https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-58810551
Children across much of Africa are to be vaccinated against malaria in a historic moment in the fight against the deadly disease.
Malaria is very roughly like a COVID pandemic every year, and it's been happening for tens of thousands of years. It is one of humanity's oldest enemies, and our first efforts to fight it were purely evolutionary; those efforts left well-known and often debilitating markers in our genes, including sickle cell anemia.
In technological society, we don't have to rely on evolution disclosing whether this or that random mutation does well against malaria. We can do better by studying the problem and trying out responses that evolution couldn't do for us. In the words of Karl Popper, by testing ideas, science lets the ideas die in our stead.
Malaria was up there with HIV as something I thought we wouldn't have a vaccine for any time soon. Both have uncanny abilities to evade the immune system and can quickly develop resistance to drugs.
This current period is a really odd one to me. We are entering what may be a golden age for vaccines, antivirals, gene editing, and cancer treatment, but I'm also simultaneously very concerned that we may be entering a period of substantial anti-vaccine, anti-expertise, and general anti-science sentiment. A trend that has been gathering steam for the last decade or so, but really seems to have exploded and entrenched itself this pandemic.
It might not feel that way, but this is some of the best news that the world has seen in a long time.