[HN Gopher] Malaria 'Completely Stopped' by Microbe
___________________________________________________________________
Malaria 'Completely Stopped' by Microbe
Author : simonswords82
Score : 387 points
Date : 2020-05-04 12:12 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| muktabh wrote:
| Apart from the huge human misery this technique can avoid, also
| hope it can avoid the pandemic of avian malaria killing many
| birds.
| mikeappell wrote:
| I've heard that mosquitoes are believed to be completely
| replaceable in the food chain of the various species which prey
| upon them. Considering how mosquitoes are a vector for _numerous_
| diseases, malaria being the most deadly but still one of many,
| what's stopping research into eradicating mosquitoes entirely? A
| lack of research and surety on the overall effect on the
| ecosystem?
|
| Honestly, fuck mosquitoes. If the mosquito laser system were ever
| actually viable/purchasable, I'd happily drop thousands of
| dollars to keep those bastards out of my bedroom at night.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| Aren't there lots of mosquitoes that don't transmit deadly
| diseases, or don't bite humans at all? They're not going to go
| away as a category even if we did eradicate anopheles et al. I
| mean, do the research to find out if they're some plant's sole
| pollinators, but otherwise I can't see anything to lose.
| chr1 wrote:
| There is a hope that gene-drive targeting doublesex gene can be
| effective in eliminating mosquitos (and likely other insect
| species if we want) https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.4245.
|
| There have been many articles about this on HN last year, but
| there was also a depressingly large number of people commenting
| how precious mosquitos are, and that the maximum measure we are
| allowed to consider is modifying mosquitoes to not transmit
| malaria, and that even thinking of eliminating "the whole
| species" is a sin.
| klyrs wrote:
| They're also extremely important pollinators -- their role in
| the ecosystem isn't just bat food.
|
| https://www.earthtouchnews.com/natural-world/how-it-works/th...
| trianglem wrote:
| Not to take away too much focus from this issue, but we gotta
| start talking about ticks in the same vein.
| KerryJones wrote:
| Seriously -- I didn't realize how bad it could get until I
| got to Vienna and a local told me that residents of the city
| are required to be inoculated against ticks because they can
| make you brain dead, epilepsy, etc, and I didn't believe
| it... but it's real
| https://www.iamat.org/country/austria/risk/tick-borne-
| enceph...
| mikeappell wrote:
| No clue how important they are in the ecosystem, but from the
| perspective of insects which piss me off, I'm on board 100%.
| cc81 wrote:
| I read somewhere that they are not important and that is
| good enough source for me. It could have been written on a
| post-it for me to support an eradication campaign.
|
| I hate ticks.
| tyho wrote:
| So this microbe is already circulating in the mosquito population
| at a 5% infection rate. The scientists propose either:
|
| a) release spores en masse to infect mosquitoes
|
| b) infect male mosquitoes in the lab and release them into the
| wild to infect the females when they have sex
|
| There is an obvious third way. We could attempt to genetically
| engineer a more virulent strain of the pathogen and release it
| into nature. In the current climate I think this is less than
| likely to happen.
| vikramkr wrote:
| Once you genetically engineer the virulent strain, the way you
| are going to release it is through either of the first two
| ways. So it's not as much a third way as it is an augmentation
| of either of the first two.
| cguess wrote:
| As someone who doctors once put "12 hours from coma" due to
| malaria (and I was in rural Tanzania, so coma == death out
| there), this is straight up the best news I've heard in a very
| long time.
|
| Seriously, don't get malaria if you can help it. Your bones hurt
| from the inside out while you lay in a pool of your own sweat,
| crawling to the toilet every hour or two because of oscillating
| vomiting and diarrhea. Since you're most likely in a developing
| country, air conditioning is usually out of the question (you're
| shivering in the 100F+/35C+ temps anyways from the fever). The
| drugs, if you're lucky, only give you the most vivid and
| disconcerting dreams you've ever had (if you're unlucky, which
| 50% of people are, they're the most horrifying night terrors you
| can imagine).
|
| The good news is it's highly treatable. The bad news is that at
| ~$3 for a round of treatment it's prohibitively expensive if
| you're only making $2/day and have a family to support.
|
| We only got rid of it here in the US because of DDT. Malaria was
| endemic in the South (and parts of the North in the summer) until
| the mid-20th century.
| AriseAndPass wrote:
| I grew up in Tanzania! Can I ask where you were, and what you
| were doing?
|
| BTW - I had malaria about 5-6 times while growing up. What you
| describe sounds like a particularly bad case (1-2 of mine were
| like that). My experience, and that of my peer group (lower-
| middle class by western standards, top 0.1% by Tanzanian
| standards) was that if you got an early diagnosis and had
| access to drugs it was usually akin to a severe flu unless you
| got unlucky with the strain/severity.
|
| It was culturally very normalised to get two malaria tests any
| time anyone felt sick, because the commonly accepted belief was
| that anything could be malaria, and false negatives were too
| common.
|
| I always thought the main problem with malaria in Tanzania was
| that 99.9% of the country (especially rural areas) does not
| have access to quick testing and easy drugs, and for them it's
| a death sentence. That's not to downplay it, but more to
| emphasise the socioeconomic dimension.
| jcampbell1 wrote:
| What drug did you take? I got malaria and a friend mixed up a
| white powder with bottled water and I injected it in my leg. I
| was better in 24 hours and don't recall any side effects.
|
| My guess is the drug was chloroquine, but not sure. Based on
| other's experiences, I am glad I was young and dumb enough to
| opt for a questionably sterile injection.
|
| I was fortunate to have made a friend that worked in oil
| services in Nigeria, and he had "malaria training" from
| Schlumberger, and the bottled water injection sounds crazy, but
| was the recommended treatment.
| Vysero wrote:
| How amazing would it be to see a story like this premier on one
| of the main stream media outlets nightly broadcast for 1 or 2
| months in a row?
| Ductapemaster wrote:
| Is there a reputable non-profit I can donate to that provides
| this treatment? The idea that $3 is unaffordable for so many is
| so sad. I would gladly provide for a number of people to be
| treated if I could trust the money goes to them.
| jlebar wrote:
| https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities
| giardini wrote:
| Here's another lengthier but fascinating description and
| personal history of someone who caught malaria (and caught it
| again...):
|
| "Of Quinine And Chloroquine" by Willis Eschenbach /
| https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/04/11/of-quinine-and-chloro...
| grecy wrote:
| Ditto. I had it in Mali (not so bad) and Angola which was 5
| days of not eating, sleeping, walking talking eating or
| drinking. I lost 20lbs.
|
| I sincerely hope the end is in sight!
| derefr wrote:
| > The drugs, if you're lucky, only give you the most vivid and
| disconcerting dreams you've ever had
|
| Now I'm intrigued. What do anti-malarials do to healthy people?
| Does anyone take them recreationally to experience this effect,
| the way they do other "weird downers" like
| mescaline/DMT/salvinorin/etc? Or is the psychotropic effect of
| the drug predicated on actually having malaria?
| joshvm wrote:
| The prophylaxis medication is typically a broad spectrum
| antibiotic like doxycycline. There are other more expensive
| options which you take for a shorter period afterwards vs
| doxy which you have to take every day plus a month after.
|
| However.. Some of the alternative drugs have very serious
| warnings that if you have any history of mental illness you
| probably shouldn't take them. Mefloquine is particularly
| prone to this I think and the symptoms sound like what the OP
| described (insomnia, vivid dreams, etc). You shouldn't have
| that with doxycycline, but it can make you photosensitive
| which isn't ideal in Africa.
| tonyarkles wrote:
| I took Chloroquine as a prophylactic anti-malarial before and
| during a trip to Central America. You can get the crazy
| dreams whether or not you're infected. Mine were,
| fortunately, quite vivid (and sometimes lucid) but not
| disturbing. The scenarios were pretty wild though. Other
| friends of mine had less pleasant experiences. For example,
| one had a recurring dream that his abdomen got ripped open, a
| load of pebbles fell out (instead of viscera), and a flock of
| ravens came and eat the pebbles while he watched in agony.
| Every night, over and over, for about two months.
|
| During your waking hours, nothing feels amiss at all. Keep in
| mind too that the dosing is once a week. It took a week or
| two for the effects to start for me, and they persisted for
| almost a month after I was home. Unlike reports from the
| various psychedelics you listed, I felt absolutely no
| euphoria or "spiritual awakening" from any of it; I just woke
| up every morning and thought "wow, that was fucked up!"
| derefr wrote:
| I wonder how much of the "crazy dreams" comes down to
| people usually taking such a drug when travelling and
| having new experiences/seeing new places/expanding their
| mental schemas (which is known to increase BDNF / promote
| neuronal plasticity, and therefore likely to cause intense
| dreaming under the "memory reconsolidation" hypothesis of
| dreaming.)
|
| It'd be interesting to compare to the dreams of people who
| take the drug without travelling, e.g. medical staff native
| to malarial regions, who take it as a prophylactic when
| interacting with malaria-infected patients.
| tonyarkles wrote:
| Yeah that would be curious to investigate for sure!
|
| I can only speak to my own experiences, but while I have
| observed the phenomenon you describe in preparation for
| travel/while travelling, Chloroquine dreams were waaaaay
| more dramatic than anything I've experienced with other
| travel. I forget what the exact timeline was, but I think
| I started taking them about a month before departing, and
| the dreams started about two weeks before departing, and
| stayed pretty much constant until a few weeks after I'd
| been home and stopped taking the pills.
| bluGill wrote:
| I haven't taken them myself, but my coworkers quit taking
| even though the company was buying them. So I assume it isn't
| the type of high people do willingly. Other coworkers took
| them with no problems though, so it seems somewhat person
| specific what the reaction is.
| cc81 wrote:
| I get incredibly weird and vivid dreams from Prednisone and I
| know a friend who was prescribed Benzo (not sure what kind)
| and also got very vivid dreams. I don't know if is the same
| type he describes but it is like a normal dream; just
| stronger and odder for me (with a completely different
| medication).
|
| It is nothing like a psychedelic trip for me.
|
| If you want to try and see if you get weird/strong dreams
| there are a lot of anecdotes around the supplement ZMA. It is
| just anecdotes but I've seen threads started on many
| different training forums from newbies asking about it.
|
| https://examine.com/nutrition/does-zma-cause-weird-dreams/
| rawoke083600 wrote:
| Yup those dreams are real on the medicine ! Damnn ! I SAW
| aliens like the little grays, they were in my bedroom when I
| woke up. Till this day I'm not sure if it was the pills and a
| dream or if there were real grays visiting me... Maybe they
| needed a specimen that took malaria-pills ? Never taking
| malaria pills again. And I live in South Africa.
| softwarejosh wrote:
| it was a dream unfortunately :(
| [deleted]
| pfortuny wrote:
| It also used to kill thousands in Italy until the mid XX
| Century:
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3340992/
| Talanes wrote:
| It took me entirely too long to realize XX was Roman
| Numerals. I was very perplexed why you had written a
| placeholder for the century.
| mudiaga wrote:
| Coming from a malaria-prone region and remembering the times I
| had to take Chloroquine injections and trying different malaria
| tablet treatments just makes this the best news I've heard this
| year. I hope they can conclude on these findings fast enough.
| cestith wrote:
| I fully expected this to be another article on wolbachia. It's a
| pleasant surprise to see another microbe that can help block
| malaria in mosquitoes. Between the two a good dent might be put
| into that and other diseases. Wolbachia was shown to help with
| dengue too, and at least somewhat with Chikungunya and Zika -
| which are viral. This sort of trend looks hopeful for the future.
|
| If we're really fortunate and have the people and funds made
| available to do this sort of research, perhaps we could see West
| Nile, yellow fever, Lyme disease, bubonic plague, Rocky Mountain
| spotted fever, and other bite-passed pathogens severely
| curtailed.
|
| https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/j...
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms11772
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6085076/
| phkahler wrote:
| Is this fungal infection transmitted to humans? If so, is that
| bad?
| brownbat wrote:
| Here's a really comprehensive overview of Microsporidia --
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5613672/
|
| Still working through this and the original paper, but while it
| can cause encephalitis in humans, it seems to be ubiquitous
| already anyway, and we don't seem to typically get it from
| insects. Setting aside the fact that you could swap malaria for
| almost any other infectious disease and humanity would be
| massively better off.
|
| (Caveat: IANA Microbiologist and welcome corrections.)
| bdamm wrote:
| If it is ubiquitous anyway then why isn't it blocking malaria
| in the wild?
| brownbat wrote:
| I should have said "not uncommon" rather than "ubiquitous,"
| but it appears it already is blocking malaria development
| in a small portion of mosquitoes.
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-16121-y
| Endlessly wrote:
| "IANA" being "I am not a" - commonly expressed as IANAL (I am
| not a lawyer).
| IAmEveryone wrote:
| It's no danger to humans.
|
| It's one of those bugs that can opportunistically infect humans
| when their immune system is severely limited (i. e. end-stage
| untreated AIDS, unfortunate incident at a nuclear reactor). But
| that's a situation where almost anything will kill you.
|
| (I once had a professor who likened it to a run-down house with
| young trees sprouting from the roof, adding that he'd be
| somewhat, but not extremely, surprised to find a
| immunocompromised patient with moss growing somewhere)
| mkagenius wrote:
| IMO, we should be fine as long as we take baths daily (not a
| doctor but I think.)
| random_savv wrote:
| Out of pure curiosity, I would love to know what Bill Gates
| thinks about this!
| syntheticnature wrote:
| Malaria has been a big deal for the Gates Foundation for a long
| time. I recall reading discussions of his hope to breed, or
| maybe genetically modify, the relevant mosquitoes to make them
| incapable of carrying malaria, then manipulating the wild
| population to uptake the genetic change.
|
| There's also this page: https://www.gatesfoundation.org/what-
| we-do/global-health/mal...
| garaetjjte wrote:
| > breed, or maybe genetically modify, the relevant mosquitoes
| to make them incapable of carrying malaria
|
| "Debug Project" is trying to do that (curiously, funded by..
| Google): https://debug.com/
| forgingahead wrote:
| This is an incredibly dangerous idea -- I do not think we
| should be genetically messing with mosquitoes, whatever the
| perceived or desired benefits, when the downside (a bad
| strain multiplying exponentially) could be horrible for all
| of us.
| macintux wrote:
| Conversely, if we find a way to do this safely, this
| could be important for far more than just malaria... and
| "just" solving malaria would be hugely beneficial.
| oceanofsolaris wrote:
| AFAIK there isn't much genetic engineering involved in
| that project at the moment. They just rear male mosquitos
| that are infected with a Wolbachia bacterium (making them
| sterile).
| BurningFrog wrote:
| So 5% of mosquitos in one area has the microbe.
|
| If it has a survival benefit for mosquitos, it will reach 100% by
| itself. Since that hasn't happened, I'm a little worried that
| there are some caveats here.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| An ecologist friend explained to me once that humans can often
| do things that slowly increase the percentage of some species
| at the cost of others.
| sdiq wrote:
| Maybe it happened already. Growing in Kenya in the 80s, many
| regions were considered malaria endemic. A number of this
| regions from these 2000s are now considered malaria-free. Could
| this be the reason? I don't know.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Sure, one possible explanation is that this is in the process
| of happening naturally. Next year 5% will be 6%, and so on.
| lukeschlather wrote:
| Most tropical/subtropical areas that are malaria-free did it
| by virtually eliminating mosquitoes with pesticides long
| enough that malaria was virtually eliminated in the human
| population, which eliminated malaria in the mosquito
| population when the mosquitoes rebounded.
| ascorbic wrote:
| It isn't going to be much of a benefit to the mosquitoes,
| because malaria doesn't kill them
| rriepe wrote:
| For the mosquito, it's just one potential disease from one
| potential food source.
|
| Malaria isn't really that bad of a time for mosquitoes anyway.
| It might even _increase_ their chances of reproducing by
| driving them to feed more on humans.
| sandra1402 wrote:
| (I once had a professor who likened it to a run-down house with
| young trees sprouting from the roof, adding that he'd be
| somewhat, but not extremely, surprised to find a
| immunocompromised patient with moss growing somewhere)click here
| if you need hack help https://legitimatehacks.com/hack-your-
| cheating-spouse-whatsa...
| darkerside wrote:
| > More than 400,000 people are killed by malaria each year, most
| of them children under the age of five.
|
| This is one of those sentences that is just too easy to read
| over. But losing a young child to a disease must be unbearably
| painful. Multiply that grief by 400,000.
|
| My greatest comfort in these times is that COVID19 appears to
| have little effect on young children. I wish these researchers
| the best, and I hope they get all the support they need.
| scruffups wrote:
| My own comfort is in knowing that this virus can be kept at bay
| if my immune system is strong enough, and as a mindful engineer
| and a living being I understand which behaviors are optimal for
| health and which are harmful... and in these times I am
| conditioned to maximize helpful behaviors and minimize harmful
| ones.
|
| We have to stay on top of it regardless of age. My kid now
| takes her C, D, Zinc and we've gone on a sugar cleanse (sugar
| has been found to impair the immune system, depending on your
| tolerance for it)
|
| Stay healthy.
| GoToRO wrote:
| I would really like to know if covid19 is worse than malaria,
| globally. Up until now it seems that it is worse only because
| it affects us. I was shocked to find out there is no treatment
| for malaria when I traveled in affected areas. I felt the same
| way as I am today, except I was the only one feeling like that.
| ngold wrote:
| The aversion to testing by the American government is how we
| know that we live in dark times. I look forward to see what
| Silicon Valley finds in their testing of people that died in
| november.
| gmanley wrote:
| What makes you think it's an aversion to testing? It seems
| to me more just general incompetence and slow response that
| caused the testing crisis in the US.
| darkerside wrote:
| I thought hydroxychloroquine was a much vaunted treatment for
| malaria?
|
| COVID certainly has a lower mortality right now, but it's
| only because of the extreme precautions we've all taken. In a
| world where we didn't bother, I presume that would completely
| change.
| screye wrote:
| > COVID certainly has a lower mortality right now
|
| Yep. A vast majority of those who've contracted COVID are
| asymptomatic. The mortality rate might be significantly
| lower than previously reported.
| krzyk wrote:
| > A vast majority of those who've contracted COVID are
| asymptomatic.
|
| Any sources on that?
|
| From the https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807
| /1560-7917.E... it looks like at most 17% could be
| asymptomatic, but I'm not sure if it wouldn't be lower if
| they waited longer.
| klmadfejno wrote:
| Age affects everything. The diamond princess cohort is
| much older than the population average. Older people are
| more likely to die from the disease, suffer symptoms from
| the disease, and catch the disease, all things being held
| equal.
|
| The concept of death rates, symptomatic rates, and even
| transmission rates as a generic term is meaningless
| because it depends entirely on the age demographics of
| the population (and behavior, and other things, etc.).
|
| The idea the most people who catch it are asymptomatic is
| true if our antibody tests aren't throwing out massive
| false positive rates. For something closer to the general
| population, the USS Theodore Roosevelt is probably a
| better guess.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_on_USS_Th
| eod...
|
| Looks like 90% of them had the disease on April 11. By
| April 20, 60% were asymptomatic. The last update seems to
| have been on April 22, with about 50% asymptomatic.
| That's probably a good bet for an actual figure in my
| opinion.
| danilocesar wrote:
| > Looks like 90% of them had the disease on April 11. By
| April 20, 60% were asymptomatic.
|
| That's not what the wikipedia says... 94% of the crew has
| been tested for Covid, with 678 positives. Infection rate
| ~15%.
|
| From those infected, ~60% didn't show symptoms.
| klmadfejno wrote:
| That's correct, my mistake on the infection rate of 90%.
| The 60% on the wiki figure is coming from an article
| written April 16. I did a bit of digging and found a navy
| statement from the 22nd which said 50%.
|
| However given my error on the 90%, it seems much more
| likely that a large proportion of the people asymptomatic
| on the 22nd had caught it more recently than I was
| assuming, so the asymptomatic rate is probably a bit
| worse.
| yojo wrote:
| I would assume the crew of a military ship are
| substantially younger and healthier than the general
| population. Since both health and age seem to play a key
| role, 50% is almost certainly an upper bound, with the
| true number lying between 17% and 50%
| toomanybeersies wrote:
| There are indications that severity of infection is
| proportional to the initial viral load. I'd imagine that
| being locked in close quarters on a warship would subject
| the sailors to a higher viral load than you'd expect in
| the general population, and subsequently they'd have on
| average more severe infections, so it could be lower than
| 50%.
| klmadfejno wrote:
| Most will be in the range of 20-40. Some will be older,
| but none will be kids. So take it as you will. The true
| number doesn't have any intuitive meaning anyway, since
| the likelihood of being infected is correlated with the
| likelihood of being symptomatic.
|
| E.g. if hypothetically people under 20 never exhibit
| symptoms but also never get the disease, they won't bring
| the asymptomatic rate down because they won't be infected
| in the first place.
|
| Averages suck in this context.
| athenot wrote:
| One way to find out is to look at the overall death rates
| (of all causes) in an area and see how it evolved. NY
| started doing that and found there's a discrepancy. One
| explanation among others is that some people who've
| caught it and died from it never got a positive test
| (either no test, or false negative).
|
| That seems to point to the opposite happening: a higher
| mortality that is still not fully understood for lack of
| accurate data.
| kmonsen wrote:
| I do overall agree with you, but Norway has lower than
| usual number of deaths this year, so not sure what to do
| with that. I guess if you just compare the deaths to
| average you are still under reporting because of the stay
| at home orders it is sort of expected that less people
| die.
| fakedang wrote:
| Not just Norway, India too.
| [deleted]
| TsiCClawOfLight wrote:
| Don't forget the secondary effects of shutting down
| entire countries: depression, supply chain failures,
| sudden poverty, degradation of infrastructure, and
| increasingly lack of exercise and unhealthy eating as
| this drags on.
|
| I suspect that will account for most of the differential,
| and possibly even be the more important number. (because
| many countries diagnose deaths with covid as deaths by
| covid)
| stOneskull wrote:
| The secondary effects are much worse. The virus is being
| used as an excuse to get more control of the people and
| planet by the psychopaths. They don't really care about
| us.
| seppin wrote:
| I don't know why something so easily disproved is being
| repeated so often. The worst-case of an economic shutdown
| is not worse than 2 million dead people.
|
| Added bonus: the economic outcome of 2 million dead
| people is bad too, perhaps worse than a shutdown of
| (largely) healthy people. It's not an either/or, economic
| hardship right now is unavoidable. The choice is between
| getting a handle on the virus or not, and thousands dead
| instead of millions.
| cma wrote:
| Later on it may be a major factor, but right now it is
| probably outweighed in the counts by less car accident
| deaths, lower transmission of other communicable
| respiratory diseases, and less work and leisure
| accidents.
| wolco wrote:
| More likely much higher when you start parsing how China
| determines COVID cases/deaths. Or those people not
| allowed in hospitals. There deaths do not count.. so
| there is a big difference but going the other way.
| cycomanic wrote:
| The antibody tests in New York showed 12. 3% for the
| state and 19% infection rate for the city
|
| https://www.axios.com/coronavirus-new-york-antibody-
| test-f4f...
|
| Confirmed and probable deaths are 16700 for a population
| of 8.4 million we come to about 1% IFR. However the
| excess deaths (for example how we count deaths during flu
| seasons) are 21000, so we are likely undercounting covid
| 19 deaths. Based on that number the IFR is 1.2% both
| these numbers are significantly higher than the flu. The
| other thing is that the numbers there are taken at
| similar times. However there is an incubation time of
| about 4 days (IIRC) and a time to death from first
| symptoms of about 10 days. So we really should compare
| the infection rate now with the death toll in 2 weeks.
| Which likely will increase IFR
|
| https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/coronavirus-
| crisis-210...
| cc81 wrote:
| 19.9% for the city.
|
| You are still in the end of the flu season though so some
| of those excess death numbers might be that.
| vidarh wrote:
| Malaria has kept getting resistant against more and more
| medication. This map [1] is pretty terrifying - _very_ few
| areas that have malaria does not have some extent of
| (hydro-)chloroquine resistant malaria.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaria#/media/File:Palud
| isme....
| burnishing wrote:
| What precautions would reduce the mortality? Social
| distancing, masks, etc. can decrease the chances of
| spreading the disease but I don't see how they reduce
| mortality once you catch it.
| elliekelly wrote:
| I think it depends on the strain (species?) of malaria and
| even the geography of where a person has been infected.
| Some infections are more resistant to treatment than
| others.
| IAmEveryone wrote:
| Total confirmed Covid deaths currently stand at 230,000. But
| total mortality data, where available, points at excess
| mortality of around 50% to 100% more than that. That puts
| _current_ mortality somewhere between 300,000 and 500,000.
| Malaria deaths are also around 400,000 says Wikipedia. But,
| crucially, that 's _annual_ death. Even in the optimistic
| case of Covid deaths currently being at their peak and going
| down as fast as they grew on the way up, total deaths are
| double Malaria 's. And looking at the graphs, it doesn't seem
| like it's receding symmetrical to its growth.
|
| As to regional differences, see here for some recent excess-
| mortality data that includes Ecuador and Brazil, two
| countries that don't have Malaria but share some
| characteristics with countries that do, such as climate and
| relative poverty: https://www.ft.com/__origami/service/image/
| v2/images/raw/htt...
|
| This isn't going to spare the countries affected by Malaria,
| except that some of them have a demographic advantage.
|
| The only redeeming factor in Covid's favour is that mortality
| isn't the only, and possibly not even the most important,
| harm of Malaria: Just like Covid, it kills only a minority of
| those infected. But survivors sometimes suffer chronic
| relapses, enduring symptoms such as fatigue, and, in
| children, cognitive deficits.
| azernik wrote:
| There's some evidence that COVID-19 infections are going to
| cause long-lasting damage:
|
| https://www.healthline.com/health-news/what-we-know-about-
| th...
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > I was shocked to find out there is no treatment for malaria
| when I traveled in affected areas.
|
| I'd be shocked too; there IS a treatment for malaria.
| aaron695 wrote:
| The flu kills around 600,000 each year -
|
| https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/14-12-2017-up-
| to-650-00...
|
| Covid-19 should kill 30 million.
|
| .5% * 80% * 7.8 billion.
|
| That will be over many years however. Maybe 2-3 years.
|
| Some estimates put Covid-19 at 10 years lost per person
| average.
|
| If you can get it multiple times, which is likely after a few
| years, it'll keep killing forever but it'll slow down, and we
| might even slow it even more in the richer countries, like we
| sort of bother with the Flu for, if a vaccine is ever
| possible.
|
| Currently China has an unsustainable model going (School is
| not back properly) for 1.4 billion. If however they can move
| to a sustainable model, maybe they might not get it..... Good
| luck everyone else.
| cc81 wrote:
| I think 80% for heard immunity is a pretty high count.
|
| IFR is a guess and yours could be right. It is lower than
| NYC but the developing world is much younger than the west
| so they might have a much lower IFR unless their lack of
| available health care hurts them too much.
|
| Hopefully IFR will drop as well as we learn to protect the
| elderly better.
| danenania wrote:
| The main difference is that malaria, as bad as it is, is not
| contagious between people. So while the numbers are bad,
| there's effectively a lid on them--they aren't suddenly going
| to start growing exponentially.
|
| With covid, the worst case scenario with no mitigation is
| quite literally that _everyone_ in the world gets it in
| fairly short order, which could cause tens of millions of
| deaths even with low IFR estimates, plus all the social and
| economic destabilization that implies.
| 7952 wrote:
| The response to covid is due to its newness. That means that
| our response can have much greater effect and is more urgent.
| jml7c5 wrote:
| Around 500,000 people died of malaria in 2018. COVID-19
| deaths are currently at 250,000 (according to
| worldometers.info), but deaths are only just starting to slow
| down, and it's unclear how many deaths are going unreported.
| (There has been suggestion that in some places, actual deaths
| may be twice as high; apparently even after one adds reported
| COVID-19 deaths to an area's expected "regular" deaths, there
| is a shortfall vs actual deaths.)
|
| It's worth noting that in terms of person-years lost, an
| average malaria death is significantly worse as it
| predominantly kills children under the age of 5.
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| _average malaria death is significantly worse as it
| predominantly kills children under the age of 5_
|
| It's not only deaths, it's also lost opportunity, as
| malaria is a chronic disease. Children miss out on
| schooling, adults miss out on work, and malarious areas
| miss out on investment.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| > unclear how many deaths are going unreported
|
| I'd been hearing the numbers might be inflated from
| diagnoses on dead people without tests. Hard to know what's
| really going on with anything with all the conflicting
| information.
| joshuahedlund wrote:
| > Hard to know what's really going on with anything with
| all the conflicting information.
|
| Yes, but you don't have to give up. If you use critical
| thinking and assess the competing claims and the strength
| of the evidence for them, it becomes clear that the
| evidence for inflated counts is extremely weak, bordering
| on hearsay, and inconsistent with the overall data, while
| the evidence for extra uncounted deaths is much broader
| and stronger and consistent with the overall data, so
| while there is uncertainty about the true numbers, on net
| it's reasonable to assume more deaths are being missed
| than overcounted.
| amenod wrote:
| Does that really seem reasonable to you?
|
| Should we assume that social isolation, lack of physical
| activity, change of habits, being laid off a job and
| worse health care (preventive for example) have no impact
| on the number of deaths? That's quite a big assumption.
| jml7c5 wrote:
| Take a look at: https://fullfact.org/health/covid-deaths/
|
| There are certainly _some_ deaths being incorrectly
| attributed to COVID-19, but I think the data conclusively
| rejects the hypothesis that there is rampant COVID-19
| over-reporting.
| SamBam wrote:
| Almost certainly the other way around. The most useful
| measure is "excess deaths" -- those are simply the
| statistical "excess" of deaths we are currently
| experiencing compared with the average at this time in
| years past, and are uninfluenced by diagnoses, coroners,
| politicians, etc.
|
| Here are some good state-by state graphs [1], and here's
| a country-wide graph [2]
|
| By any measure, our "excess deaths" since February have
| spiked enormously, and significantly more than the
| current official Covid death count.
|
| Some may be due to hospitals overflowing preventing other
| care. But it's pretty clearly all Corona-related.
|
| 1. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/28/us/coro
| naviru...
|
| 2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2020/05/
| 02/exc...
| ballenf wrote:
| I agree, but the real number would be comparing to
| lockdown death rates w/o covid.
|
| Over the past few years, the evidence linking human
| health and overall mortality to isolation and human
| contact has been increasing. Don't get me wrong I'm
| staying locked down for the foreseeable future, but I
| have family and close friends whose mental health I'm
| seriously worried about. Not to mention physical health
| from stress, isolation, reduced activity, and can't
| afford to eat as healthy / stress-eating.
|
| No idea if those are trends that will even come close to
| direct covid deaths, but we can't make informed decisions
| considering them.
|
| > But it's pretty clearly all Corona-related.
|
| If you count the above as "Corona-related", then I don't
| think the number has much meaning in terms of informing
| public policy.
| xoa wrote:
| It actually has been studied and it looks like, in terms
| of absolute bulk numbers, that at least in developed
| countries like the US lockdown decreases deaths overall.
| Here's an Ars article from last week with a summary and
| some links for some further reading if you're interested
| [1]. Basically though while suicides go up, a lot of
| other causes of death plummet. Auto accidents for example
| a big source of yearly mortality that drop a ton if,
| well, people aren't getting in their vehicles so much.
| Air pollution has plummeted [2] as well, another
| significant source of deaths. People are bored at home
| and thus work out more, tend to eat better, etc.
|
| Of course as that article and any other responsible ones
| should point out, the benefits and harms fall quite
| unevenly, and there is a lot of real misery too. And at
| some point the economic harm from ongoing lock down would
| certainly affect more and more people regardless of
| previous income. But even so as far as society overall
| goes it at worst looks like a wash right now, and seems
| more likely to lean towards fewer deaths. So excess vs
| previous years does look like a valid number to use as
| some level of gut check given the ongoing poor state of
| testing.
|
| ----
|
| 1: https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/04/recessions-
| dont-lead...
|
| 2: https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-offers-a-
| clear-view...
| koheripbal wrote:
| The 2018 number is 405K according to the WHO - and it's
| dropping every year, significantly, despite exploding
| populations.
|
| source: https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-
| stories/detail/world-m...
|
| Tremendous progress is being made against Malaria. Of
| course, it's not enough until will destroy this scourge.
| jml7c5 wrote:
| I'm not sure how I ended up with "around 500,000" instead
| of the (readily available) actual number. Thank you for
| the correction.
| SamBam wrote:
| > in terms of person-years lost
|
| "Potential" person years lost, I guess. If you used "person
| years" the same way you use "Our firm has a combined 125
| years of experience" then it's the other way round.
|
| (Grim discussion, I guess, but I'm just not certain I agree
| with the unspoken assumption that seems to be in that
| statement, that the younger the death, the more tragic/more
| effect on society.)
| xiphias2 wrote:
| It's a horrible assumption. I know that my parents
| probably have only 5-15 years of their life left, so I
| make sure to have contact with them as much as possible,
| and keep up longevity research, though I know that they
| don't like to experiment as much as I would in their
| place.
| SamBam wrote:
| > I know that they don't like to experiment as much as I
| would in their place.
|
| Hard to know. Do you think there's zero chance that, when
| you're their age, you might be the one telling your adult
| kid that you've had a happy, long life, and don't feel
| the need to experiment with longevity?
| jml7c5 wrote:
| Yes, "potential person years" or a similar phrasing would
| have been clearer.
|
| >(Grim discussion, I guess, but I'm just not certain I
| agree with the unspoken assumption that seems to be in
| that statement, that the younger the death, the more
| tragic/more effect on society.)
|
| It is a matter of morality and personal ethics. I chose
| to mention it only because the discrepancy in this case
| is so large, and it felt almost misleading to not relate
| the information. That said, I regret framing it in such a
| coldly utilitarian way.
| vikramkr wrote:
| These cold terms are how these discussions are had in
| industry. It's the core behind value based pricing -
| quality adjusted life years or QALYs are what many health
| systems use to determine what they will or wont pay for.
| As long as money is scarce, these are how conversations
| are had. A drug that saves a child's life is worth more,
| and people are willing to pay more, than a drug that
| saves an older person's life. There are cutoffs and
| thresholds. In the UK, with a few exceptions, a drug cant
| cost much more than 30 thousand pounds for each extra
| quality adjusted year of life (e.g. an extra year
| bedridden might only count as 30% of a year, while an
| extra year closer to functional might count as 95%) for
| NICE to approve paying for it. In the developing world,
| the value of a human life is set at about 2x GDP per
| capita per QALY. In the US, for a drug to be cost
| effective, it should be less than 150,000 dollars per
| QALY (but many drugs aren't).
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| The usual metric is QALY, "quality-adjusted life years".
| (The idea of quality adjustment being that three years of
| being 82-84 isn't as good as three years of being 22-24.)
| roywiggins wrote:
| Someone has actually crunched the numbers on this! The
| person-years lost for COVID is currently about 10 years on
| average.
|
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-kills-people-an-
| ave...
| kurthr wrote:
| Alternately, the person years of those children haven't
| started, and can easily be replaced... Maybe we shouldn't
| just be ranking people by age, if we want to come to
| moral outcomes?
| gajomi wrote:
| > we shouldn't just be ranking people by age, if we want
| to come to moral outcomes?
|
| Agreed. But I think quantifications can still be useful.
|
| Person-years probably aren't the right sort of
| quantification though, in that they blend together too
| many kinds of human experience. But I imagine most people
| would agree that statements like "X% of grandparents,
| lost 10 years earlier than expected" or "Y% of children
| under 10" allow for comparing the relative impact on
| families.
|
| Quantifying losses doesn't mean that we consider the
| quantified as fungible.
| fossuser wrote:
| One of the common Give Well recommended effective altruism
| donations is anti-malarial mosquito nets. [0].
|
| I think they have one of the best dollar to lives saved ratio
| of any charity.
|
| [0] https://www.givewell.org/charities/amf
| treeman79 wrote:
| Extreme Overuse of ddt leads to weak eggs for birds.
|
| Solution was to condemn millions to die.
| throwanem wrote:
| You insult the people who work hard every day to find cures
| and preventative measures for malaria that not only work
| better than DDT, but also _don 't_ drive a major part of
| worldwide ecosystems to extinction.
|
| I've had the privilege of working with some of those people.
| They deserve far better than this contemptible nonsense of
| yours.
| arkanciscan wrote:
| And my doctor told me that having fungus in my genitals was a
| _bad_ thing
| brownbat wrote:
| Original study in Nature:
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-16121-y
| stevenking86 wrote:
| Given how helpless much of the world is against Malaria and how
| many people it continues to kill each year, this strikes me as
| one of the most significant scientific discoveries of our
| lifetime. Am I missing something?
| aftbit wrote:
| Even if it works well in the lab, it might not work at scale
| for any number of reasons. Definitely a potentially huge
| breakthrough, but let's not count our chickens before they
| hatch.
| rriepe wrote:
| It's a treatment for mosquitoes, not people.
| macintux wrote:
| If anything, that would seem to make it even more
| significant. Treatments for people often have side-effects
| for the patient, and as we see with increasing resistance,
| side-effects for the population as a whole.
|
| This is potentially a way to stop malaria permanently with
| few side effects.
| rriepe wrote:
| Are you disagreeing with something I said?
| macintux wrote:
| I'm disagreeing with the implication of your statement
| that it's _less_ significant because it's a treatment for
| mosquitos.
|
| If that implication was not intended, then I have no idea
| what you were attempting to infer.
| rriepe wrote:
| He asked what he was missing and I pointed out that the
| headline was referring to malaria in mosquitoes, and not
| malaria in humans (as a human reading it might assume).
|
| I wasn't making any point about overall impact. One is
| simply a much, much bigger news item than the other (It's
| "We can cure 400k people with malaria right now!" vs.
| "We've made a promising step in the overall fight against
| malaria" -- one has never happened and one happens
| monthly).
|
| The BBC retained this ambiguity for clickbait reasons. I
| was just dispelling the ambiguity. If they added "in
| mosquitoes" to the headline this wouldn't have happened.
| But then we also wouldn't be commenting on it.
| JungleGymSam wrote:
| I understood what you meant. Somehow, other people are
| not.
| [deleted]
| lymeeducator wrote:
| Many people (~thousands) in the US use a few species of
| Cryptoleptis (sanguinolenta) to good effect for Babesia, a less
| virulent and dangerous "cousin" of Malaria. It is generally safe
| for all ages. It is also used pretty effectively in Africa for
| Malaria (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2956313/
| ... more studies should be done!). It is often hard to get young
| children to describe their symptoms, but night sweats and
| temperature disregulation (via nervous system) are common in both
| parasitic pathogens. At any rate, the more low cost solutions
| with minimal to zero side effects we have, the better.
| projektfu wrote:
| This is good. We need ecological solutions that don't involve
| killing bystander species, and this sounds like a good option.
| Jimmc414 wrote:
| As a bystander species, I support this argument.
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