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
if we kill the mosquitoes we’ll be fine.
Mosquitoes kill more than 700k people every year (2017)
181–190 of 411 posts
Re: Mosquitoes kill more than 700k people every year (2017)
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would love to see statistics from the other perspective: Which animals are killed most by humans? Besides insects, I would guess fish and chicken are quite high...
you mean farmed animals or wild ones ?
In that case, depending on the framing, you might care more about the balance of animals killed by humans vs. animals caused-to-exist by humans. (Or you might think both of those things are bad. Negative utilitarians don’t much like chicken farming, given the large number of chicken lives and the large amount of suffering in each life.)
Re: Mosquitoes kill more than 700k people every year (2017)
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
The point you're ignoring in your haste to indict everyone you don't like - due to what I suspect to be your complete ignorance of, or at least disinterest in, the millions of dollars annually spent on research aimed at eradicating malaria worldwide by the very same "West" for which you cannot find enough opprobrium - is that we can't know what consequences will come of these kinds of broad, blunt methods. Nobody exp…
I'm not indicting the entire West. I'm indicting certain people in the West that post silly almost conspiracy style stuff against obvious solutions to a deadly disease. There's an obvious balance here, and it's not on the 'we don't know how but something might happen' side. How about we all stop posting on HN? After all, posting might change magnetic fields which might change a butterfly's path which could cause a de…
I find your appeal to hyperbole pretty distasteful. Please be civil and argue from the facts of the situation. There's a huge chasm of difference between what GP is saying and the words you're putting in their mouth.
Re: Mosquitoes kill more than 700k people every year (2017)
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, so what you said didn't contradict anything I said. Hydroxycloroquine is safer than acetaminophen which is available openly at doses that can destroy the liver. Here is what the CDC says about hydroxychloroquine. To call it "unsafe" is ridiculous and spreading misinformation. Hydroxychloroquine is a relatively well tolerated medicine. The most common adverse reactions reported are stomach pain, nausea, vomiting,…
> Yes, so what you said didn't contradict anything I said. Hydroxycloroquine is safer than acetaminophen which is available openly at doses that can destroy the liver. My point is, that even if it's safer than acetaminophen (which is not in evidence) that's doesn't mean it's safe . Which is a direct contradiction to your glib, "Wrong."
[deleted]
Re: Mosquitoes kill more than 700k people every year (2017)
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
The sterile-insect technique does work, but it's not going to achieve the kind of eradication people in here are talking about. Wild-eyed ideas about mass pesticide application and CRISPR gene drives are more the sort of thing that actually concern me, or would if I thought anyone talking about them was anywhere near the required levers of power to actually make them happen. As it is, I just wish people had enough se…
Strile-insect achieves 90-95% (e.g.[1]). Sustained and combined with a bit from the other approaches (netting, drying some swamps, this article suggests a medicine to make infected biting mosquitoes die, etc.), we can at least repeat what happened in much of the West - the population was reduced so much the parasite went extinct, when the population bounced back it was 'clean' (in other places in the West these mosqu…
Well, hell, OK, then, let's do that.
Re: Mosquitoes kill more than 700k people every year (2017)
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
Poor sharks, they get one of the worst raps for how little damage they do to humans. I'm surprised to see dogs so high up on that list.
https://xkcd.com/795/
I was expecting this one before I clicked: https://xkcd.com/1252/
Re: Mosquitoes kill more than 700k people every year (2017)
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
0 Traffic 1,350,000 Sort of weird to limit the Human category to, apparently, conflict, war, murders, and acts of terrorism. Also, it's horrible that conflict, war, murders, and acts of terrorism are in the same ballpark as traffic deaths. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r... (2016)
The human category is limited, I believe, to intentional killing. Otherwise you open up a whole can of worms about macroeconomic trolley problems. (Am I killing people right now by making insufficiently-optimal donations to charity?)
It doesn’t have to be this abstract, though. This will likely change in the next 20 years.
Consider the move from horse drawn carriages to vehicles.
It was an acceptable risk that anyone might be permanently disabled due to being kicked in the head or trampled by a horse.
This might be a horse you are simply walking past. Or one that is spooked and running down the street. The owner of the horse beared little to no responsibility.
Now it is largely acceptable, to permanently disable or kill someone due to a mistake or some form of common negligence while operating a vehicle.
It is almost not a crime to accidentally run someone over. This is “normal” or “not intentional.”
In the future, it will seem insane to have allowed so many people manual control over multi-ton vehicles.
Just as it does not make sense that a horse would be tied up outside Trader Joe’s and due to a spook permanently disable you as you exit the store.
It will seem so primitive to have such loose controls on cars that if you chose to drive a manually controlled car killing someone will likely be seen as dangerous enough of a choice that a person would be held liable for manslaughter.
Re: Mosquitoes kill more than 700k people every year (2017)
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
0 Traffic 1,350,000 Sort of weird to limit the Human category to, apparently, conflict, war, murders, and acts of terrorism. Also, it's horrible that conflict, war, murders, and acts of terrorism are in the same ballpark as traffic deaths. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r... (2016)
The human category is limited, I believe, to intentional killing. Otherwise you open up a whole can of worms about macroeconomic trolley problems. (Am I killing people right now by making insufficiently-optimal donations to charity?)
[deleted]
Re: Mosquitoes kill more than 700k people every year (2017)
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Yes, so what you said didn't contradict anything I said. Hydroxycloroquine is safer than acetaminophen which is available openly at doses that can destroy the liver. My point is, that even if it's safer than acetaminophen (which is not in evidence) that's doesn't mean it's safe . Which is a direct contradiction to your glib, "Wrong."
The CDC says "Hydroxychloroquine is a relatively well tolerated medicine." So, unless you know something more than the CDC, it sounds safe to me. That would absolutely make what you're saying "wrong", and you're spreading misinformation.
CDC also said it shouldn't be used for covid unless it was in a hospital, as part of a clinical trial. They said this because it is dangerous.
Currently CDC refers to NIH for advice about using Hydroxychloroquine:
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/therapeutic-op...
https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/whats-new/
> Chloroquine/Hydroxychloroquine:
> The Panel recommends against using high-dose chloroquine (600 mg twice daily for 10 days) for the treatment of COVID-19 (AI), because the high dose carries a higher risk of toxicities than the lower dose.
> The FDA warning that cautioned against the use of chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 outside the setting of a hospital or clinical trial was added to this section.
Do they say this because it's a safe drug? No, they say it because it kills more people than it helps when used to treat covid-19.
Re: Mosquitoes kill more than 700k people every year (2017)
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
Without a lockdown, it’s still possible. Latest estimates are 0.5-1 percent fatality rate, which maps to 2-3 million people here in the US, and if everyone got ill in a short succession, because it is very contagious, the death toll would certainly be higher. Recent birthday party, 20 people, every single one caught the disease.
> Latest estimates are 0.5-1 percent fatality rate I read just a couple of days ago that the IFR (infection fatality rate) is only ~0.25%-0.3%? Still ~four times higher than that of the flu, but not ten times greater.
The current CDC "best estimate" is ~0.4%, assuming an R0 of 2.5, with estimates of ~0.2% if the R0 is actual ~2 in the US and ~1% if the R0 is actually 3.