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The most effective malaria vaccine yet discovered

blogs.sciencemag.org

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Re: The most effective malaria vaccine yet discovered

#141

Post by nicoburns »

tasty_freeze wrote: post #137
cmckn wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up in Alabama, and remember a few times a summer seeing the "mosquito truck" drive by, spraying pesticide as I played in the yard. I guess it works!

We had those growing up in suburban Chicago too -- in my case in the 70s. The trucks would only appear at dusk. We dumb kids thought the fog was a hoot so we would jump on our bikes and chase behind the truck hooting at the novelty, breathing in who knows what chemicals. I can still remember the smell.

> breathing in who knows what chemicals

Probably DDT. Not thwebest of ideas!

Re: The most effective malaria vaccine yet discovered

#142

Post by Someone »

jefftk wrote: post #49
throwaway5752 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's incorrect to say it looks like sniffles in comparison. This is basically severity / priority in software. If we left sars-covid-19 without mitigation for a century, it would catch up rapidly. You compare things over relevant intervals. There are far more influenza deaths over the last 3 decades than ebola, but ebola is far more severe and greater concern.

> If we left sars-covid-19 without mitigation for a century, it would catch up rapidly. I think that's probably wrong? The most likely outcome would be that after the initial pandemic subsided (with lots of deaths), most people would catch it when they were reasonably young and then be mostly protected. This is different from malaria, which is much more deadly.

I think the most likely outcome is that it will become like the flu: not that deadly in Western society, but mutating too rapidly for protection to last long, and still killing many elderly and people with chronic health conditions each year (according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza, Influenza kills over half a million people each year)

(Both are RNA viruses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthornavirae)

Re: The most effective malaria vaccine yet discovered

#143

Post by pjscott »

hackerbabz wrote: post #133
todd8 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although some posts suggest that the USA may experience malaria at some point in the future because of global warming; in actuality, the USA has already experienced malaria. In 1882, the range of malaria in the USA extended from the Canadian border on the north to southern border with Mexico on the south. The only states of the current 48 contiguous states unaffected were Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Idaho, Main, Vermont,…

This is something that has confused me for a long time. America definitely has mosquitoes (I’m from Washington, DC). How are there mosquitoes but no malaria?

It's bizarrely hard to find good explanations of this! The National Malaria Eradication Program, between 1947 and 1951, cut down on malaria transmission enough that the parasite was driven locally extinct. They drained wetlands where mosquitoes bred, sprayed house interiors and mosquito-heavy areas with DDT on a very large scale, and generally engineered a very specific ecological disaster, depriving the parasite of the human hosts needed for part of their reproductive lifecycle. Without enough infected humans, the parasites died out.

Crucially, they didn't need to get rid of all the mosquitoes to do this: they just needed to drive mosquito-to-human transmission low enough for long enough.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Malaria_Eradication_P...

Re: The most effective malaria vaccine yet discovered

#144

Post by [deleted] »

oblio wrote: post #134
argvargc wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Except for the age difference of the victims Right. Let's all just ignore that the majority of those killed by covid are around the average age of life expectancy, so that we can try and make the unprecedentedly panicked, massively-damaging and downright stupid multi-trillion dollar response to covid appear slightly less irrational and racist. Starving kills 9 million/year. They're mainly children of colour too, bu…

Why is it racism, though?

[deleted]

Re: The most effective malaria vaccine yet discovered

#145

Post by Zenst »

ff-- wrote: post #132
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up in Africa. We weren't as scared of Ebola, as we were, of good old Malaria. It's also the gift that keeps on giving. Once you get it, it does a reunion tour, every now and then, for the rest of your life. At the dinner table, we (expats) used to have a bowl of quinine tablets, set out like a condiment. I really hope this works out, because, thanks to climate change, the lower 48 may get a chance to find some…

Malaria used to be common in the US until the 1950s or so. It was eradicated through extensive mosquito control and engineering efforts. Rich countries can cope; it's the developing world that's thoroughly boned, at least until industrial capabilities catch up.

> Malaria used to be common in the US until the 1950s or so.

I had no idea of that, as I suspect many given the time past if you wasn't around then. Did a little digging and nicely covered here: https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/history/index.html

Which makes me wonder - what the cost of malaria drugs are and how much would it cost to eradicate it. Equally have the true environmental and ecological aspects of eradication methods been analysed. I wasn't aware that mosquito's were pollinators until a while back, not that anything usurps Bee's, but many insects are pollinators and in some area's they may even be crucial as a species.

After all the 1950's approach was basic killing of the mosquito's and whilst that may of been a solution for one area like the US, I'm not sure that approach would be taken as much today and for Africa, certainly as I mentioned, the whole pollinator aspect of mosquito's may make for a more fragile ecosystem that removal of a species would be more impaction than the gains.

I always found it fascinating that malaria has been around so long that a genetic mutation evolved in some that makes them immune to it.

Re: The most effective malaria vaccine yet discovered

#146

Post by Fomite »

User23 wrote: post #135
Fomite wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We tried it in Africa. A lot . DDT is great - it's cheap, it's persistent, and there was a heady note of optimism that we might be able to drive malaria to extinction via vector control. Then DDT-resistance developed in the mosquitos. Combined with the health and ecological concerns around it, its use was largely halted. It's been reinvigorated recently as malaria incidence has rose, but it's a trade-off that it woul…

Isn’t DDT resistance a result of so-called “responsible” usage like DDT coated netting instead of overwhelming application such as in the USA? It’s the same principle as antibiotic resistance: under-dosing selects for resistance.

DDT resistance arose during a time when it was extremely intensively used to try to wipe out malaria-carrying mosquito populations. It's certainly sustained by the more moderate uses of it, but at this point, that ship has sort of sailed.

It's been reintroduced in some countries as well - it's effective, and it's an important tool, but it's not nearly enough. And indoor residual spraying with DDT for malaria control remains fairly controversial - I fall in the camp of "It's probably worth it, but anything we can do to minimize it is a thing worth pursuing."

Re: The most effective malaria vaccine yet discovered

#147

Post by wizzwizz4 »

oblio wrote: post #134
argvargc wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Except for the age difference of the victims Right. Let's all just ignore that the majority of those killed by covid are around the average age of life expectancy, so that we can try and make the unprecedentedly panicked, massively-damaging and downright stupid multi-trillion dollar response to covid appear slightly less irrational and racist. Starving kills 9 million/year. They're mainly children of colour too, bu…

Why is it racism, though?

It isn't inherently racism (though there is racism involved). It's more a NIMBY type effect, but in reverse, I think – “it doesn't affect me, so I don't have to think about it” type thing.

Re: The most effective malaria vaccine yet discovered

#148

Post by dang »

anonymous4759 wrote: post #79
dang wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN is not a person - it can't have human qualities like being hypocritical about something. That would be like calling a room hypocritical because people in it disagree. The community is a statistical cloud of people whose views are all over the place. While I have you: could you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.y…

I've used throwaway accounts here for a decade, since I post infrequently and don't care about karma, and it's never been a problem. Further, my comment wasn't flamebait (or anything otherwise objectionable) and shouldn't have been flagged. While I have you, dang: the flagging on this site is out of control. Why do you allow users to so easily hide from others comments they dislike? The downvoting, I don't care about…

Although I turned off the flags on your comment, I don't agree that it wasn't flamebait. It was off-topic, generic, and provocative. It was even name-calling too ("ghastly"). That's a flamebait cocktail.

Creating accounts for every few comments you post is a problem for the reason I just explained. Doing it for a decade doesn't make it ok. It makes it worse!

In a way, this is a freeloader problem. The richness of the community here comes from people interacting and relating with each other over time. On HN people are welcome to do that anonymously (pseudonymously, for those who speak pedantic), but still need some identity for others to relate to. If you don't contribute that, you're freeloading in the sense that you're benefiting from what other people are giving, without giving anything comparable of yourself. That undermines the community. If everyone did it, we would have no community.

Throwaway accounts are ok on occasion when there's some sensitive relevant information that shouldn't be linked to the main identity—but note that I said on occasion. Using them as a matter of course is abusive. That's also in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Re: The most effective malaria vaccine yet discovered

#149

Post by [deleted] »

oblio wrote: post #134
argvargc wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Except for the age difference of the victims Right. Let's all just ignore that the majority of those killed by covid are around the average age of life expectancy, so that we can try and make the unprecedentedly panicked, massively-damaging and downright stupid multi-trillion dollar response to covid appear slightly less irrational and racist. Starving kills 9 million/year. They're mainly children of colour too, bu…

Why is it racism, though?

[deleted]

Re: The most effective malaria vaccine yet discovered

#150

Post by londons_explore »

pjscott wrote: post #143
hackerbabz wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something that has confused me for a long time. America definitely has mosquitoes (I’m from Washington, DC). How are there mosquitoes but no malaria?

It's bizarrely hard to find good explanations of this! The National Malaria Eradication Program, between 1947 and 1951, cut down on malaria transmission enough that the parasite was driven locally extinct. They drained wetlands where mosquitoes bred, sprayed house interiors and mosquito-heavy areas with DDT on a very large scale, and generally engineered a very specific ecological disaster, depriving the parasite of…

If this were the complete story then just a single person coming back to the USA infected would lead to mass infection...

Clearly that hasn't happened.

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