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by ben_w
2211 days ago
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Taking a more positive interpretation of what @logichains wrote: given that many governments do have a history of letting lots of people die because it’s to expensive to keep them alive, the only reason this isn’t happening now is because it will affect those leaders personally. |
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AIDS is a good example of this. It's more deadly than coronavirus, but because it was seen as a disease of gay people, governments initially invested extremely little in treatment or stopping the spread. According to WHO, 32 million people have died of AIDS since it appeared, and most of those deaths would have been prevented with easy access to and faster development of the antivirals now used to treat it in rich countries.
Malaria is another one. It kills hundreds of thousands of people each year (mostly in Africa), and is largely preventable by relatively simply approaches like mosquito nets. For a small fraction of the trillions of dollars involved in trying to stop covid19, most of these fatalities could be prevented.