
Bill Gates warns on future disease epidemic - allending
http://m.bbc.com/news/technology-31956344
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KFW504
For more, [http://fusion.net/story/57515/darpa-thinks-it-has-a-
solution...](http://fusion.net/story/57515/darpa-thinks-it-has-a-solution-to-
ebola-and-all-other-infectious-diseases/)

Premise is fair, though more details are needed to discuss the validity of any
particular approach.

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jobu
_" Nato plays war games to check that people are well-trained and prepared.
Now we need germ games," he said._

It's actually a bit surprising that NATO or the UN don't have practice runs
for disease outbreaks or natural disasters.

~~~
taybin
How do we know that they don't? I'm sure they have procedures for biological
warfare responses.

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jobu
Anything is possible, but I couldn't find anything with a quick google, and
I'm assuming Bill Gates has more time and resources than myself to verify that
statement before making it.

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allending
The Guardian (yeah, I know) had a very in-depth look at how the current
progress in fighting Ebola from the viewpoint of Prof. Tom Solomon:
[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/14/meet-the-man-
le...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/14/meet-the-man-leading-
britains-fight-against-ebola). Long read, so make sure you have a cup of
coffee handy.

~~~
SirMeow
Not a brit, so I'm curious: what's wrong with The Guardian?

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irremediable
I'm not actually sure what his specific criticism is. Some people don't like
it because it's quite leftwing. Possibly, though, he just said that because no
newspaper is going to have great scientific content.

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puranjay
I was under the impression that Guardian was one of the last remaining British
news outlets that wasn't completely morally compromised?

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irremediable
Exactly as blumkvist replied: immorality and neutrality are quite different
things. In fact, I'd argue that the Guardian's political alignment is strongly
linked to its integrity.

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mootothemax
Google tracks Flu-related search queries to give indications of current flu
outbreaks:

[http://www.google.org/flutrends/](http://www.google.org/flutrends/)

I'd imagine that they track other possible trends indicating an epidemic, and
share the result with government health departments and NGOs.

Does anyone know if they actually do this, though?

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duaneb
I would imagine this would be something that Google would be skittish to get
into. Flu symptoms are a) common and b) well known. Tracking symptoms of
arbitrary potential epidemics could be very difficult to design, let alone
verify, and there's little benefit to Google. Not even PR if they raise a
false flag.

~~~
mootothemax
_Tracking symptoms of arbitrary potential epidemics could be very difficult to
design_

Does it need to be terribly precise, though?

If, for example, lots of searches spring up for vomiting or sweating in a
small radius, I'd imagine that'd raise a "Hey, you might like someone to look
at this flag," which could be useful - just as long as the computers aren't
shouting all day long.

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webnrrd2k
Highly recommended If you're interested in this sort of thing: This Coming
Plague, by Laurie Garrett. It's a very good book about, in a nutshell, how
easy international travel is, and how lower investment in medical
infrastructure and social services affect us all.

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Vektorweg
How about to try to cure the proprietary software disease?

~~~
Ensorceled
The time to criticize Carnegie is when he is monopolizing the steel industry;
not while he is building thousands of libraries.

~~~
Vektorweg
I have one question: is it right to destroy a whole culture just to be the
good guy afterwards?

~~~
bernardlunn
The PC was the greatest tool given to man in a long time, the Internet would
have been impossible without it. What is your beef? That Gates was a fierce
competitor in a competitive business?

~~~
Vektorweg
He shouldn't have made his software closed source. Too many business men
followed him, leading to a vast amount of bullshit software no one can easily
relay on to make something better.

The free software culture slowly recovers. But we are still far away from the
good old and worthy traditions for commercial software developers.

------
gesman
“To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

― Mark Twain

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areyoukiddinme
Bill Gates, diseases, large contributions to pharmaceutical companies.

Me thinks I see an association here that adds up to making lots of money using
scare tactics.

