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Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 29, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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any serious virus with an animal reservoir is impossible to globally eradicate without several orders of magnitude more political will or state capacity than has ever existed

Yes, obviously. This has nothing to do with my point, which is that the only virus considered serious enough and feasible enough to fully eradicate had a fatality rate under 5%.

The political desire to do this was complicated by the cold war and the realization by both the US and USSR that helping to create public health infrastructure in the very weak and nascent states where the disease persisted was strategically important to expand their spheres of influence.

Are we just making tangentially related, dubiously true assertions now?