SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
The World Health Organization Wants You To Worry About "Disease X"
Every year, the World Health Organization commissions an expert committee identify the most threatening infectious diseases of the upcoming year. The idea is to prioritize research and development on diseases and pathogens that pose a major risk to global health, but lack effective treatments or vaccines.
The committee met early in February this year, and the prioritized list of diseases has been released. The list is made up of familiar threats, including Ebola, Zika, Lassa Fever and a respiratory illness in the Middle East known as MERS. And then there's "Disease X." It is the last on the list, and most mysterious.
What is Disease X? Disease X is quite literally a mystery disease. It's a recognition that we can't see everything coming. In 2018, it's entirely possible that we'll see a brand-new pathogen. Or, as with Zika, an old disease will suddenly demonstrate a new way to harm us.
Disease X is a placeholder for disaster we can't imagine yet.
From the WHO list of Blueprint priority diseases:
Disease X represents the knowledge that a serious international epidemic could be caused by a pathogen currently unknown to cause human disease, and so the R&D Blueprint explicitly seeks to enable cross-cutting R&D preparedness that is also relevant for an unknown "Disease X" as far as possible.
Also at The Telegraph.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 13 2018, @03:10PM (2 children)
R&D budgets and personal in most big pharmas corps are "stuck" on a semi-annual or even annual boardroom meeting schedule. That is, if Zika breaks in February it won't be until June/July before personal and funds will be allocated. Moreover, even smaller boardrooms won't agree to discuss anything during monthly or quarterly reviews without medical and financial reports (and the time to read them). As a result, whenever an outbreak occurs, all the immediate and important work is done in universities and federal labs. Institutes that are currently being underfunded by an orange clown that doesn't understand anything about how government works and why it works the way it does. So, the WHO tactfully begs pharmas to put aside money to do strain identification or even primary discovery since no one will do it for them anymore in the future.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday March 13 2018, @06:48PM (1 child)
She visited me at working software. At the time we had six employees
As soon as she walked in the door she said how great it must be for us to be able to quickly adapt to changing market conditions
I later worked for apple myself. Upon observing the cars parked in the lot by the building where all the executives worked, I said to myself "These people suffer from never having to work for a living"
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 14 2018, @01:59PM
Were there two almost identical Teslas side-by-side? Because I seen that and foudn it ridiculous. It's a real shitty case of one-upmanship for people who seem to have it all but are slaves to their ego.