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NDlurker 5 hours ago [-]
My girlfriend died from human metapneumovirus at 30 years young. She had a weakened immune system from lymphangiomatosis, so something like metapneumovirus, which is a mild illness for most people, was a death sentence for her. I hope this fund is successful so nobody else ever has to go through what she did.
oscarmcdougall 5 hours ago [-]
Sorry for your loss.
NDlurker 3 hours ago [-]
Thank you. It's crazy how quickly life can change.
She filled out a healthcare directive when she was 24. Either she never gave it to her clinic or it didn't get transferred with her other files or something when she started going to a different hospital system. Anyway, the hospital she was in didn't have it. She was hospitalized for like 5 days before she passed. I found that healthcare directive that morning, just a few hours before she died. It was stuffed in the back of a drawer. I was tearing up my apartment trying to find it. And when I found it I saw she had written on there
Please celebrate my life, mourn for me, but know I am in a better place.
God has a plan for me, and He has a plan for all of you.
fny 3 hours ago [-]
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.
sarchertech 3 hours ago [-]
The Iran war is going to cost us at least $200 billion dollars and you’re over here complaining about NASA spending?
qingcharles 3 hours ago [-]
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.
SideQuark 3 hours ago [-]
It’s 500m spend without guaranteed success.
MitziMoto 3 hours ago [-]
Yeah, so was building moon rockets.
Groxx 2 hours ago [-]
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).
simoncion 3 hours ago [-]
Looking at how Blue Origin is doing, it seems that that's still true.
throwawaytea 3 hours ago [-]
We spend that on illegal immigrants every month if not more in the US, while demoralizing many citizens (I know someone that is on the verge of killing himself because he gets $1000 a month in social security and hearing about addict assistance spending or illegal spending basically makes him feel like a lowest tier citizen in this country.)
Shitty-kitty 1 hours ago [-]
Social Security is the number 1 line item accounting for over 22% of the federal budget.
tialaramex 26 minutes ago [-]
For now. Expect that to be overtaken by debt servicing in the not too distant future.
rebuilder 3 hours ago [-]
What makes you think they will succeed?
s1artibartfast 3 hours ago [-]
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?
anhyz 2 hours ago [-]
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.
riffraff 2 hours ago [-]
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)
WalterBright 2 hours ago [-]
> There's a reason we had to introduce work regulations so you don't have children working 13 hours shifts in coal mines.
Coincidentally, the regulations appeared when it was no longer profitable to employ children. If you don't believe that, just imagine what jobs kids could do in your workplace. I can't think of any.
Coal mining today is done with industrial machines.
gregoryl 2 hours ago [-]
People who are voluntary philanthropists tend not to amass fortunes.
happyopossum 5 hours ago [-]
> 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.
atomicnumber3 4 hours ago [-]
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 "materially sick" mark. I say materially sick to mean, definitely sick, though perhaps not taken out of school (due to not technically being outside of the health exclusion policy, and sometimes I only realize they were "materially" sick after they got home instead of just "passably sick given kids will basically have a lingering cough from august to may).
mixmastamyk 3 hours ago [-]
This happened to us too, until I heard the podcast about Vitamin D. Nipped that in the bud almost immediately.
jdkoeck 2 hours ago [-]
This is Linus Pauling all over again.
morbicer 46 minutes ago [-]
I don't care what was "disproven" or if it's a placebo.
I raised vitamin D intake in winter, I take betaglucans and if I feel like I am starting to get under the weather I take 2-3g of vitamin C per day.
Since we started that, no colds or flus for me or my wife and we have a kindergarten kid.
leptons 3 hours ago [-]
I heard about vitamin D during covid, and that and hand sanitizer are the only 2 things we still do. I haven't been sick for a few years. Before covid (and vitamin D supplements), it was at least 25 days sick every year, if not more.
eloox 3 hours ago [-]
What's that? Any particular dosage?
JoshTriplett 4 hours ago [-]
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.
puttycat 3 hours ago [-]
+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)
tibbar 4 hours ago [-]
Unbelievable in which direction?
I've had years in which most people in my immediate surroundings were sick for weeks or months (likely exacerbated by mold, school, and travel). Also years in which I never really got sick at all.
Getting sick that often is pretty debilitating.
j4k0bfr 4 hours ago [-]
This feels about right to me. Living with kids and commuting via public transport (in a country where face masks are not common) might break 5%.
lokar 4 hours ago [-]
Are you reading “sick” as so ill that you can’t carry out your normal routine? I think they mean any symptoms.
mberning 4 hours ago [-]
For my family of 5 w/ school age children I would say that is a pretty reasonable estimate, maybe even a bit low for us. There are levels of “sick” though and I would say for us most respiratory illnesses are very mild and are a minor annoyance. Where it becomes more menacing is when we have sick kids and sick parents at the same time.
MBlume 4 hours ago [-]
I would love to move to whatever planet you're living on. To me the estimate seems low.
throwawaytea 3 hours ago [-]
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.
Null-Set 4 hours ago [-]
> We surveyed attendees ahead of the symposium. One of our questions was: if this doesn’t happen in the next ~10 years, what will the primary reason be? The number one reason cited was lack of funding, followed by technical feasibility. Why hasn’t this field attracted sufficient funding, especially given the enormous societal burden?
Isn't a projected problem with technical feasibility an explanation for lack of funding?
exmadscientist 2 hours ago [-]
Not really. They're trying to split up potential causes of failure between:
1. "Funding" meaning: We knew what we had to do but didn't have enough money to do it; if we had, this path would have worked (though why it says "TAM" here I don't quite get);
2. "Technical" meaning: We knew what we wanted to do but couldn't quite make it work; if we had, this path would have worked
3. "Uptake"/"Regulatory" (perhaps not the most natural pairing, though I see why they're together) meaning "We couldn't get people to actually do it"/"The authorities wouldn't let us do it"; if we had, this path would have worked
But that is missing a much different type of failure:
4. "Strategy" meaning "This path does not actually lead to our goal"
It's easy to see why in marketing material they'd leave out that last one. They want to build confidence! But for a moonshot like this, especially a biological one, it's kind of silly to think that this is definitely the best way to achieve this goal. I am, personally, quite skeptical; this reads like a mashup of SV and germophobes (with apologies to, well, both of those groups). I hope it works! And I won't stand in its way. But I won't be betting my own money on it. Probably we will learn something interesting no matter what.
More generally, this is a distinction that a lot of people miss (often intentionally, if PR/marketing is involved): strategy and tactics are distinct and they can succeed or fail independently. The best execution (tactics) here will not help if the plan (strategy) is flawed. And there are numerous other examples from research, business, and of course everyone's favorite hobby subject, war, of what happens when your tactics are good but your strategy isn't, or vice versa, or any of the other combinations. And, of course, making decisions about when to pivot (switch strategies) and all those other fun topics.
lazyasciiart 3 hours ago [-]
> Why haven’t we already seen the same kind of transformation with respiratory viruses?
Because it’s a lot easier to control the supply of a material that has to be actively transported into people’s houses for them to use? I struggle to take them seriously when I didn’t see this basic and fundamental difference even mentioned.
amatecha 5 hours ago [-]
As someone who still masks (KN95) in all indoor settings where unmasked people are present, I am all for this. Very much looking forward to seeing where it leads.
taxicabjesus 2 hours ago [-]
What is it that motivates you to continue wearing a mask?
I take note of people who are still masking, but I have compassion for their fear so I don't say anything.
TylerE 1 hours ago [-]
Well, in my case it's because A: I have a gazillion underlying health issues and B: I haven't been "sick" since February of 2020, when I had a diagnosed type-B flu.
jubilanti 3 hours ago [-]
Noble goal, but tell a bunch of scientists and startups that you've got a grand vision and $500 million in cash to burn, and they're always going to tell you a story about how it could be possible if you give them that money. And your sycophantic AI you use to research and vet will also always tell you there's a chance, if that's what you seem to be wanting.
EthanFantl 4 hours ago [-]
I am so tremendously excited to see this, I've had quite a few friends become permanently disabled from long covid and even have some lingering symptoms myself from my last infection and so anything to improve access and uptake of air cleaning technologies and new preventatives is amazing.
Sxubas 3 hours ago [-]
Can it be dangerous to use uv as it can cause mutations in pathogens potentially making them evolve even faster?
I assume the kind of uv used must be fatal, but is there a chance that a tiny percentage makes it?
awakeasleep 3 hours ago [-]
Sunlight is the biggest UV source and at the scales we’re talking, manmade disinfectants would not register
fred_is_fred 5 hours ago [-]
My son is susceptible to these type of infections and has asthma. He missed 17 days of school last year. Even if not fatal these types of infections are miserable and have an impact on those who get them and their caretakers.
nxc18 5 hours ago [-]
I was really disappointed that air cleaning didn’t take off after Covid. Super disappointing to see society just collectively decide to not learn any lessons.
Even if there were no mortality or productivity benefits, you’d think cutting down on cold and flu would be sufficient motivation on its own. Especially in schools and other high risk places.
Kudos to these people.
mberning 4 hours ago [-]
We had twins after having a singleton during covid. We invested in 4 big hepa air filters and placed one in each bedroom. I think it significantly reduced the amount of illnesses we faced in the first year if the twins life. Lesson learned for us.
simoncion 3 hours ago [-]
> Even if there were no mortality or productivity benefits, you’d think cutting down on cold and flu would be sufficient motivation on its own.
You'd think that, but air-cleaning equipment that's not legally required is an avoidable expense. People getting sick, crippled, or even dying from things that aren't legally your fault doesn't appear on a company's balance sheets.
Given that, it's pretty obvious what a business that's out to save every dollar you can get away with will choose to do.
phtrivier 27 minutes ago [-]
No idea of whether those people ar competent, or if it's a PR stunt. Good luck to them. I've joked often enough that "a vaccine for common cold" would have changed my life.
Also, I'm:
- happy that they don't claim the breakthrough will come from AI or Blockchain, for once
- a bit surprised that they got founding by both openAi and Anthropic (so of course they'll try to solve a few things with ai and Blockchain, but,who knows.) Aren't those companies loosing vast amount of money at the moment ? What are they doing philanthropy with ? Just borrowing ? Or are investors for their Series XYZ usually ok with the owner using the money to fund pet projects (even if here, the "pet project" is a good idea, and potentially a good customer/ ?
6 hours ago [-]
teslabox 2 hours ago [-]
It's important to build on solid foundations, rather than on faulty assumptions. My experience is the standard medical approach to lung problems is basically wrong.
There was a submission ~6 years ago about using ethanol to sanitize people's lungs as a treatment for COVID-19. One of the comments shared a college story about how they were coerced into treating their sniffles with a spoon and vodka: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22745834
In early 2020 I started advocating using the classic herbal treatment for lung problems: apple brandy inhaled from a charred oak keg. The theory is simply that the ethanol is an antiseptic, and the apple and oak flavoring compounds stimulate the lungs to repair themselves.
I found a manufacturer and started selling little 3L kegs. My first customer asked, "can I try it?" I warned that the ethanol burns before you get used to it. I was impressed that he was able to fill his lungs with apple brandy fumes without coughing the first time. After a moment of held breath he darted off. When he came back 1 or 2 minutes later he said, "I'll take one".
He was a big guy. His problem was getting winded between his car and the store. That he could walk for one or two minutes on lungs filled with apple brandy fumes, when he couldn't normally walk without getting winded while breathing normally, was incredible.
2 hours later he called back. The husband of the woman he'd been the driver for that day was ~70 year old husband and coughing himself to death with a case of the COPD. He'd quit smoking ~20 years before, but his lungs never recovered.
Both of these men's lung conditions rapidly improved after they started inhaling apple brandy fumes. After he started huffing on apple brandy 4x/day, the COPD fellow's coughs went away, and his skin went from 'gray' to 'pink'. The other fellow caught the COVID-19 in June or July that year. I heard his lung capacity score was fantastic, the virus was just hitting his kidneys. He survived his hospitalization.
The modern tool that facilitates the inhalation of apple brandy is a nebulizer.
Different story: in 2021/2022 I was emailed by a woman who'd found my youtube video. In 2023 she came out to Arizona to visit, then to stay permanently. She always assumed that her lung problems were related to the asbestos she'd inhaled on 9/11. But since she's started using the apple brandy barrel, she's only had to use her inhaler once in the past 3 years: when she got a lung full of hairspray in the gym's bathroom.
As the submission in the link above indicated at the start of COVID-19, treatment with inhaled ethanol is a reasonable initial treatment for respiratory problems.
Spartan-S63 4 hours ago [-]
I'd be interested to see more concerted research into contagious/self-replicable vaccines that are self-replicating and spreadable to a wider swath of people. That seems like a step forward in public health prevention for seasonal illnesses that we have well-engineered and safe vaccines for.
I understand the bar for deployment would need to be high to ensure that side effects are even rare compared to typical voluntary vaccinations.
wizzwizz4 4 hours ago [-]
Self-replicating vaccines? We already have those. They're called diseases.
imhoguy 54 minutes ago [-]
I still amazed how so many people don't get this entire planet is one feedback loop system of competing life processes and they think hiding in their dusty houses with artificial cures will make them avoid that competition and become immune against death.
alex43578 4 hours ago [-]
1) There’s no way the public would buy in to this idea.
2) This seems like a serious violation of medical ethics.
3) If we already gave a well-engineered and safe vaccine, why not take that? Supply chain and immunization itself isn’t a practical choke point: it’s vaccine accuracy for things like flu, and vaccine misinformation for something like measles. But again, take the vaccine or don’t: for most illnesses and most scenarios, you’re only hurting yourself.
camillomiller 53 minutes ago [-]
> Why haven’t we already seen the same kind of transformation with respiratory viruses?
My favorite conspiracy-adjacent theory is that pharmaceutical companies don’t have any intention to give up the multi-billion dollar market of cold and respiratory infections palliatives.
Even if there is no ill intent, there are just no market or capitalistic incentives, because a one-shot solution for these pathogens is not going to create a market as rich as the previous one.
To me this is the perfect representation of why believing the market is a positive force is wrong. If not for external pressure, in this case the market clearly signals that it’s best for us all to keep getting colds.
p1dda 3 hours ago [-]
If you want to end respiratory infections: eat healthy, exercise, stop smoking, decrease stress, spend time outside in the sun
handoflixue 2 hours ago [-]
Are you really under the impression that doing that makes you immune to the flu?
2 hours ago [-]
a_t48 4 hours ago [-]
As someone currently with a nasty cold, having to work through it anyhow - please.
wronganswer 1 hours ago [-]
[dead]
aaron695 12 minutes ago [-]
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usernametaken29 3 hours ago [-]
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 significantly reduce health problems world wide.
But eh, I’m not part of a lobbying organisation, so what do I know.
RealStupidity 3 hours ago [-]
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.
She filled out a healthcare directive when she was 24. Either she never gave it to her clinic or it didn't get transferred with her other files or something when she started going to a different hospital system. Anyway, the hospital she was in didn't have it. She was hospitalized for like 5 days before she passed. I found that healthcare directive that morning, just a few hours before she died. It was stuffed in the back of a drawer. I was tearing up my apartment trying to find it. And when I found it I saw she had written on there
Please celebrate my life, mourn for me, but know I am in a better place. God has a plan for me, and He has a plan for all of you.
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.
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).
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?
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)
Coincidentally, the regulations appeared when it was no longer profitable to employ children. If you don't believe that, just imagine what jobs kids could do in your workplace. I can't think of any.
Coal mining today is done with industrial machines.
This seems completely unbelievable to me. Totally outside of my personal, professional, and family experience.
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 "materially sick" mark. I say materially sick to mean, definitely sick, though perhaps not taken out of school (due to not technically being outside of the health exclusion policy, and sometimes I only realize they were "materially" sick after they got home instead of just "passably sick given kids will basically have a lingering cough from august to may).
I raised vitamin D intake in winter, I take betaglucans and if I feel like I am starting to get under the weather I take 2-3g of vitamin C per day.
Since we started that, no colds or flus for me or my wife and we have a kindergarten kid.
When I stopped working in an office, I almost completely stopped getting sick.
I've had years in which most people in my immediate surroundings were sick for weeks or months (likely exacerbated by mold, school, and travel). Also years in which I never really got sick at all.
Getting sick that often is pretty debilitating.
Isn't a projected problem with technical feasibility an explanation for lack of funding?
1. "Funding" meaning: We knew what we had to do but didn't have enough money to do it; if we had, this path would have worked (though why it says "TAM" here I don't quite get);
2. "Technical" meaning: We knew what we wanted to do but couldn't quite make it work; if we had, this path would have worked
3. "Uptake"/"Regulatory" (perhaps not the most natural pairing, though I see why they're together) meaning "We couldn't get people to actually do it"/"The authorities wouldn't let us do it"; if we had, this path would have worked
But that is missing a much different type of failure:
4. "Strategy" meaning "This path does not actually lead to our goal"
It's easy to see why in marketing material they'd leave out that last one. They want to build confidence! But for a moonshot like this, especially a biological one, it's kind of silly to think that this is definitely the best way to achieve this goal. I am, personally, quite skeptical; this reads like a mashup of SV and germophobes (with apologies to, well, both of those groups). I hope it works! And I won't stand in its way. But I won't be betting my own money on it. Probably we will learn something interesting no matter what.
More generally, this is a distinction that a lot of people miss (often intentionally, if PR/marketing is involved): strategy and tactics are distinct and they can succeed or fail independently. The best execution (tactics) here will not help if the plan (strategy) is flawed. And there are numerous other examples from research, business, and of course everyone's favorite hobby subject, war, of what happens when your tactics are good but your strategy isn't, or vice versa, or any of the other combinations. And, of course, making decisions about when to pivot (switch strategies) and all those other fun topics.
Because it’s a lot easier to control the supply of a material that has to be actively transported into people’s houses for them to use? I struggle to take them seriously when I didn’t see this basic and fundamental difference even mentioned.
I take note of people who are still masking, but I have compassion for their fear so I don't say anything.
I assume the kind of uv used must be fatal, but is there a chance that a tiny percentage makes it?
Even if there were no mortality or productivity benefits, you’d think cutting down on cold and flu would be sufficient motivation on its own. Especially in schools and other high risk places.
Kudos to these people.
You'd think that, but air-cleaning equipment that's not legally required is an avoidable expense. People getting sick, crippled, or even dying from things that aren't legally your fault doesn't appear on a company's balance sheets.
Given that, it's pretty obvious what a business that's out to save every dollar you can get away with will choose to do.
Also, I'm:
- happy that they don't claim the breakthrough will come from AI or Blockchain, for once
- a bit surprised that they got founding by both openAi and Anthropic (so of course they'll try to solve a few things with ai and Blockchain, but,who knows.) Aren't those companies loosing vast amount of money at the moment ? What are they doing philanthropy with ? Just borrowing ? Or are investors for their Series XYZ usually ok with the owner using the money to fund pet projects (even if here, the "pet project" is a good idea, and potentially a good customer/ ?
There was a submission ~6 years ago about using ethanol to sanitize people's lungs as a treatment for COVID-19. One of the comments shared a college story about how they were coerced into treating their sniffles with a spoon and vodka: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22745834
In early 2020 I started advocating using the classic herbal treatment for lung problems: apple brandy inhaled from a charred oak keg. The theory is simply that the ethanol is an antiseptic, and the apple and oak flavoring compounds stimulate the lungs to repair themselves.
I found a manufacturer and started selling little 3L kegs. My first customer asked, "can I try it?" I warned that the ethanol burns before you get used to it. I was impressed that he was able to fill his lungs with apple brandy fumes without coughing the first time. After a moment of held breath he darted off. When he came back 1 or 2 minutes later he said, "I'll take one".
He was a big guy. His problem was getting winded between his car and the store. That he could walk for one or two minutes on lungs filled with apple brandy fumes, when he couldn't normally walk without getting winded while breathing normally, was incredible.
2 hours later he called back. The husband of the woman he'd been the driver for that day was ~70 year old husband and coughing himself to death with a case of the COPD. He'd quit smoking ~20 years before, but his lungs never recovered.
Both of these men's lung conditions rapidly improved after they started inhaling apple brandy fumes. After he started huffing on apple brandy 4x/day, the COPD fellow's coughs went away, and his skin went from 'gray' to 'pink'. The other fellow caught the COVID-19 in June or July that year. I heard his lung capacity score was fantastic, the virus was just hitting his kidneys. He survived his hospitalization.
The modern tool that facilitates the inhalation of apple brandy is a nebulizer.
Different story: in 2021/2022 I was emailed by a woman who'd found my youtube video. In 2023 she came out to Arizona to visit, then to stay permanently. She always assumed that her lung problems were related to the asbestos she'd inhaled on 9/11. But since she's started using the apple brandy barrel, she's only had to use her inhaler once in the past 3 years: when she got a lung full of hairspray in the gym's bathroom.
As the submission in the link above indicated at the start of COVID-19, treatment with inhaled ethanol is a reasonable initial treatment for respiratory problems.
I understand the bar for deployment would need to be high to ensure that side effects are even rare compared to typical voluntary vaccinations.
My favorite conspiracy-adjacent theory is that pharmaceutical companies don’t have any intention to give up the multi-billion dollar market of cold and respiratory infections palliatives. Even if there is no ill intent, there are just no market or capitalistic incentives, because a one-shot solution for these pathogens is not going to create a market as rich as the previous one.
To me this is the perfect representation of why believing the market is a positive force is wrong. If not for external pressure, in this case the market clearly signals that it’s best for us all to keep getting colds.