The Gaming Den

Vaccines are among the most cost effective medicines known to man. Generally you're looking at 1-3 applications that provide protection for at least a decade, often for the rest of your life. This also means they are effective to distribute, since a small number of aid workers can insure people get the vaccine over a short period of time - rather than the much more difficult task of ensuring people take their meds that comes with any sort of drug regimen.

maglag wrote:Well hasn't failed either. Most humans still aren't infected with HIV since most humans are smart enough to take basic precautions.

At the end of the day HIV is not an airborne disease nor something that's transported by food/water or simple skin touch. Plenty of other diseases make a lot more damage.

HIV only gets bigger headlines because rich people who want as much sex and drugs as they can risk catching it, and then cannot be cured.

HIV gets a lot of press because it is both deadly and presently incurable. And because an awful lot of people have it - between 35-40 million globally. In fact, more people die of HIV/AIDS each year than of TB or Malaria, making it the deadliest single communicable disease on the planet at present (respiratory and diarrheal diseases collectively kill more, but that's a collection of different infections). Also, the retroviral drugs that treat HIV are expensive to produce, difficult to distribute, and require diligence in taking them.

An effective vaccine for HIV would likely save tens of millions of human lives over the course of this century and save tens of billions of dollars, making it quite possibly the most win-win medical discovery you could achieve.

What the fuck, maglag? HIV disproportionately affects black men and male homosexuals. These are not groups known for their excessive privilege. HIV gets a lot of coverage because there is currently no known cure or vaccine, it affects a genuinely large (if not currently epidemic level) number of people, and it is insanely expensive to treat. An effective vaccine will save lots of money and lots of lives, mostly among people who don't have a lot of money and already have significantly diminished life expectancies for a plethora of other reasons.

maglag wrote:Who's gonna pay for the cost and distribution? In particular since a significant amount of the infected are poor people in the first place?

You're a fucking moron. Who paid to eradicate smallpox?

The World Health Organization, Melinda Gates-esque foundations, Hegemons fishing for diplomatic cache, the families and estates of AIDS-stricken individuals, LGBT and African identity activists, and people who just want a fucking slam dunk with their charitable contribution would all shower the effort with treasure and labors.

You make the vaccine work and start up a collection fund to see it in people's arms, and I will tithe 5% of my entire income until the project is finished or the day I die. In this I am neither kidding nor alone.

Same here, I'd gladly set up donations to be taken out of my paycheck to end fucking HIV.

Grek wrote:Same here, I'd gladly set up donations to be taken out of my paycheck to end fucking HIV.

Ideally they'd end all forms of HIV, not just fucking HIV.

Just a vaccine for needle-sharing HIV. Then you can share the same needle for the vaccine!

"What about Hepatitis?"
"What do you... oh fuck"

Eikre wrote:

maglag wrote:Who's gonna pay for the cost and distribution? In particular since a significant amount of the infected are poor people in the first place?

You're a fucking moron. Who paid to eradicate smallpox?

The World Health Organization, Melinda Gates-esque foundations, Hegemons fishing for diplomatic cache, the families and estates of AIDS-stricken individuals, LGBT and African identity activists, and people who just want a fucking slam dunk with their charitable contribution would all shower the effort with treasure and labors.

You make the vaccine work and start up a collection fund to see it in people's arms, and I will tithe 5% of my entire income until the project is finished or the day I die. In this I am neither kidding nor alone.

Smallpox was a fluke/miracle. A one time event that was never replicated despite the same base conditions being replicated multiple times since then.

Again, plenty of other nasty diseases that can be cured and could be eradicated right now if, say, the USA decided to buy one less high-tech flying killing machine this year.

But only smallpox got erased.

maglag wrote:Smallpox was a fluke/miracle. A one time event that was never replicated despite the same base conditions being replicated multiple times since then.

Again, plenty of other nasty diseases that can be cured and could be eradicated right now if, say, the USA decided to buy one less high-tech flying killing machine this year.

But only smallpox got erased.

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eradicati ... s_diseases

Rinderpest also eradicated, and we're hopefully very close with polio and some others.

Smallpox was a fairly unique disease, with an extremely low mutation rate that made the global population of the disease able to be dealt with by the same vaccine, which is very close to 100% effective for your whole life.

Most viruses aren't like that. But also, that horrible human being Andrew Wakefield convinced tens of millions of people to not vaccinate their kids against Measles and Rubella just as they were on their way out, because he wanted to sell his own vaccine instead, which has delayed that program by at least 20 years.

Ok so one whole other disease got eradicated besides smallpox. Thanks for the info.

Still is not only HIV a lot more mutable besides harder to detect，pharmaceutical companies nowadays care a lot more about profit. And fancy HIV drugs is a massive market. If a HIV vacinne comes out you can expect a lot of anti propaganda from the companies selling expensive HIV drugs.

For fucks sake, just ignore the conspiracy theorist.

And that story led me to this one.

http://www.theverge.com/2016/7/12/12159 ... ty-privacy

I've resisted the pull of Pokemon Go thus far. It does sound like a fun use of AR in gaming.

http://kotaku.com/toy-time-transforms-m ... 1783819508

I've spent hundreds of dollars on comic books. Art. Swords. But I've never year felt the urge to drop $400 on a Transformer.

i think i heard shrapnell orgasm just then . .

The university of Australia has designed a man based on what they believe humans anatomy would be if car crashes had been a leading cause of death for the past few million years, instead of only recently.

http://jalopnik.com/if-humans-evolved-t ... 1784037415

http://www.meetgraham.com.au/

*Monash University in Melbourne.
The Australian National University in Canberra had nothing to do with it, as far as I can see.

Ancient History wrote:http://kotaku.com/toy-time-transforms-m ... 1783819508

I've spent hundreds of dollars on comic books. Art. Swords. But I've never year felt the urge to drop $400 on a Transformer.

Now you know what it's like to be me! Like, I've spent $170 actual dollars on a Toy Story combiner.

They remade Petes Dragon . .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete%27s_ ... 2016_film)

And now stephen kings it . .
http://www.ew.com/article/2016/08/16/pe ... g-it-movie

Stahlseele wrote:And now stephen kings it . .
http://www.ew.com/article/2016/08/16/pe ... g-it-movie

The new design for Pennywise seems to miss the point of IT being a clown.

Pretty much, yeah . .

It's like they don't trust Skarsgård to be as effectively creepy as Tim Curry, which, okay, fair enough.