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Mosquitoes kill more than 700k people every year (2017)

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Re: Mosquitoes kill more than 700k people every year (2017)

#51

Post by ahelwer »

petters wrote: post #48
ahelwer wrote: post #32

I grew up in Manitoba so have a very healthy hatred of mosquitoes - 50 of them once followed me into a car during the https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1120044775024013312

The ecological systems would likely be fine; the mosquitoes responsible for diseases are a minority. But that is beside the point and does not matter. What matters are 700,000 human lives annually. It's tragic really. If we had these diseases in Europe or North America, we would have already done this.

Maybe you didn't click the link, so I guess I'll ask you: how many humans would die if we did exterminate the mosquitoes? More or less than 700,000? Do you know? You have no way of knowing how ecological systems would react.

Re: Mosquitoes kill more than 700k people every year (2017)

#52

Post by lucisferre »

ahelwer wrote: post #51
petters wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ecological systems would likely be fine; the mosquitoes responsible for diseases are a minority. But that is beside the point and does not matter. What matters are 700,000 human lives annually. It's tragic really. If we had these diseases in Europe or North America, we would have already done this.

Maybe you didn't click the link, so I guess I'll ask you: how many humans would die if we did exterminate the mosquitoes? More or less than 700,000? Do you know? You have no way of knowing how ecological systems would react.

Several of the comments responding to him do address this and at least some of the people commenting do appear to know, or at least know more than Nassim Taleb appears to.

Besides, his statement isn't an argument, and present no facts or information.

> Imbecilic remark. Do you know how many humans would die if we eliminated mosquitos? Any idea?

petters also appears to be correct on what would happen if we had these issues in North America. Your own province kills mosquitos en masse and those ones aren't even carrying deadly disease they are just a nuisance.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/deltamethrin-first-u...

Re: Mosquitoes kill more than 700k people every year (2017)

#53

Post by nkozyra »

epicureanideal wrote: post #41
dmix wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> anyone leaning toward the idea we should exterminate mosquitoes Is this actually a thing?

Yes, I am in favor of exterminating every last mosquito. I’d rather deal with any results than the mosquitos themselves. Also I had a long conversation with a specialist in a company working on this and they convinced me that it wouldn’t actually be a big problem like some say.

> it wouldn’t actually be a big problem like some say

Well this is the law of unintended consequences in action. Many people don't think it will have any negative effect but we don't know. Nature is extraordinarily complex and disrupting it in such a huge way almost always carries knock-on impact.

Re: Mosquitoes kill more than 700k people every year (2017)

#54

Post by clairity »

700K per year. ok let's let the elephant out of the bag:

why haven't we been in lockdown every year until this deadly scourge has been exterminated?

and no, it's not that the current pandemic was more uncertain. even by january/february, it was clearly less contagious and deadly than the 1918 flu. we had good bounds on potential trajectory by early march, when many lockdowns were being implemented.

Re: Mosquitoes kill more than 700k people every year (2017)

#55

Post by slg »

Koshkin wrote: post #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 https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-animals-that-kill-mo...

These numbers are weird. Why do we count mosquito-borne diseases under mosquitoes but don't put communicable diseases under the tally for humans? It is especially curious considering mosquitoes don't know any better while humans have both the knowledge and ability to dampen how disease spreads through our population.

Re: Mosquitoes kill more than 700k people every year (2017)

#56

Post by baybal2 »

jonshariat wrote: post #12

This 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.

Malaria can be eradicated by timely treatment, and quarantine. There are countries that defeated malaria with nothing more than that.

Re: Mosquitoes kill more than 700k people every year (2017)

#57

Post by optimiz3 »

clairity wrote: post #54

700K per year. ok let's let the elephant out of the bag: why haven't we been in lockdown every year until this deadly scourge has been exterminated? and no, it's not that the current pandemic was more uncertain. even by january/february, it was clearly less contagious and deadly than the 1918 flu. we had good bounds on potential trajectory by early march, when many lockdowns were being implemented.

> why haven't we been in lockdown every year until this deadly scourge has been exterminated?

Probably because 700k/year is globally, while the US alone has suffered 100k deaths in 3 months.

Re: Mosquitoes kill more than 700k people every year (2017)

#58

Post by throwaway894345 »

clairity wrote: post #54

700K per year. ok let's let the elephant out of the bag: why haven't we been in lockdown every year until this deadly scourge has been exterminated? and no, it's not that the current pandemic was more uncertain. even by january/february, it was clearly less contagious and deadly than the 1918 flu. we had good bounds on potential trajectory by early march, when many lockdowns were being implemented.

I'm of the impression that in March and perhaps even in April "experts" (whoever they are) thought the US alone could see death tolls in the millions?

Re: Mosquitoes kill more than 700k people every year (2017)

#59

Post by graeme »

ahelwer wrote: post #49
graeme wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t that plan only to eliminate the specific species responsible for disease carrying? There are many mosquitos, the mosquito they’re targeting is just one.

Intentions don't always match outcomes when it comes to fiddling with these systems.

That's true. But, by what plausible mechanism could this project switch from killing one species of mosquito to killing all of them?

There's no way it would happen via natural selection. The mosquito is engineered to die. The project has to keep releasing new genetically engineered mosquitos to mate with females.

I totally get the idea that removing all mosquitos would likely lead to spiralling ecosystem collapse, and it's possible that even killing this one species could do so.

But, are you arguing that trying to kill this one species could kill all mosquito species? I just don't see how that's possible with this mechanism.

Re: Mosquitoes kill more than 700k people every year (2017)

#60

Post by leeoniya »

epicureanideal wrote: post #41
dmix wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> anyone leaning toward the idea we should exterminate mosquitoes Is this actually a thing?

Yes, I am in favor of exterminating every last mosquito. I’d rather deal with any results than the mosquitos themselves. Also I had a long conversation with a specialist in a company working on this and they convinced me that it wouldn’t actually be a big problem like some say.

> Also I had a long conversation with a specialist in a company working on this and they convinced me that it wouldn’t actually be a big problem like some say.

and a specialist working for an oil company convinced me that climate change happens all the time. he wasn't technically wrong, except that he wasn't around to enjoy those other times to attest that it would be "no big deal".

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