Scientists Believe There's Finally A Cure For The Common Cold (dailymail.co.uk) 193
schwit1 writes:
After decades of research, the fabled cure for the common cold could be on its way in the form of a nasal spray called SynGEM, the brainchild of a Dutch biotechnology company. After successful tests on mice and rats (yes, they get colds too), 36 human volunteers at London's Imperial College are now trying out the spray.
While colds can be caused by hundreds of different viruses, just three viruses are responsible for 80% of them -- and yet colds are responsible for 40% of the sick days taken in the U.S., according to another article, as well as 75 million doctor visits (costing $7.7 billion) every year, plus another $2.9 billion for cold medications. One experimental medicine professor at London's Imperial College London has spent the last 30 years researching colds and flu, and though a cure has never been found, he now tells the Daily Mail, "I think we are on the verge of it. I really do."
While colds can be caused by hundreds of different viruses, just three viruses are responsible for 80% of them -- and yet colds are responsible for 40% of the sick days taken in the U.S., according to another article, as well as 75 million doctor visits (costing $7.7 billion) every year, plus another $2.9 billion for cold medications. One experimental medicine professor at London's Imperial College London has spent the last 30 years researching colds and flu, and though a cure has never been found, he now tells the Daily Mail, "I think we are on the verge of it. I really do."
About to be excited (Score:5, Insightful)
Until I saw TFA is from the DailyMail
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Even the Daily Mail sometimes gets it right. Whether they did this time, I don't know, but it is in line with what I have read over the last year from more reliable sources. There are indications that it is possible to find parts of both rhinoviruses (which cause cold) and flu viruses that are sufficiently stable to allow us to develop vaccines against all of them (the problem with cold and flu viruses is that they mutate constantly, but there are some parts that don't)
Re:About to be excited (Score:4, Interesting)
"There are indications that it is possible to find parts of both rhinoviruses (which cause cold) and flu viruses that are sufficiently stable to allow us to develop vaccines against all of them"
Ahh but if that were the case I wouldn't still be getting colds because I'd have developed a natural immunity against them, I haven't, we don't, vaccines won't work.
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Fair enough, but I just don't think colds are worth immunising against and they might have health benefits.
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Re:About to be excited (Score:4, Insightful)
Even the Daily Mail sometimes gets it right. Whether they did this time, I don't know, but it is in line with what I have read over the last year from more reliable sources.
That's kinda the point. Talking about a groundbreaking medical breakthrough and giving the Mail as a source is a bit like trying to convince someone that global warming is real by directing them to your weird drunken uncle who also supports the flat earth theory and thinks all muslims are terrorists; you may be right, but you've chosen an awful method of convincing anyone of it.
I'd genuinely love a few links to those reliable sources you mentioned; I can't trust a word the Mail publishes.
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It's a slightly sad tendency I see here on /. - to first overinterpret somebody's comments and then attack them. Personally I don't mind too much, but I'd prefer to have an intelligent conversation sometimes.
So, what I said is '... it is in line with what I have read ..."; a pretty vague statement on any account. Hardly an all-out endorsement of the Daily Mail, I think; it's just that I have read things over the last few years that I think give a bit more reason to hope that it may not be uncrackable after
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I realize that the Daily Mail has issues.
https://www.theguardian.com/co... [theguardian.com] After all, we get Private Eye here in the states.
The big problem with this story is that they're hyping a vaccine that is still in Phase I clinical trials. Yeah, doctors are trying to find a vaccine for the common cold. Doctors have been doing that for 100 years. What's new about this one?
Other than that, it's a somewhat disorganized collection of interesting and maybe even useful information about the common cold. She went to expert
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It is almost funny in the week fake news inserted by the Russian secret service is accused of modifying the American election result - to be discussing a story sourced in the Daily Mail. For those who do not know the Daily Mail is a propaganda tool for controlling the lower classes. Of course it also publishes hard news because it could not peddle its propaganda without it, but the likelihood of an entertainment piece (man bites dog) like this story being true is almost negligible. The year in which post-tr
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Logical fallacy 17b: argumentum ad hamatum
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And this is where most people today stand when it comes to critical thinking skills: I completely trust this source of information, but completely distrust that source of information, therefore I must be a quite shrewd fellow!
It's important to look at (a) the nature of the claim and (b) the sources being cited. In this case the claim is that scientists working for a pharmaceutical company are optimistic about a new approach to vaccination they are developing, and the sources are the scientists themselves
It works (Score:1)
Re:It works (Score:5, Funny)
I tried it and it works. As a side effect it causes your nose to fall off.
So, how does it smell? It Sphinx!
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No nose, no rhinovirus. Brilliant!
Just wanted to say (Score:3)
Only for RSV!!! (Score:2)
The "common cold" is really just a set of symptoms that might be related to any of over 200 viruses. The vaccine mentioned in the article is for one of those, RSV.
I can't find precise numbers, but according to this article [webmd.com], RSV causes less than 20% of colds. Interestingly, the number in this article has apparently recently been adjusted upwards from 10% as that number is still appearing in google caches.
So, this vaccine will not help for >80% of the cases of common cold. On the plus side, RSV is really b
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I suppose they think they could eliminate a cause of a proportion of colds, thus making them rarer.
The rest would be just marketing, since all that is feasible to say about the common cold, is target some specific common causes to make them occur less often.
The "common cold" is really just a set of symptoms that might be related to any of over 200 viruses.
Because the common cold symptoms, most of them, are result of the Human body's defenses coming into play --- the body's standard natural response to i
"Sick" days (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe the common cold is used as a method 40% of the time to get a sick day, but that doesn't mean that its actually the cause.
Is balanced (Score:4, Insightful)
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Do that asshole allowed to take days off? Can he take 2 weeks off until all the symptom wear off? Is that even acceptable or realist?
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Fine, then his boss is the asshole. Either way, we're surrounded by assholes.
Realistic approach (Score:1)
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Zinc and vitamin C are both very cheap. If you use tobacco or alcohol, dropping them and taking supplements instead will leave you in better condition financially.
The word "need" when applied to quantity of vitamin C is not a simple evaluation. A small quantity prevents scurvy; larger amounts (even beyond a gram per day) provide other health benefits. Do you only need the amount of vitamin C that prevents scurvy, or do you also need better wound healing and resistance to some diseases?
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Do that asshole allowed to take days off? Can he take 2 weeks off until all the symptom wear off? Is that even acceptable or realist?
The symptoms doesn't take 2 weeks to wear off, unless he has the flu or pneumonia.
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unintended consequences in 1..2..3.. (Score:2)
So now people fall sick from been worked too much...?
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And that'd be far worse than having a cold. Colds aren't such a bad thing (flu different).
new excuse? (Score:2)
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Two words: explosive diarrhea. Works every time, never questioned.
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My company has a common pool for sick days and PTO as well, and instead of encouraging people to stay healthy, it encourages sick people to come in while contagious so they can still keep their days for summer vacation. Paying out fewer days looks good on the balance sheet though, so the policy remains in effect.
This might take a while (Score:1)
Statistically I Should Be Immortal (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, those three viruses may currently account for 80% of colds (although I suspect it's regional, and the culprits vary from place to place, like the Flu viruses) but if they're eliminated, people not staying home sick with one of those three will instead be exposed to one of the other hundreds of cold viruses until they get sick. Now a different set of 3 viruses will account for most colds, but there will be just as many colds. Anyone who works with the airline industry is still going to get sick frequently.
Additionally, saying there's an $11 billion+ 'cost' of colds is disingenuous, as that money trades hands. From the point of view of the medical industry, they'd be losing $billions every year if the common cold were to be cured. Salaried positions tend to have X amount of paid sick days, which are redeemed by the employee no matter what, so employers pay that money whether or not the employee actually gets sick; you could say 'lost productivity costs' but if those sick days are taken as de facto vacation, the effect is the same. A large proportion of sick days are actually "my bipolar is kicking in and I'm too depressed to come into work" or "my child is sick" or "I need to do something today and you didn't give me off the day I asked for" etc. and those problems won't go away easily.
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Well, gee, if we invent automobiles that's going to hurt the shoe industry and the horse industry. And if we stop breaking windows that's going to hurt the glazing industry.
Stop providing stupid arguments.
$2.9 billion... (Score:1)
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Not to worry, the cost of this medication will be at least $2.89B. No sense in leaving money on the table.
so, like me, they rediscovered bicycling! (Score:2)
Never got a cold anymore since I have been going to work with this good old bicycle. For years.
Now of course this only became possible once we didn't need to bring children to school, etc.
So probably there is room for chemical things...
To be successful it's has to have 3 features (Score:2)
2 It must be cheap since if you do nothing most of the time it'll go away.
3 It must be very safe because if you do nothing most of the time it'll go away.
Those 3 reasons are probably the big ones why it didn't get developed before. (Since it'd be hard to make something that safe that worked that quickly and little money in the end.)
Beware of what you ask for (Score:3)
Reminds me of a SciFi short story in the late 1960s. Some scientist invents a full cure for the cold. Trouble is, once the nasal passages are fully free of virus and snot and stuff, it turns out humans have an incredibly sensitive olfactory system. Teensie everyday levels of chemicals (smoke, perfume, flowers, etc) a painfully overloading the smell response. :-)
I'm not giving away the ending
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Telempath by Spider Robinson, published 1976. Contagious hyperosmia led to the collapse of civilization. The novel is set in the aftermath.
A non-tabloid info source (Score:2)
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Wow. Thanks for that (since the Rest of Us were too lazy to look it up).
For the Rest of Us ---
1. This is a vaccine that is designed to work ONLY against RSV - one semi common (10-20% of all URIs) virus albeit one that can be deadly in little kids (especially premies)
2. TFA managed to imply that this vaccine would work on the Big Three (Rhinovirus, Coronovirus an RSV) making it a reasonable candidate for a 'cold vaccine'. But this is not true at all. It was developed to PREVENT (as in vaccine) not CURE
Vaccination for RSV is NOT a cure for... (Score:1)
Don’t be a pharma sheep! (Score:1)
Fascinating (Score:1)
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Saw this claim before about 20 years ago.
A drug called "Placonaril" by Viropharma.
Failed the FDA trial.
I hope this bunch does better.
The cold is already cured (Score:3)
I find this article and discussion odd. I have not had a cold in many years. For several years now since I've been using zinc oral spray and/or tablets prophylactically I have never come down with a full-blown cold. I've considered the cold cured by zinc for quite a while now. The trick is knowing when to use it and how much. Almost always I can quickly sense if there's a severe infection starting and know when to zinc up and how much. Usually only need to do one or a few doses of oral spray, but in d
Re:The cold is already cured (Score:4, Informative)
Correlation is not causation.
Zinc has no known effect on colds.
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False. Zinc has a dramatic effect on colds when used prophylactically. When used after a cold it has less of an effect. Correlation is extremely high.
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I've got a tiger-repelling rock you might be interested in.
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Not sure if joking or just fails badly at statistics.
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False.
From a study dated 2015 Feb 25:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4359576/ [nih.gov]
"Zinc acetate lozenges shortened the duration of nasal discharge by 34% (95% CI: 17% to 51%), nasal congestion by 37% (15% to 58%), sneezing by 22% (1% to 45%), scratchy throat by 33% (8% to 59%), sore throat by 18% (10% to 46%), hoarseness by 43% (3% to 83%), and cough by 46% (28% to 64%). Zinc lozenges shortened the duration of muscle ache by 54% (18% to 89%), but there was no difference in the duration of head
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Citation needed.
Here's a starting point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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From the most recent study from that Wikipedia page, dated 2015 Feb 25:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4359576/
"Zinc acetate lozenges shortened the duration of nasal discharge by 34% (95% CI: 17% to 51%), nasal congestion by 37% (15% to 58%), sneezing by 22% (1% to 45%), scratchy throat by 33% (8% to 59%), sore throat by 18% (10% to 46%), hoarseness by 43% (3% to 83%), and cough by 46% (28% to 64%). Zinc lozenges shortened the duration of muscle ache by 54% (18% to 89%), but there was no di
Or you could WASH YOUR HANDS (Score:3)
Just wash your hands... well.
I started doing this a couple decades ago; wash hands well after doing or before doing any of the following:
Handling money
going out in public
Using the restroom
eating
before cooking anything
after getting home from anywhere for any reason
after touching anything else that belongs to someone else (so their computer keyboards, personal effects, etc.
Use real soap, warm water, lather up, rinse and then dry.
This will dramatically reduce your exposure to all kinds of bacteria and viru
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I had a cold when I was a child and now I'm immune to it. Trouble is I can still catch another one.
Picovir (Score:3)
A drug called "Placonaril" by Viropharma.
Pleconaril (Picovir) failed FDA trials, but not necessarily for the reasons you might think at first glance. The problem is that the FDA considers common colds to be a trivial health issue for the general public, with very low mortality. Easily treatable with supportive care. However, the segment of the population that might take this drug is very, very large (most of the population). As a result, the FDA will demand perfection from any clinical trials, with the bar set at an impossible to meet standard
Re:File under Bullsh*t (Score:5, Funny)
Nonsense. In homeopathy they just put 1/100000000000000000000000000th of an onion in water, and the cold is guaranteed to be gone in a week. It just costs $200 a bottle, and is every bit as good as somebody putting their energy up your spirit.
Re:File under Bullsh*t (Score:5, Funny)
Reminds me of this homeopathic cream somebody gave me for sore muscles.
The disclaimer said to consult a doctor if it didn't work within 3 weeks.
A doctor I called said to call him back if it didn't disappear by itself within 2 weeks.
Should I interpret this as saying the homeopathic shit would actually make it worse than doing nothing?
Needless to say, I threw the cream in the trash and the pain was gone in about a week.
I guess my further diluting of the homeopathic cream by not using it made it work better?
Re:File under Bullsh*t (Score:5, Funny)
Careful. Homeopathic medicine can kill you if you don't take it.
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I find it a lot cheaper to buy homeopathic remedies at the grocery store. Look for those gallon jugs of "distilled water", which are generic versions of all homeopathic remedies simultaneously.
Also, I take issue with your statement that homeopathic remedies are as good as spiritual energy. I don't absolutely know that there is no such thing as spiritual energy, or that, if it existed, it would have no medical effects.
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Which? The ones making NyQuil? LOL. Seriously, you believe they have any clout?
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
I expect they do have some clout what with that $11+ billion a year profits to spend. I doubt they'd bother trying to stop a common cold cure by this method though unless they could find side-affects with the cure.
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The corporate lobbyists will influence the FDA to put a stop to this, pronto.
Why? Wouldn't corporations benefit from fewer employee sick days?
Re:Yeah right. (Score:4)
There are also corporate lobbyists that want to make sure this comes to market too. Also, even the owners of stock in companies that make cold medicine get sick, have children that get sick, etc. To assume that they'd allow human misery to continue to make a buck is assuming the worst in humanity.
Do you believe all the people that make medicines are in the business to profit from the misery of others? That is possible but it is also possible that they are in the business of relieving misery but to do so they need to pay the bills.
Also, it's not like curing the common cold will eliminate their market. People still get headaches, have trouble sleeping, get allergies, and so on. If you look at the ingredients of a common cold medicine and compare it to a common sleep aid like Tylenol PM you will see it's the same stuff. The stuff to treat allergies is also the same stuff to treat cold symptoms. If they don't sell enough cold medicine they'll just put a different label on it and sell it that way.
Let them lobby away, because the people in the FDA would quite likely want to see this on the market too. I can imagine the lobbyist money looks great until that government official gets a cold of their own.
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That's fine, I'm sure a lot of people would agree with you. Question for you, would you rather lose a million pounds/dollars/euros or your child?
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Re:Sickdays==Lossofprofits, can't have those! (Score:4, Informative)
I'm not sure what your point is. If I stay healthy, that helps both me and the company that I work for. What's wrong with that?
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Re:Sickdays==Lossofprofits, can't have those! (Score:5, Insightful)
He may not fully understand why it seems bad, but it is part of a trend to value human life as well as almost everything else in terms of money alone.
Are you aware that the sole purpose of money, the only reason it exists, is to enable people to assign values to things? If we didn't care about comparing values of arbitrary combinations of things we could just use a barter system. The wealthy could get just as wealthy owning land and machinery and livestock and fuel, we'd just have a much harder time comparing how wealthy they are if nobody assigned numbers in fungible units to those things.
Complaining about people measuring value in money is like complaining about measuring sound volume in decibels. The sound's not going to get any louder or quieter just because you''re squeamish about assigning a numeric value to it's current volume.
Maybe you don't want to know the value of a human life. Maybe it makes you uncomfortable to even think about the question of whether every human life has precisely equal value in quantifiable units. Maybe you hope to never allow yourself to think about how much money you'd be willing to spend to extend a stranger's life by sixty seconds.
But that doesn't mean that "money" isn't the appropriate class of units in which to measure "value" and if life has any value at all then money is the correct thing to use to estimate that value in units that can be compared against other things of value. Decibels for sound volume, kilograms (or other mass units) for mass, meters (or other length units) for distance, and dollars (or other monetary units) for value.
Just because you'd prefer not to know what the number is, doesn't mean that it can't be measured. Nor does your preference not to know affect which units are appropriate for quantifying the measurement.
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He may not fully understand why it seems bad, but it is part of a trend to value human life as well as almost everything else in terms of money alone.
Complaining about people measuring value in money is like complaining about measuring sound volume in decibels. The sound's not going to get any louder or quieter just because you''re squeamish about assigning a numeric value to it's current volume.
Complaining about people measuring the value of human life in money is like complaining about measuring temperature rise in decibels. FTFY.
Different things have different units of measure; some of us understand that money is a wholly inappropriate metric for the value of human life.
Money buys safety systems, medicine - LIFE (Score:3)
> Different things have different units of measure; some of us understand that money is a wholly inappropriate metric for the value of human life.
Money is how you buy longer life. Want safer highways? Gotta spend money. Better doctors? Want to see the doctor more often? That'll cost money. Want to test every piece of meat for contamination before it's sold? You're going to need to spend a lot of money.
You could go about your day very safe. In traffic, you could have a professional driver drive ahead
Some exact dollar costs to save lives (Score:3)
Right now, today, you have a choice of whether to spend your money installing fire sprinklers in your home. It'll cost about $6,000. There' a 1/50,000 chance it'll save your life. As you decide whether or not to spend that $6,000 to protect your life, you are putting a dollar value on your own life.
Installing fire sprinklers in 100,000 homes will cost $600 million and save about 6 lives. ($10 million per life). Should we do that?
Does your answer change when you find out that by instead spending
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Installing fire sprinklers in 100,000 homes will cost $600 million and save about 6 lives. ($10 million per life). Should we do that?
Does your answer change when you find out that by instead spending that $600 million educating kids and encouraging healthy habits we'd save about 25,000 times as many lives, from heart disease and similar killers? ($4,000 per life).
Seems to me that both those things cost the same amount of money. Are you agreeing with the OP that price and value are not the same, that you can't measure a thing's value by its price?
You buy what you value (Score:3)
Given that you can save lives at $4,000 each, you shouldn't spend your money at $10 million each. Saving a life isn't worth $10 million, because you can do more with that $10 million. The VALUE (market value, in fact) is less than $10 million.
> price and value are not the same, that you can't measure a thing's value by its price?
Quite the opposite. What you buy, at what price, is an objective measure of what you REALLY value. He COULD donate half his salary to save several lives. Instead, he probabl
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What you buy, at what price, is an objective measure of what you REALLY value.
No it isn't. I value air but I've never paid a cent for it. Now if circumstances were different I would be willing to pay quite the exorbitant price for air, but as things stand now not a cent. Because, you see, even the most valuable things can and do have a market value of zero when they are freely available in abundance.
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Never underestimate the power of words, like how some employees go ballistic when they're called resources "like we were cattle". Well tough you're hired to do a job and in that context you're just another input, like the bricks and the blender you need a bricklayer to make the wall. I usually sarcastically agree they're right, the proper term should be prostitute since we're pimping out our brains for cash.
I know that no matter how much they care about my physical and social well-being it's ultimately a me
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Re: Sickdays==Lossofprofits, can't have those! (Score:2)
That's a category error. Money can only measure the value of transactions; unless you're trading people as vendibles, applying a money count to human lifes is meaningless.
Sure you can count the price of medical care and sanitation, but that's not the value of life any more than the price of food and water is, even if you'd die without then.
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Just so long as you remember that money is a measure of price and not a measure of value. For example, consider what the price of a breath of air is vs its value.
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it nice to see, that something as a human being sick, is calculated as corporate loss.
You see... Employees are a company's most valuable asset and, um... Sorry, I forgot where I was going with this.
[ Pro Tip: When your employer starts saying crap like this, start looking for another job. ]
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You are misinformed by like 20 years. We have antiviral medication that have cured quite a few diseases such as Hepatitis C and also the flu (Relenza, Tamiflu etc). They are a bit expensive though.
Re:not likely (Score:5, Funny)
The start of the Mallpox Season was yesterday- Black Friday.
There is no cure.
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There are several cures; become a Buddhist and reject materialism, become Amish and reject materialism, become a hermit and reject materialsm...
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And when the planet hit the sun
I saw the face of Allison
Allison, Allison, Allison, Allison
But as long as we are going to go around spreading misinformation:
Sometimes I wish that I could stop you from talking
When I hear the silly things that you say
I think somebody better put out the big light
'Cause I can't stand to see you this way
Allison, I know this world is killing you
Oh, Allison, my aim is true
My aim is true
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Or just eat the garlic. Whole bulbs of it. Wario style.
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You win the non sequitur award for today.
It's never been done, therefor it can't be done. But if it were done in this one case, it could be done in all cases.