Ending respiratory infections
blog.interceptfund.com
blog.interceptfund.com
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).
We iteratively succeeded against AIDS ffs, that looked like impossible mission in 80s and 90s, we just threw more science and research on the problem. Your arguments are not that good
A more correct way to use reason is to look at all possible things that have been proposed that cost $500m, and see how those turn out in general. Then possibly weight using expert knowledge about this particular problem and the possible benefits. Then consider what the opportunity cost is, i.e., what you give up by spending $500m here instead of something else.
Trite armchair rebuttals are not convincing.
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.
It is interesting how reactionary people are to the topic.
In practice, the government only represents the most sociopathic people.
Never getting sick is an enabler to reaching the goal. And the goal is..?
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.
We think the most promising category of products that accomplish these goals are those that remove pathogens from the air, particularly in high-density environments like offices, schools, and public transit. We’ll call these air cleaning technologies (ACTs) like air filtration and far-UVC antimicrobial light.
Sounds like a pretty big challenge to me... Ok, during Covid I read that airplane-style air conditioning with nozzles above each seat and used air pumped out at ground level was pretty good in making sure "your" air didn't get mixed up with your neighbor's (masks were still mandatory however on the few flights I took during that period). But how are you going to do the same in a packed subway train in, let's say, Tokyo or New York, at rush hour? That air conditioning unit would probably have to be as heavy as the train itself, and to the passengers it would feel like a hairdryer (on cold setting) blasting at them permanently from above...
This seems completely unbelievable to me. Totally outside of my personal, professional, and family experience.
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.
When I stopped working in an office, I almost completely stopped getting sick.
I think so, too. The referenced article (https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...) says:
“Every year, in the USA, about 25 million people visit their family doctors with uncomplicated upper respiratory infections, and the common cold syndrome results in about 20 million days of absence from work and 22 million days of absence from school.”
That makes 44 million days of absence on a population of 340 million, or about one day for every 7½ citizens.
Even assuming healthy people are as susceptible to that as the general population and assuming 50% of those that get ill will work, anyways, out of financial necessity, that still is a far cry from “Healthy people spend roughly 15-25 days each year […] sick”
That paper also has a graph showing Mean annual incidence of respiratory illnesses by age group. Eyeballing it (ignoring size differences between age groups) I get at an average of about 3 infections. If each takes a week, that gets you to those 15-25 days.
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).
Result: not been sick more than a day or two for fifteen years. And rarely, once or twice a winter.
One exception, during covid I had it and it lasted five full days at medium intensity, then went away permanently.
This is not a “placebo effect” at all, was like turning on a light switch, immediate results. During the winter I heard about it, I’d been sick for almost three weeks straight, couldn’t shake it. Naysayers look silly in my opinion, or are perhaps an exception I mentioned above.
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.
I still was sick all the time. That combination of not enough sleep (kids crying in the night etc.), work stress and insane amount of viruses from nursery is killer.
Not well known but there are people who simply can not absorb D thru the gut. A high school friend is one. Shouldn’t discourage the 90%+ who can benefit because of exceptions.
I got sick so often it limited a lot my general life: I stopped practicing sports regularly and started being very careful with sleep(sleep deprivation likely increased the chance of infection), because I knew if I did not lead a perfectly balanced lifestyle I would get sick. I am quite upset I stopped running 15km per week, even with snow. I never fully went back to it, due to fear of getting sick, and having to take care of toddlers while being feverish or nauseated.
In those years I think I was not disease free more than 3 months at a time. In a year where many people decide to not have children, it does not help the cause of having children seeing other parents suffer so much, in those early years. I have non parent friends that get sick after meeting us, resenting meeting us and asking if we are sick, because they spent all the night in the bathroom or with fever. Fortunately it feels we are already immune because we are not sick very often anymore.
Does running long distance increase the chance of getting sick?
So if I am exhausted of a run and cannot rest or sleep, it is almost sure I get sick soon after. Just my experience.
A message reminding people that you can improve the resistance to basic colds/flu for a school teacher, tested on several school teachers, should be motivating for someone tired of being sick.
You asked why you're getting downvoted. I'm doing you the service of explaining it's because your comment looks spammy and annoying. Take the feedback...
We also had 10+ covids to indicate how much it changes, mostly imported by kids from creche (we hit the 'right' timing with them and covid waves). What do you expect when they shared pacifiers and put fingers in mouths all the time. Or suddenly sneezing gunk all over my face when holding them.
Before kids, I was usually sick 1x a year for few days, or had 1 proper flu week and that was it, my wife even less. No it didn't visibly improve our immunity, had covid last autumn and it felt almost like for the first time, sans loss of smell and taste.
Now that I'm isolated in my sterile home office and might go weeks without seeing someone outside of my family, I basically take no sick days.
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.
Most of the time wearing a mask has no ill effect (particularly in stores or whatever), but it does get super old that it's an uphill battle with pretty much everyone everywhere, because for them everything is "back to normal". I don't care if I have to sit there in the restaurant and not eat anything while everyone else eats, but other people find it awkward and make constant comments about it -- or I just don't get invited to stuff too. (As an aside, it's frustrating that restaurants with outdoor patios often aren't much help, because apparently the trend is that outdoor patios have to be completely enclosed in plexiglass thus defeating the purpose of an outdoor patio) ...
It has been a pretty interesting 6 years, noting how people respond to the masking. I think people just think we're ill, pretty often. I've had a few people give a judgemental look, especially in Europe. No one has really said anything out loud, surprisingly.
What's especially surprising is just how inconsiderate people are -- going to work (or just being out in public) while blatantly sick, spreading their illness to others, never wearing a mask because apparently that's too hard or something. Too bad for anyone who's immune-compromised or lives with immune-compromised people, I guess. The pandemic has really opened my eyes to just how selfish people are, and it has been very disappointing to see. It has also highlighted the degree of consideration and thoughtfulness many people enact, which is super awesome to see!
Nice to see they mention UV, too. Aerolamp[0] is down to ~$500. If it were $100, it'd be easy to get into offices, too. Heck, if I worked in person, I'd buy a $100 one as an employee.
I've written about it in more detail here: https://www.indoorco2map.com/blog.html?post=interceptFund
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.
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.
That has nothing to do with "the market". The market would start more new healthcare companies, and they'd be doing things like this blog post. The issue we have in many parts of the market is regulatory capture - a few companies have convinced government to make regulations that increase the cost of starting a competitor. Healthcare is definitely one of those places!
Sure, a freer market would probably have problems some or even most of those regulations prevent. And at the same time, we've created a problem. I've heard it suggested that government should always shoulder the marginal cost of regulations they create, because that's the only way you avoid a couple of players preventing new entrants.
I understand the bar for deployment would need to be high to ensure that side effects are even rare compared to typical voluntary vaccinations.
HN comments are another example of a system that is technically competitive, but is better characterised as collaborative: we argue, we vote, the ranking system surfaces the "best" comments at the expense of "lesser" ones… and yet we're all working together to produce something hopefully interesting for the lurkers to read.
Please don't pooh-pooh other people trying to make things happen. It costs you nothing to not post negative comments.
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/ ?
By that I meant "they don't pretend they're going to solve a hard problem by vaguely handwaving at trendy buzzwords".
More seriously speaking, I suspect (and hope) that some form of machine learning / data generation could help in such an effort (AlphaFold is a thing, not a buzzword.)
The blockchain part is much more tongue in check, of course.
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.
Drugs and medicine play a small role in resp viral infections.