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Ending respiratory infections

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Re: Ending respiratory infections

#41

Post by throwawaytea »

happyopossum wrote: post #6

> 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.

Healthy lifestyle and food have a huge part. I date teachers a lot, and I've taken several people from constantly sick to almost never sick for 1+ year by just changing food and not going out to bars. I know this sounds like a random flippant comment, but I've done it enough times and consistently enough that I have no doubt personally.

Re: Ending respiratory infections

#42

Post by qingcharles »

fny wrote: 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.

And you're talking about the spending of a single country, but the success of a plan like this improves the lives of everyone globally. So if drugs were developed by a world-wide fund where every country chips in a percentage of their GDP or whatever, then it would be even more affordable.

Re: Ending respiratory infections

#43

Post by RealStupidity »

usernametaken29 wrote: post #30

While I think it’s a noble idea I think much more could be achieved with much smaller amounts of money. Actually zero. Regulate sugar, introduce a HIGH sugar tax. Introduce higher nicotine and alcohol tax. Introduce stricter environmental controls for poisonous materials and water and air pollution. All these things cost essentially zero to implement, they even bring in money and all of them are credible ways to sign…

I like the idea, but I think there will be significant costs associated with it, especially for stricter environmental controls for poisonous materials and water / air pollution, since it'll cost companies to implement and maintain this, regulate it etc.

Re: Ending respiratory infections

#45

Post by puttycat »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #18
happyopossum wrote: post #6

> 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.

This sounds roughly normal for what I came to expect back when I worked in an office with many people who had school-age kids. I had a colleague who wryly referred to his kids as "my little plague carriers". When I stopped working in an office, I almost completely stopped getting sick.

+1 for office work as disease source. Plus taking public transport (mostly underground trains). Today I avoid the subway almost completely, taking my bike almost everywhere, to avoid getting sick during winter. (No kids though)

Re: Ending respiratory infections

#46

Post by jdkoeck »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #31
atomicnumber3 wrote: post #20

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.

This is Linus Pauling all over again.

Re: Ending respiratory infections

#48

Post by riffraff »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #33
fny wrote: 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.

Everything should be voluntary philantrhopy! It seems like the ideal state if people are willing to do the pro-social thing by their own volition. Is it better if your child does their homework because they freely choose to, or is it better that they do it because you will beat them with a belt?

But people are not voluntarily philanthropists.

There's a reason we had to introduce work regulations so you don't have children working 13 hours shifts in coal mines.

It's way better if my children study by themselves, but if left to their own devises they'll just watch cartoons all day.

(Not advocating for belting kids, just saying there's a gap between utopia and reality)

Re: Ending respiratory infections

#49

Post by Groxx »

MitziMoto wrote: post #29
SideQuark wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s 500m spend without guaranteed success.

Yeah, so was building moon rockets.

I don't think anyone (not insane) actually doubted we could reach the moon, they were just unsure how much money it'd take per launch, and if it'd ever be worth it. Because we had already reached orbit, "add more fuel" is essentially a guaranteed success, if infinite money is allowed - at worst you do it in multiple launches and join up the parts in space. 2, 10, 1000, it'll eventually succeed, there's no reason to believe it wouldn't.

Reaching another star? Definitely more expensive, but entirely feasible if we all got our shit together and decided it was going to happen.

Medical stuff though? Humans are complicated, and there are practically no guaranteed routes, regardless of money (currently).

Re: Ending respiratory infections

#50

Post by anhyz »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #33
fny wrote: 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.

Everything should be voluntary philantrhopy! It seems like the ideal state if people are willing to do the pro-social thing by their own volition. Is it better if your child does their homework because they freely choose to, or is it better that they do it because you will beat them with a belt?

I'm sure if we just cut taxes a little more, our modern-day robber barons will choose to use their money to fix things on their own instead of building doomsday bunkers and buying superyachts.
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