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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

#271

Post by galangalalgol »

bijant wrote: post #269
georgeam wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the bees will go lots of foods that depend on them for pollination. Bees are very essential for agriculture.

Bees are just another legacy producer ripe for disruption. With recent Progress in AI and Drone technology the question isn’t if Bees get replaced by autonomous Nanobots but when.

I remember when I was a kid the EMP trucks went around to keep the nano swarms down, but most of us got bot-lung anyway.

Even rogue nanoswarms are less worrisome than mosquitos as a vector.

Re: The most effective malaria vaccine yet discovered

#272

Post by stjohnswarts »

Fomite wrote: post #130
rossdavidh wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the attempt in Brazil did not go as planned: https://www.dw.com/en/genetically-modified-mosquitoes-breed-... "The hope of the Ministry of Health was to reduce mosquito populations by 90 percent. And this worked well during the field trial. About 18 months after the end of the experiment, the mosquito population returned to what it had been before."

Indeed. Ecological systems are complicated and remarkably resilient.

that's a good thing since humans seem to be full steam ahead on destroying them (at least currently)

Re: The most effective malaria vaccine yet discovered

#273

Post by stjohnswarts »

Gatsky wrote: post #233

The long and arduous task of dealing with malaria does give one pause when considering that there have been two new globally significant infectious diseases in the last 50 years. We aren’t getting rid of HIV or SARS-CoV-2 any time soon. To me there is little doubt we should deploy massive resources to detect new infectious agents early and prevent their spread. We have the technology. There is no better gift we can l…

Well one good way might be to try to quit eating everything that walks, crawls or hops and switch over to veganism.

Re: The most effective malaria vaccine yet discovered

#274

Post by stjohnswarts »

User23 wrote: post #17
bolangi wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Widespread supply of mosquito nets treated with an insecticide is one of the more successful measures.

The most successful measure was carpet bombing the USA with DDT for years[1]. Most people don't know this now, but malaria used to be endemic in the USA as far north as the border with Canada. DDT's environmental persistence is obviously a double-edged sword, but it made the eradication possible. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/history/elimination_us.htm...

Well I have my doubts about that because it would have come right back after the DDT bombing stopped. Mosquitos can breed exponentially with zero issues, so I think that puts a huge hole in your theory.

Re: The most effective malaria vaccine yet discovered

#275

Post by stjohnswarts »

abfan1127 wrote: post #18
UncleOxidant wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would mosquito extinction even be a good idea? There would be substantial impacts to ecosystems if mosquitos were completely eliminated.

yes. mosquitos do quite a bit of pollination.

not the species spreading malaria. Efforts to genetically engineer a fix are welcomed by most people I think to stop malaria. There are ongoing trials with mixed results.

Re: The most effective malaria vaccine yet discovered

#276

Post by stjohnswarts »

frankus wrote: post #230

Not an epidemiologist but a bit of googling suggests that humans are the sole reservoir for the varieties of parasites that can cause malaria in humans. I wonder if how much closer a 77% effective vaccine could bring is to eradicating the parasite worldwide.

Unlikely, it would probably take something more like 95% since the spreaders are not human they're mosquitos, you would have to cut the population of mosquitos down to the 77%+ number to get started via that mechanism for herd immunity.

Re: The most effective malaria vaccine yet discovered

#277

Post by sharken »

Fomite wrote: post #114
Exmoor wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Malaria deaths peaked around 930,000 a year in 2004, and is around 600,000 a year now Your link does a good job showing this, but for those who don't click and scroll down it's probably worth mentioning that the vast majority of those deaths are in central Africa. So it's not just a lot of deaths, but it's a really significant portion of the population and, as you said, mostly children.

Malaria is a massive drain on the lives, well being and economies of central Africa. An effective malaria vaccine would be huge .

And from the perspective of most africans a lot more relevant than the Corona vaccine.

I wish the rest of the world would realize that Africa first and foremost benefits from this new Malaria vaccine.

Re: The most effective malaria vaccine yet discovered

#278

Post by pietroglyph »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #273
Gatsky wrote: post #233

The long and arduous task of dealing with malaria does give one pause when considering that there have been two new globally significant infectious diseases in the last 50 years. We aren’t getting rid of HIV or SARS-CoV-2 any time soon. To me there is little doubt we should deploy massive resources to detect new infectious agents early and prevent their spread. We have the technology. There is no better gift we can l…

Well one good way might be to try to quit eating everything that walks, crawls or hops and switch over to veganism.

Yep. Animals are the most common way that diseases are introduced to humans, and industrial animal agriculture brings these animals into close proximity with themselves and us. Removing animal products from our diets not only mitigates this huge disease reservoir but also removes a huge source of greenhouse emissions, land use, pesticide use (for feed), and animal and labor exploitation (the meatpacking industry is extremely exploitative in the United States.)

Re: The most effective malaria vaccine yet discovered

#279

Post by greazy »

yyyk wrote: post #108

This is great news which will save many lives. We will need to do more though. There are species of Plasmodium which survive on non-human hosts which means the disease will always be waiting - and this vaccination regimen is very demanding, so interruption or underinvestment will make Malaria come back. IMHO to finish off malaria we'll need some other approaches to complement it, and my suggestion is to get rid of th…

> There are species of Plasmodium which survive on non-human hosts which means the disease will always be waiting

A small correction, the species you're referring to don't 'survive' in non-human hosts, but actually the other way around. There are probably thousands of plasmodium species that infect everything from lizards to birds to monkeys. In monkeys (eg simian) there are a large number of pasmodium species that have undergone zoonotic transfer thereby infecting humans. It's believed the 'last man standing' in defeating malaria will be P. Knowlesi, or monkey malaria. It can infect humans, and seems to be quiet common in Borneo Island. But it hasn't to my knowledge, started transmitting human to human. But without a doubt we will continually see spill-over events of not only Malaria but other parasites.

Re: The most effective malaria vaccine yet discovered

#280

Post by greazy »

Gatsky wrote: post #233

The long and arduous task of dealing with malaria does give one pause when considering that there have been two new globally significant infectious diseases in the last 50 years. We aren’t getting rid of HIV or SARS-CoV-2 any time soon. To me there is little doubt we should deploy massive resources to detect new infectious agents early and prevent their spread. We have the technology. There is no better gift we can l…

Influenza cries. Influenza has been constantly assaulting humans for the last ~100 years:

Spanish flu (1918–1920) Asian flu (1957–1958) Hong Kong flu (1968–1969) Russian flu (1977–1979) H1N1/09 flu pandemic (2009–2010)

and imo there's another coming in the next decade. Hopefully it won't be any of the H7/H9/H5 viruses because that's going to hurt

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