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In 2005, trachoma was responsible for 4% of all cases of blindness in Myanmar. By 2018, the prevalence of trachoma was down to a mere 0.008% with trachoma no longer a public health problem.

Meanwhile, Maldives and Sri Lanka have both eliminated rubella. This appears in the same article as the Myanmar news, because...

...I guess eliminating diseases nationwide is so commonplace that we don't even need separate updates for each country/disease? That seems like a good thing.

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Progress Open Thread: November 2020

by Aaron Gertler 🔸

Nov 2 20201 min read 14

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Open thread

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Progress Open Thread: November 2020

What goes in a progress thread comment?

14 comments

The Progress Open Thread is a place to share good news, big or small.

See this post for an explanation of why we have these threads.

What goes in a progress thread comment?

Think of this as an org update thread for individuals. You might talk about...

Securing a new job, internship, grant, or scholarship
Starting or making progress on a personal project
Helping someone else get involved in EA
Making a donation you feel really excited about
Taking the Giving What We Can pledge or signing up for Try Giving
Writing something you liked outside the Forum (whether it's a paper you've submitted to a journal or just an insightful Facebook comment)
Any of the above happening to someone else, if you think they'd be happy for you to share the news
Other EA-related progress in the world (disease eradication, cage-free laws, cool new research papers, etc.)

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TamayNov 6 202045

I won the Stevenson prize (a prize given out at my faculty) for my performance in the MPhil in Economics. I gather Amartya Sen won the same prize some 64 years ago, which I think is pretty cool.

Ben_West🔸Nov 6 202010

Amartya Sen won the same prize

No pressure.

Just kidding, congratulations!

LinchNov 6 20203

Damn congrats!!!

alex lawsenNov 6 20202

Awesome!

NunoSempereNov 3 202029

I'm currently #1 on the leaderboard of CSET's foretell; predicting that, before the US elections, China would not add a U.S. company to its newly created Unreliable Entities List, and that no private messages obtained in the July Twitter hack would be leaked to the public just brought me from 2nd to 1st.

CSET's foretell is "a crowd forecasting pilot project launched by Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology that focuses on questions relevant to technology-security policy." CSET received/was created with a large grant from OpenPhil.

LinchNov 7 20204

congrats that's awesome!

LinchNov 7 20202

Do you know what's the base rate of questions on foretell that resolves "yes?"

NunoSempereNov 7 20204

Good question. Of the binary questions which I've predicted and have resolved, 0/10 (!). But 7 were about US-China relations, so you'd expect them to be somewhat correlated. Some of them also seemed like they could have happened, like Microsoft's acquisition of TikTok, or European countries restricting Huawai. So, overall, my gut tells me I'd expect about 10-20% to resolve positively in the future. Note that binary questions (as opposed to questions which ask about different ranges) are relatively scarce; there are 29 questions open right now of which only 4 are binary.

Aaron Gertler 🔸Nov 2 202022

Togo just became the first African country to have officially (according to the World Health Organization) eliminated sleeping sickness!

Aaron Gertler 🔸Nov 23 202012

Myanmar has eliminated trachoma.

In 2005, trachoma was responsible for 4% of all cases of blindness in Myanmar. By 2018, the prevalence of trachoma was down to a mere 0.008% with trachoma no longer a public health problem.

Meanwhile, Maldives and Sri Lanka have both eliminated rubella. This appears in the same article as the Myanmar news, because...

...I guess eliminating diseases nationwide is so commonplace that we don't even need separate updates for each country/disease? That seems like a good thing.

Rowan Clements 🔸Nov 23 202011

I finished my degree! (BA in economics and philosophy). It ended up being quite a challenging final semester, mostly because of COVID and things going on in my personal life, so it's great to have it done.

I also won an award from my college for my performance (highest GPA), which was pretty cool.

Aaron Gertler 🔸Nov 24 20202

Congratulations!

Rowan Clements 🔸Nov 26 20201

Thank you :)

Ben_West🔸Nov 17 202010

The world's first lab grown meat restaurant opened in Israel: https://www.livekindly.co/first-lab-grown-meat-restaurant/