[shadowfiend]

Please do a detailed reading of the linked evaluation of the Against Malaria Foundation. There is a fairly rigorous discussion of the impact on both fatal and non-fatal potential malaria infections, as well as how the evaluation is done. While anecdotal evidence is more emotionally powerful, there seems to be pretty strong large-scale evidence that at least in the places AMF targets, the nets are effective at a relatively low cost.

[Mikeb85]

I have and I'm sure the mosquito nets are effective.

The point isn't to say they're not, but rather to say the nations that have been most successful at preventing malaria deaths are those that are most developed, or have access to anti-malarial drugs (which are dirt cheap).

The flu kills thousands every year and used to kill many more (the 1918 flu epidemic killed an estimated 50 to 100 million people around the world), but we don't even consider it to be fatal anymore due to our level of nutrition and medical care - which comes from development.

Also keep in mind the US used to have malaria-spreading mosquitoes and a fair amount of malaria-deaths, but now it's considered eliminated as a public health concern. Maybe some of the techniques it used could be applied to Africa, and not just band-aids that keep Africa hooked on western 'aid'.

[learnstats2]

> we don't even consider it to be fatal anymore due to our level of nutrition and medical care - which comes from development.

This is absolutely nothing to do with human development.

Good health can compound problems with flu because it leads to a cytokine storm - flu epidemics tend to kill healthy young people disproportionately.

The scientific community has been extremely concerned about another influenza epidemic because there is no guarantee that we can do anything about it, medically speaking.

If there was an epidemic on that scale again, the best practice is to close schools and workplaces, to restrict travel. In other words: to temporarily stop the benefits of human development.