Maybe not "saving the world," but I think it's pretty cool that we've nearly fully eradicated a worm that literally eats its way through living human beings with the massive support of a billionaire — for whom this was just one of many, many ongoing public health projects
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Replying to @webdevMason @TheAnnaGat
I'm very happy that Bill Gates is putting his money to good use. I'm also not entirely sure what the point of the original article was. At the same time, how many billionaires have had Gates-level impacts? Depending on philanthropy does not seem to be a good systemic solution.
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Replying to @basus @TheAnnaGat
Yeah, so let's... tell the few that *do* try to do that to stop trying to be Batman? Or something? Fucking yikes.
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To be clear, I'm fully aware of how unlikely it is that either you or this author were even aware that guinea worm disease existed. You'd never have gotten it whether or not it had been nearly eliminated. Them's the breaks.
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Replying to @webdevMason @TheAnnaGat
I grew up in India and I'm well aware of the Gates Foundation's work to help eradicate polio and malaria and am grateful for it. If billionaires do genuinely help, I'm happy to give them the credit they deserve.
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But he's also *not* Batman in that he's pretty quietly doing not-very-glamorous work that's having an impact. If that were the norm for billionaires that would be fine, but is it?
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Replying to @basus @TheAnnaGat
I mean, is that really where we're at? If you're going to eliminate polio and malaria, you'd better do it quietly, or some freelance thinkpiece wankoff will make fun of you for trying to be Batman?
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Replying to @TheAnnaGat @basus
I see a really weird cultural shift toward the toxic assumption that *attempting something big* as an individual is fundamentally at odds with democracy, that individual heroism itself is a sort of social defection, and at the very least nobody should be rewarded for it. Bizarre
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Revenge of the small minded?
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at this piece. Like why???