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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)

#201

Post by slg »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #136
slg wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For one thing, we could conceivably get rid of the mosquitoes if the problem to solve is making life better for humans. However, getting rid of humans to make life better for humans rather defeats the purpose.

Tuberculosis kills almost as many people as the rest of that list combined. It is spread from human to human. There is a vaccine that can help prevent it. If this list was intended to shine light on a fixable problem, TB seems like a much easier problem to solve than eradicating all mosquitoes.

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

#202

Post by Cactus2018 »

cameronfraser wrote: post #36
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...

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.

Gruesome wikipedia page with detailed Circumstances

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_dog_attacks_in_t...

The pattern appears to be, very young child, or older adult, attacked by either a pitbull or pack of dogs.

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

#203

Post by 7leafer »

cryptoquick wrote: post #138
7leafer wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So am I, my friend.

Your pushback against the HN downvoter cowards, especially when you've questioned the status quo and planted a seed of dissent against the grain, is quite appreciated by this particular HN user. Honestly, I find the dialogue here toxic and coarse, and I'm sure I'm a part of that, too. Ideally I'd just delete my account, and never come back... But HN won't allow me to delete my account, so, in spite, I'll keep coming…

Please keep coming back and commenting, because otherwise there's nothing to dampen this dittohead echo-chamber.

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

#204

Post by saalweachter »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #198
saalweachter wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Pretty sure that 0.4% is "among people who develop symptoms" and 35% of infections are asymptomatic. So 0.4% of 65% of infections, or ~0.26% of infections. [0]: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scena...

Thanks for the correction; everyone else, ignore what I wrote one post up.

(It's a shame HN doesn't support strike-through; that is my preferred way to retract a post without just deleting it in shame.)

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

#205

Post by yyyk »

jschwartzi wrote: post #183
yyyk wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What am I missing?

The current situation is that many people needlessly die. The current approaches don't work well enough. Various radical approaches to fixing that have been investigated and tested to a significant degree. Now given the cost, testing and various answers to the objections, there comes the time the objections have to put a bit more meat and go beyond people have screwed up before, and something might happen.

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

#206

Post by sarabande »

Koshkin wrote: post #146
sarabande wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Off topic, but how did you make that beautifully formatted table?

Insert two spaces at the beginning of each line.

Testing (edit, it didn't work when I copied it from the page and added two spaces before each line, see below):

  1 Mosquito 1,000,000
  2 Human 475,000
  3 Snake 50,000
  4 Dog 25,000
  5 Tsetse Fly 10,000

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

#207

Post by kenjackson »

madengr wrote: post #19
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Is there a peer reviewed study of this in a top journal? Someone tried to send me a link from AAPS and I was like, really...

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

#208

Post by paulsutter »

derefr wrote: post #177
morsch wrote: post #160

Earlier 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?)

What makes you think mosquitos are deliberately spreading malaria?

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

#209

Post by xpe »

robbrown451 wrote: post #196
morsch wrote: post #160

Earlier 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)

Personally I think they should just skip the human category. I mean, if I die of old age aren't I sort of being killed by a human? ok maybe that is a stretch, but how about if I catch the flu from another person? Is it the flu or the other person that got me?

Here is what the article from worldatlas.com meant, in context:

> Approximately 475,000 people die every year at the hand of fellow man. In a world filled with conflict, war, murders, and acts of terrorism, this is unfortunately not that surprising. Deaths among humans are intentional and pre-calculated making them beyond tragic.

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

#210

Post by xpe »

sarabande wrote: post #130
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...

Off topic, but how did you make that beautifully formatted table?

See:

  https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
which has a link to:

  https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc
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