This just in from the Outer Party social media site:
A commentator writes, “Easy to focus on Covid but safe effective Malaria vaccines will have a huge impact to save lives.”
Well, yeah. “In 2018 there were 228 million cases of malaria worldwide [vs 175 million COVID-19 cases, April 2020 to April 2021] resulting in an estimated 405,000 deaths [vs about 3,000,000 COVID-19 deaths]. Approximately 93% of the cases and 94% of deaths occurred in Africa.”
(Not that it matters, then or now, but a certain USA politician who railed, loudly and [alas] effectively, about ‘draining the swamp’ in Washington DC could have been told that the deed had already been done, in the early 20th century, as part of the USA’s eventually-successful campaign to eradicate malaria within its borders.)
SARS-CoV-2 has been known to humans for 16 months. Malaria, since the dawn of human history, and its causative organism, Plasmodium falciparum, since 1897.
Oxford has been heavily invested in the COVID-19 vaccination effort, and it is most likely using similar strategies for the malaria virus that it is now touting. Strategies, for which the science has been available, if Your Friendly Neighborhood Amoeba understands correctly, for a decade or more.
So it’s wonderful that a promising malaria vaccine is appearing now. But why now, instead of, say, a decade ago, when, apparently, it could have been made available and could have saved (using the 2018 estimate as a baseline) four million lives? Your Friendly Neighborhood Amoeba has a suggestion, but is loath to make it lest his blog be deleted by a PC bot, which YFNA lacks the resources of, say, a QAnon, to evade or deactivate.
He is willing, however, to risk offering a couple of hints, which he is tempted to direct particularly towards those privileged, self-absorbed individuals who are oh so obsessed with the YOLO phenomenon at present, and are prepared to announce as much on the Outer Party social media site.
Hint no. 1. Six letters. The first letter is V. The word is cherished by a competing vaccine (well, at least now it is) maker.
Hint no. 2. Five letters. The first letter is B.
Thanks for sharing