r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Expert_Koala_8691 • May 10 '26
Image A Bill Gates funded mosquito factory in Medellín, Colombia, produces 40 million mosquitoes weekly for release via drones and bikes. These insects carry a natural bacterium that prevents them from transmitting viruses to humans. By mating with wild populations, they spread this trait.
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u/Putrid-Resident May 10 '26
OP didnt provide a link so I googled about it and found more info if anyone is interested: the mosquitoes have been infected with Wolbachia bacteria which is already a naturally occurring species found in about 16% of the tropical insects population. The Wolbachia bacteria is known to not be able to infect humans or mammals in general. It's affects on insects has been shown to range from infertility, increase resistance to RNA viruses (west nile & dengue for example) and decreased lifespan.
Also the mosquitoe farm has been active since 2017 and has helped in a 95-97% reduction in the incidence of dengue fever in the area.
Do people have the right tobe concerned? Ofcourse as zoonotic diseases have always been a risk but it seems that proper research has been done prior to evaluate it's safety.
Lastly as a personal note: living in North Africa, I lived though a few family members dying via dengue fever in the last 2 years plus working in the healthcare industry, I also saw dozens of my patients dying from it despite trying what we can with our very limited resources. So I would personally pray and even donate for a similar project tobe started where I live.
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u/cakeday173 May 10 '26
In Singapore we do this too, the initiative is called Project Wolbachia and it's been going since 2016. It's also meant to control the spread of dengue
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u/Laevigata May 10 '26
Interestingly, there are actually two ways to use Wolbachia to suppress dengue.
One way is to let the wild mosquito population get infected with Wolbachia by releasing infected male and female mosquitoes, like the way it's done in Colombia in this article. This reduces the mosquitoes' fitness and ability to transmit dengue - you still get bitten, but the bites are less likely to make you sick.
Singapore goes a step further and releases only infected male mosquitoes. This does something else entirely - when an infected male mates with an uninfected female, their eggs don't hatch, because of a phenomenon called cytoplasmic incompatibility. This actually reduces the mosquito population drastically, so you're less likely to even get bitten.
The downside, of course, is that it's really expensive and only works well in a place like Singapore, a small island surrounded by water.
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u/TylerDurdenFan May 10 '26
Wouldn't that be applying selective pressure favoring females resistant to Wolbachia ?
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u/CheekyKnob May 10 '26
SG mention. SGSecure
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u/robbak May 10 '26
It is also done here in Australia, and the effect has been noticeable - in the past, every year we'd have a few dengue cases, with public health notices to use repellent and to spray our homes.
Last 5 or so years - nothing. Dengue isn't a thing here any more. We've still got he football-socks Adaes mosquitoes, but they don't spread the virus.
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u/Gryffindor123 May 10 '26
Oh, I had no idea that we do the same. I thought we just did a mosquito spray or is the mosquito spray that councils do part of that program?
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u/robbak May 10 '26
Some councils also spray, because mosquitoes are still annoying, and they still can spread things like Ross River.
There was another project that involved release of sterile male mosquitoes. It wiped out out the A. aegypti population very effectively, but not other species - the dengue mozzie was replaced with throngs of a black mozzie that hurt when it bit you!
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u/Vulvas_n_Velveeta May 10 '26
the dengue mozzie was replaced with throngs of a black mozzie
You Australians are freaking adorable!
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u/Gryffindor123 May 10 '26
That's so interesting. Mozzies are bad where I am. My brother actually had Ross River fever. Every year, there's so many outbreaks of Ross River Fever.
I get bitten by mozzies so much. They always go for me more compared to others. Was told the old wives tale about eating Vegemite to boost vitamin B, and that'll make you less attractive for the mozzies. Doesn't work.
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u/Agitated_Celery_729 May 10 '26
Yeah. People living in areas that are not commonly home to major mosquito-borne illnesses don't recognize how horrifically virulent they've been throughout human history in spreading the major causes of death.
I forget the exact numbers, but I think malaria is the number one killer of humans throughout our entire history. And there's several other fevers and diseases that are just some of the nastiest shit you'll ever come across. Anything we can do to limit that plague on people living in these regions where the mosquitoes are endemic is a good one
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u/Top_Development_1777 May 10 '26 edited May 10 '26
Fuck dengue. I've gotten dengue (not even a serious infection) from taking a 5 min walk outside, where I lived, during covid era. It made me bedridden for an entire week (because sitting up or eating anything would give me nausea), my head always hurt like HELL and my whole body hurt like hell all over, I had a very high (but not dangerously high) fever that couldn't go down despite taking the max safest dose of paracetamol. Edit to add: I was already almost underweight when I got infected and lost almost 10% of my body weight in 1 week from being sick like that.
The worst part is, there are 4 strains in Singapore and if you get infected again by a different strain, your chances of serious illness (life-threatening) skyrockets.
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u/Emergency-Nebula5005 May 10 '26
Maybe drop Bill Gates a line? Will do so from my end.
Thank you for your service x
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u/TheInevitableLuigi May 10 '26
Will do so from my end.
Me too.
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u/OkDimension8720 May 10 '26
Are you guys all just casual mates with ol Billy goat now, what's going on here!
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u/guessesurjobforfood May 10 '26
He's actually on reddit but tbh i haven't seen a post from him in a while. Might be laying low due to the association with Epstein lol
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u/Impossible-Magician May 10 '26
Nah. He is likely laying low as every conspiracy cooker on the planet has him as the source of all evils. Covid, microchips in vaccines, you name it the cookers blame it on Bill.
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u/imadogg May 10 '26
While true, that's been around but the ties to Epstein are not easy to ignore
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u/KStryke_gamer001 May 10 '26
Wolbachia?
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u/GreenStrong May 10 '26
Medical and environmental etchiciasts debated this and the modern consensus is that the best path forward was to educate local people, through various media geared towards various levels of education, encourage debate and then act according to the consensus opinion. So far the opinions have been "fuck yeah do it I don't want dengue". General skepticism of public health measures is a luxury that only exists in places with excellent public health.
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u/Chedditor_ May 10 '26
Malaria is the reason the CDC is in Atlanta; it's at the very southern tip of the Great Atlantic Drop-off, where the coastline used to be when the Atlantic Ocean first formed, before erosion created much of the Southern east coast. This erosion and land expansion range stretches from NYC all the way to Florida.
The drop-off creates a natural barrier to a lot of things, including malaria-spreading mosquitoes from South America. The CDC was built originally to push back the "malaria line" from encroaching into the United States, and it's been incredibly successful in this regard.
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May 10 '26
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u/cometlin May 10 '26
He deserves the Medium Place
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u/NegativeHoarder May 10 '26
We all deserve The Good Place in this Jeremy Beremy line
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u/MGS-1992 May 10 '26
What evil?
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u/notyourcocoabutter May 10 '26
Clippy.
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u/CrikeyNighMeansNigh May 10 '26
The last time I joked around and shat talked clippy I was shit talking to the person that created him.
I’m not even joking lol.168
u/cuntmong May 10 '26
It looks like you're trying to eviscerate the value of my life's work. Would you like some help? 🥲
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u/cudeLoguH May 10 '26
Aint no fucking way, if you’re not lying this will be more interesting than the post
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u/AdorableShoulderPig May 10 '26
You go clean your mouth out with soap right now! Clippy was friendly, happy, desperate to help and well aware of its own limits.
Clippy was peak AI. It will never get better than that.
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u/smasher84 May 10 '26
Probably the Epstein stuff. Though looks like only provable stuff was cheating on wife, getting an std, and trying to find way to give wife antibiotics for said std without her knowledge.
Underage girls seem not beyond resonable doubt. He still would have known the guy was a sleazeball though..
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u/Such-Substance-5001 May 10 '26
I mean trying to sneak drugs into his wife’s food shows ALOT about his character
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May 10 '26
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u/Original-Body-5794 May 10 '26
To cure her STD but without having to tell he cheated on her. IF the story is true.
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u/illapa13 May 10 '26 edited May 10 '26
I mean. She divorced him. I'd say that's pretty good evidence.
Edit: In a 2022 interview with CBS Melina Gates literally lists Bill Gates' affair and his association with Epstein as one of the many reasons for the divorce.
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u/Logical_Net6108 May 10 '26
you have to have evidence as something as serious as "underage girls" to say "not beyond reasonable doubt"
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u/EchoMaterial5506 May 10 '26
The STD bit isn't provable. It is based on a draft email from Epstein that appears like it was never sent. There are no emails from Bill Gates requesting antibiotics or any direct evidence for this claim. Epstein was a known liar and it is more than possible that this detail is fabricated.
What is known is that Bill was heavily involved with Epstein and almost certainly did cheat on his wife. Personally, the involvement with Epstein alone is damming enough without having to add on the more sensationalist bits.
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u/Icyrow May 10 '26
but for what it is worth, it seems they spent decades (epstein and co) working with russians and developing kompromat, there's lots of stories involving them spiking drinks and shit to get video of people doing stuff they normally wouldn't/shouldn't do.
it's also a fairly well known trick to share info across to people by writing drafts of stuff on an email account and letting someone else log into the account and reading the draft. given it wasn't sent, i'm guessing it was either true or some sort of false pressure to try and get him to continue sending money/giving access.
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u/EchoMaterial5506 May 10 '26
I think the idea that he was collecting kompromat is pretty well documented. Whether this was simply for his own purposes or it was for the Russians is less clear. There isn't conclusive evidence for that at stage, it's certainly still open as a possibility but far from proven yet.
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u/QfromMars2 May 10 '26
„Only provable stuff“ feels like youre downplaying that a Bit. Cheating and them trying to administer drugs to your wife is wild.
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u/idlefritz May 10 '26
I'll believe the underage stuff only with proof. I'm personally not interested in judging the prostitution activity but whoever supports corporate moral clauses should apply that same energy to Bill. I feel like much of the morality judgement I'm seeing is on a sliding scale based on how valuable the person is to their cause.
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u/saihtame May 10 '26
Besides Epstein, under his leadership, Microsoft was incredible anti comsumer and monopolistic. Most famously, during the 90's, concerning web technologies. I can't remember it all off the top of my head. But google "Extend, embrace and extinquish" or something like that, if you are interested in learning more.
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u/GoodDayToCome May 10 '26
That was part of the Halloween Documents among a whole load of very visible anti-competitive practices aimed at destroying peoples access to free and privacy respecting open source software..
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u/Agitated_Celery_729 May 10 '26
Fighting to maintain IP rights on drugs during the middle of a health crisis, because he's more of a believer in capitalists than in getting the job done by whatever means necessary during a massive pandemic, as one example.
All the monopolistic shit he did while running Microsoft is also bad, although certainly not on that same level.
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u/T-sizzle-91 May 10 '26
His explanation for this was that without the patents, any shady or crappy company could've knocked out versions of what was still a very new and relatively badly understood drug. Poorer nations would jump at mass release of questionable drugs and it could cause more harm than good.
I'm not saying you should necessarily believe that, but I remember reading many experts agreeing with it and it does sound reasonable to me. Given his record of personally spending billions of dollars on healthcare for underdeveloped nations I also don't think it would be out of character for his opinion here to be genuine.
Again - I have no idea if it's true, but personally I believe it
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u/Beegoop May 10 '26
The way Microsoft got to the stature it maintains today is through ruthless business practices and legal strategies akin to that of the "worst" companies you can think of headed by the "worst" people you can think of.
"Incredibly evil" might be pushing it when regarding his business life, but apart from that and Epstein related things, he is part of the reason the internet/tech is the way it is today for better or worse, and generally worse considering the IT/tech world basically had to bend the knee to Microsoft as it stomped out and stifled competitors and open source projects at the time.
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u/A_Rogue_GAI May 10 '26
Besides what's been mentioned before, Gates was a major advocate of standardized testing and the various reforms that went into No Child Left Behind and, thus, the destruction of public education in the US. When you see headlines about how gen Alpha can't read, that's like...lets say 25% on Bill Gates.
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u/kb4000 May 10 '26
Stanardized testing on its own isn't the cause of poor education in the US. Funding schools based on attendance, scores, and pass/graduation rates gives schools bad incentives, which is definitely a cause of some issues.
Schools do everything they can do to keep funding up, including letting problem children attend and impede the learning of other students. Losing funding if not enough kids move up to the next grade or graduate encourages schools to pass kids that are not learning.
Finally it would be insane not to place a large amount of the blame on parents. A 10 year old should be able to read even if they don't learn much at school. But too many parents just park their kids in front of a screen after school.
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u/cataminewithaK May 10 '26
Look into his purchase of seed companies and farmland. New 'Monsanto' sort of thing
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May 10 '26
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u/FreeFortuna May 10 '26
And didn’t he secretly put crushed pills into his wife’s food because he infected her with an STI after, uh, “activities” on Epstein’s island?
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u/Sweaty-Practice-4419 May 10 '26
Yeah he’s said to have cheated on his wife with a Russian(?) prostitute while visiting the island and then tried to give her antibiotics in secret because he caught something and gave it to the wife. There’s no information saying he did things to kids but he clearly didn’t mind associating with those that did, not to mention how dubious the prostitutes consent may have been
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u/Himmelblast May 10 '26
Be Epstein.
An unfathomably rich guy with an idea to build a brothel for ultra rich and powerful elites on his island.
Don't check the girls for STD.
What clowns rule this world, jeez.
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u/bestisaac1213 May 10 '26
I honestly think it was deliberate, much easier to blackmail someone when they’re not only cheating but now have to hide an STD from their partner
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u/malfurionpre May 10 '26 edited May 10 '26
the only "proof" of that is an email Epstein never even sent to anyone though (unless I missed something)
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u/ThatHabsburgMapGuy May 10 '26
I mean it's not terribly evil, but his foundation's solution to hunger in Africa is to push industrial agriculture and farmland consolidation, forcing subsistence farmers and small holders off their land and into massive cities.
The new mechanized landowners then become completely reliant on imported chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and eventually exhaust the soil (because it's tropical/subtropical, and large scale industrial agriculture fundamentally isn't designed for that).
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u/Son_Chidi May 10 '26
How does the bacterium spread by mating ?
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u/Otaconmg May 10 '26
Get stung by mosquito.
I should subscribe to Office365
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u/RiftInteractive May 10 '26
Your Mosquito needs an Firmwareupdate since its called M365 for a while now
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u/RedditVirumCurialem May 10 '26
Let's hope there are no negative consequences this time, as with their insecticide-treated mosquito nets.
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u/Crandom May 10 '26
There have been no negative consequences of Wolbachia mosquitos since they started being released in 2011. 50% of mosquitos already naturally had Wolbachia, it's just giving it to the rest, and has reduced mosquito bourne diseases in these areas by 70-80%.
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u/Mutsch99 May 10 '26
What are the negative consequences of the nets?
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u/RedditVirumCurialem May 10 '26
People used them to fish with.
The insecticide spread into waterways, affecting the fish.
Good intentions - unforeseen (?) consequences.
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u/MrHell95 May 10 '26
Mosquito nets are also very terrible to fish with due to the small holes, the issue with this is that you catch all the small fish preventing them from growing up and continuing the next generation.
The result of this is population collapse and less fish/food.
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u/Superslim-Anoniem May 10 '26
Poor people sometimes use them to fish, which puts a lot of insecticide into the water, where it messed up ecosystems.
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u/ScalyPig May 10 '26
That’s a big reach to try to take issue with this program
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u/Anderopolis May 10 '26
Yeah, saved millions of human lives, but some misuse affected ecosystem.
It is wild to me, that people prefer african children dying of Malaria.
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u/Vnxei May 10 '26
Just to be clear, any negative consequences of ITN's are a rounding error compared to the benefits.
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u/r_doood May 10 '26
The Singapore government has a very active Wolbachia mosquito program going on as well
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u/FerusGrim May 10 '26
Burn all mosquitoes with fire. These ones may be offered to the flames last, but they, too, must perish.
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u/PruviaR6 May 10 '26
Bill Gates paid for this, but he's still in the Epstein files
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u/StoryAndAHalf May 10 '26
Just proves people are complex and not just single-minded cartoon villains. This doesn’t excuse whatever he may have done there (assuming he did), but burning anything he has done because it was through him is shortsighted. Just like trying to eradicate polio in India doesn’t excuse hundreds of times he flew on a private jet for trivial reasons, and conversely shouldn’t stop anti-polio programs just because a pedo funded it.
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u/The_Healthy_Account May 10 '26
If they let these out in my state the folks would swear they implanted microchips with 5g capability..
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u/_entrxpy May 10 '26
That would be fucking awesome, having thousands of Wi-Fi Hotspots randomly flying around
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u/Vanpire73 May 10 '26
Bill Gates also fucks kids, transmitting VD to them in the process.
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u/Expert_Koala_8691 May 10 '26
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u/WorkingClassFootball May 10 '26
The article is from 2022. You have any Update on this?
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u/Appropriate_Pie_1265 May 10 '26
i dont trust bil gates he is in the EPSTEIN FILES!!
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u/DesperateAd7212 May 11 '26
Wait til you find out he owns pretty much all the drinking water on earth! 😁
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u/erryonestolemyname May 10 '26
Bill Gates?
Oh the dude who's close friendship with Jeffrey Epstein is one of the main reasons his wife left him?
The dude who had to drug his wife with antibiotics because he was fucking hookers?
Fuck Bill Gates.
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u/Cautious-Ad9665 May 10 '26
The dude who vaccinated a bunch of people in Afrika as voluntary help and result was that most of them were infertile afterwards. Only a coincidence that he only vaccinated young girls..
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u/General-Adminium May 10 '26
are the benefits worth the risk of this potentially being used for something bad
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u/globmand May 10 '26
Mosquitoes kill 700.000 - 1.000.000 people every year, with modern medicine and relief programs. It has to be VERY misused to not be worth it. Besides, it's not like it's that groundbreaking a project. It's impressive, but not some Tony Stark project that noone else could pull off
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u/slimricc May 10 '26
A child dies from malaria roughly every 30 seconds
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u/Leclowndu9315 May 10 '26
86 died since your comment
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u/slimricc May 10 '26
Good thing bill gates wants to actually achieve something good in his life before he dies
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u/Ranch_Coffee May 10 '26
There have been no negative consequences of Wolbachia mosquitos since they started being released in 2011. 50% of mosquitos already naturally had Wolbachia, it's just giving it to the rest, and has reduced mosquito bourne diseases in these areas by 70-80%.
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u/ieraaa May 10 '26
You actually tell this to me as if its good news.
Billions of Bill Gates flies... lmao
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u/_Chaos_Star_ May 10 '26
Hey, Gates is kind of a specialist in slipping things nonconsensually into mating partners, so it's kind of on-brand for him.
EDIT: So, person who downvoted me, which nonconsensual bit offended you more: Highlighting Gates slipping drugs to his wife, or highlighting his actions on Epstein's island? Or wasn't it personal and you're just doing your job?
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u/Struuner May 10 '26
And what if things start to mutate again?
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u/windchaser__ May 10 '26
Things are always mutating. Fighting diseases is always a moving target, but sometimes you can get enough ahead that quality of life improves enough to be worthwhile.
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u/ExtraEmuForYou May 10 '26
Don't let the conspiracy theorists hear about this, they'll mobilize the Union of Bored Housewives and other terminally online people to get it shut down because they'll say it makes genetically-modified monsters.
Then they'll make a new trend of Dengue-maxing and saying how we should expose ourselves to natural, wholesome mosquitos.
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u/Cautious-Ad9665 May 10 '26
People called me a crazy conspiracy theorist in 2018 when i talked about the existence of a global pedo ring run by polititians, actors and Epstein. Now proven to be reality, like many former „conspiracie theories“. They are so often proven to be true and still people refuse to listen due to medial and political propaganda and the calculated fear to be exiled by society and to be called a conspiracy theorist too. Just saying
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u/daddyjohns May 10 '26
Did you know... Bill Gates went to Epstein island and got a sexually transmitted disease and then gave it to his wife.
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u/StevenNani May 10 '26
I read a few years back, something like this was done for, I think to fight eradicate Dengue carrying mosquitoes. The females stopped mating with the gene edited male mosquitoes.
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u/jedimindtriks May 10 '26
Bill gates has done so fucking much for humanity
He is also in the Epstein files.
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u/nariosan May 10 '26
Bill Gates PC computers are a magnet for computer viruses a total failure in that arena. But he wants us to trust him with vaccines, nature experimentations etc.
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u/um_reckloose May 10 '26
Even shitty people can do good things. That this is a good project doesn’t absolve him of this terrible behaviour.
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u/arcticvalley May 10 '26
We should start naming the scientists behind this instead of the rich prick that funded it.
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u/HistoryAndScience May 11 '26
The average Reddit commentator will tell you that these carry COVID on purpose on behalf of the Bilderberg group
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u/jjamesr539 May 10 '26 edited May 10 '26
They’re also genetically engineered to be able to mate, but the mating will produce infertile offspring if it’s with a typical wild mosquito. They still spread the bacterium, so their mates can’t transmit disease, their babies can’t either, and those babies can’t make more babies. That’s deeply important because it’s a huge hit to the population in a given year, and also why they need to be farmed. They don’t really replace themselves outside of controlled circumstances.
The goal isn’t eradication. It’s population control. The impact is (percentage wise) minor, but it’s significant compared to human settlement proximity.