This is a strangely worded title: why not say "mosquitoes" instead of "tiny insects" since that is what is being referred to?
Insects as a whole are of crucial planetary importance.
Mosquitoes kill more than 700k people every year (2017)
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Re: Mosquitoes kill more than 700k people every year (2017)
#12This is why Verily's https://debug.com/ project is so interesting.
The idea is to create modified mosquitoes that can't bite or breed and release them to "breed" with the general populous thus neutralizing them.
Re: Mosquitoes kill more than 700k people every year (2017)
#13Hydroxychloroquine has been used as a malaria preventative for 60 years. Now it is suddenly unsafe?
I can't tell if this is a troll comment. The article makes no mention of hydroxychloroquine.
Well it's a troll article. I might as well post an article about lead paint being dangerous.
Re: Mosquitoes kill more than 700k people every year (2017)
#14This is a strangely worded title: why not say "mosquitoes" instead of "tiny insects" since that is what is being referred to? Insects as a whole are of crucial planetary importance.
Agree, the HN header should be updated. No other insects mentioned.
Re: Mosquitoes kill more than 700k people every year (2017)
#15Way more than that if you count diseases from ticks.
Re: Mosquitoes kill more than 700k people every year (2017)
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
Malarone is also a malaria preventative, and I personally had a psychotic break while taking it, it took 8 men to hold me down and strap me a bed for two days until I came to. Seems pretty harmless I guess?
If you don't mind, could you say a bit more about the psychotic break? The closest thing from my own experience is being told that I thrashed around a lot while coming out of post-surgery anesthesia, but I have no memory of it.
General anesthesia often has this effect on both sides, because muscle tone is lost late in induction and regained early in recovery. If you've been surprised to find yourself wrapped snugly in a sheet just before being put under, this is why.
It's not related to the sort of mental effects of antimalarials mentioned in GP's comment.
Re: Mosquitoes kill more than 700k people every year (2017)
#17This is a strangely worded title: why not say "mosquitoes" instead of "tiny insects" since that is what is being referred to? Insects as a whole are of crucial planetary importance.
If we really want to be accurate, why not talk about the parasites actually to blame, which the mosquitoes incidentally transmit? I carry no brief for the little flying bloodsuckers, but I also don't want to find out what happens to ecosystems when the many animals that prey on mosquitoes and their larvae are suddenly deprived of them.
Re: Mosquitoes kill more than 700k people every year (2017)
#18 To put this in a perspective,
1 Mosquito 1,000,000
2 Human 475,000
3 Snake 50,000
4 Dog 25,000
5 Tsetse Fly 10,000
6 Assassin Bug 10,000
7 Freshwater Snail 10,000
8 Ascaris Roundworm 2,500
9 Tapeworm 2,000
10 Crocodile 1,000
11 Hippopotamus 500
12 Elephant 100
13 Lion 100
14 Wolf 10
15 Shark 10
Re: Mosquitoes kill more than 700k people every year (2017)
#19Hydroxychloroquine has been used as a malaria preventative for 60 years. Now it is suddenly unsafe?
I don't know where that was mentioned in the article, so I think we're going off topic, but isn't the use of cures weighed against their efficacy and danger? No one would suggest chemotherapy for a cold. Hydroxycholorquine has proven to be effective against Malaria, which is terrible and can be deadly, but proven ineffective and in fact can make worse COVID, so it's not recommended to be used there. Makes sense to me…
It's been shown to have no benefit when someone is near-dead from COVID. Don't 80% of people on ventilators die anyway? So ventilators have no benefit. From what I have been reading, the drug does have benefit when used as a prophylactic, in combination with zinc. Of course we now have politicized medicine due to the fact Trump is taking it, and whatever Trump does must be de-facto bad. Now we have countries banning it's use, because of the WHO, who also said masks are useless.
Re: Mosquitoes kill more than 700k people every year (2017)
#20Hydroxychloroquine has been used as a malaria preventative for 60 years. Now it is suddenly unsafe?
Hydroxychloroquine has always been unsafe. It's just that in some situations, the risk of malaria is more unsafe.
Wrong. Hydroxychloroquine is safer than acetaminophen. Chloroquine has much higher side effects, but they different drugs, in the same family.