strong immune system for all. This is a huge endeavour that includes exercise, both aerobic and non, low stress and other interventions.

Drugs and medicine play a small role in resp viral infections.

Re: Ending respiratory infections

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No kids eh? My oldest starting preschool was one of the worst times in my life. We were sick from august to december, then january to may. Dreadful. It got better. My youngest is 3 now and is ahead of where my oldest was due to having 2 older siblings importing illnesses for several years, and this year we finally were mostly not sick all school year. Which is to say, we were probably closer to the 15 days "materiall…

This happened to us too, until I heard the podcast about Vitamin D. Nipped that in the bud almost immediately.

Yeah I took vitamin D all through my kids' nursery years, every morning, had strong belief in it.

I still was sick all the time. That combination of not enough sleep (kids crying in the night etc.), work stress and insane amount of viruses from nursery is killer.

Re: Ending respiratory infections

#110
post #3

My girlfriend died from human metapneumovirus at 30 years young. She had a weakened immune system from lymphangiomatosis, so something like metapneumovirus, which is a mild illness for most people, was a death sentence for her. I hope this fund is successful so nobody else ever has to go through what she did.

My wife has LAM. Was your girlfriend on medication hence the weakened immune system?
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