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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)

#251

Post by yyyk »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #164
yyyk wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make no mistake, the West would do DDT all over again if that was the price for getting rid of Malaria. But a very targeted intervention is off limits due to 'well, we don't know, something might go wrong'. Nature doesn't care if humans all die. Nature doesn't 'care' at all. Humanity does. And this looks very ugly and very hypocritical.

The US stamped out malaria in the 1930's as a public works program. That was before DDT.

Well, other western countries did use DDT heavily, e.g. Italy[0]. Besides, it's not like the means used in the 1930s didn't have a significant ecological effect...

I'll note that the modern suggestions to eradicate Malaria are more nuanced and at least try to only affect the parasite/host. e.g. releasing sterile males, immunizing the mosquitoes against the parasite[1], ATSBs, a GM fungus to poison mosquitoes, making human blood deadly to the parasite[2], etc.

IMHO (I'm far from an expert), the most promising seems to be releasing sterile males followed by some of the other approaches to deal the death blow to the parasite (though if the mosquito goes I won't be bothered).

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3340992/

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23067008 I wonder whether this can scale...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20937950

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

#252

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

yyyk wrote: post #71
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 issue is very well studied - Mosquitoes are an invading species in most areas; Only a few subspecies are harmful to humans, and they'll be replaced by similar mosquitoes that aren't. Besides, there's a very wide gap between what the West is and was willing to do when an infectious disease happens. When Malaria hit the West, we drained entire swamps (and their ecosystems) without a second though. When corona hits,…

There is a lot of hidden racism and colonialism in a lot of environmentalism.

Basically, the West developed and rid itself of a lot of disease and predators. But if developing countries try to do this, all sorts of “environmental” objections are raised.

I have even heard people say that mosquito borne illnesses are good because they keep people in poor nations from expanding into “pristine” forests.

Basically, if there were 100’s of thousands of children dying in the West from malaria, we would do anything to get rid of the problem(and we did). But when it is other people’s children dying, it becomes “think of the mosquitos.”

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

#253

Post by colechristensen »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #62
jschwartzi wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another way we can control mosquitoes is by making sure the native bird populations are healthy. Where I live tree and bank swallows eat tons and tons of mosquitoes and other bugs every year which helps control the population. I wouldn't recommend releasing these birds elsewhere because they may not have any natural predators but surely where there are tons of mosquitoes there are also predators of mosquitoes as well…

Is this true? I recall looking into this and finding that swallows, bats, and other "mosquito predators" don't put a dent in mosquito populations (mosquitoes are numerous and only account for a negligible percentage of these predators' diets).

The right question is "How significant is this?" because of course predators have an effect on prey population dynamics, but the question is what effect and how big.

>We conclude that predators and parasites have a limited but significant effect on overall mosquito populations, and their role should be considered when implementing habitat management, mosquito control and when modeling mosquito population dynamics.

From a study http://e-m-b.org/sites/e-m-b.org/files/European_Mosquito_Bul...

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

#254

Post by kbutler »

jayrot wrote: post #221
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm thinking, that data is more of a heat-map of interactions. Any human interaction with a shark in its environment, shark wins. So as a per-capita, they might be near 100%?

I know it's not the point you were trying to make but > Any human interaction with a shark in its environment, shark wins. this is straight-up wrong. Humans and sharks interact all. the. time. They're not killing machines. I imagine you probably know that, so I'm not trying to patronize you (honestly). But this is really important. SHARKS KILLED 4 HUMANS IN 2018. HUMANS KILLED 100 MILLION SHARKS IN 2018. https://www.…

So what you're saying is, "yes, they are killing machines", with "they" being "the humans."

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

#255

Post by ping_pong »

DanBC wrote: post #189
ping_pong wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 chl…

lol why do people keep associating this with COVID-19? Nowhere did I mention COVID-19. Hydroxychloroquine is primarily an anti-malaria drug, which the article is about.

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

#256

Post by brenden2 »

lopmotr wrote: post #242
brenden2 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably if you're speeding or driving while intoxicated, you're doing so intentionally. It's not as if someone is forcing you to drive too fast or too drunk. These things (especially speeding) dramatically increase the likelihood of being in a collision.

Your aim isn't to kill anybody. A careless maintenance worker in a factory also doesn't intent to kill someone when he intentionally skips a job. Or a shopkeeper when he sells cigarettes to a customer. You would end up including nearly all deaths as caused by humans if you go down that road. The bus driver who gave an overweight person a ride instead of making them walk.

Well, my point was that most automobile collisions aren't 'accidents' in the true sense of the word, and most automobile related injuries (and deaths) occur when someone does something negligent. The vast majority of collisions are caused by some combination of being distracted, intoxication, speeding, or just being reckless. Deaths (or serious injuries for that matter) rarely occur at low speeds, it's most often in situations that involve speeding.

There's a lot of data[0][1][2][3] to back up the correlation between speed and deaths, that's the whole focus of vision zero[4].

[0]: https://nacto.org/docs/usdg/relationship_between_speed_risk_...

[1]: https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/speeding

[2]: https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/motor-vehicle-safe...

[3]: https://www.curbed.com/2017/7/28/16051780/us-traffic-death-s...

[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_Zero

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

#257

Post by colechristensen »

toshk wrote: post #232
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.

Thinking of ways to reduce mosquitos populations are understandable, and many organisations are working on them, but this proposition to completely eradicate them, mainly with certain technologies, is borderline insanity. The problems eradication solves are obvious and important to solve. The problems eradication might cause are less obvious and are potentially disastrous.

There are thousands of species of mosquito, dozens of which transmit malaria, and only a handful which do it really well.

Many of the mosquitos are invasive species anyway. The point being, there are many many of species which would fill up the ecological niche left if we extincted a few.

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

#258

Post by bsanr2 »

Cactus2018 wrote: post #202
cameronfraser wrote: post #36

Earlier 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.

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.

*neglected/abused dogs of various breeds

Many dogs involved in attacks are erroneously typed as pitbulls (which is, in fact, a designation encompassing at least 3 different distinct breeds); genetic testing later reveals that they were not. Pitbulls are the "Moors" of dog breeds.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S109002331... https://dogbitesohio.com/are-pit-bulls-unfairly-being-design...

Unfortunately, the stigma surrounding pitbulls is influenced by shaky notions of racial and behavioral genetics that mirror eugenics and its progeny.

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2016/08/racism-and-the-americ...

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

#259

Post by HappyDreamer »

morsch wrote: post #160
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...

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)

    1.5  Suicides   800 000
The traffic, and suicides, are the two main dangerous things for younger people in non-malaria and not-a-war zones.

I was in an a little bit conflict zone recently, and people asked if I was worried and said I should be careful. They didn't know -- the local people living there -- that the traffic is 100 times more dangerous than the slightly ongoing conflict. They just look at the news and feel worried about whatever the newspapers write about, which is _not_ the traffic.

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

#260

Post by clairity »

addicted44 wrote: post #214
clairity wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you know that the most effective preventative for mosquito bites are mosquito nets, like staying inside, with screens on your windows and doors, right?

So you dont need a lockdown. You simply need mosquito nets. So when you have a cheap solution that works, why would you want to do something expensive that does not even work any better than the cheap solution? Other than making a nonsensical ideological statement, that is.

even with mosquito nets that we've had for centuries, possibly millenia, we're still losing 700K+ per year, so the cheap solution (free, in many cases) isn't working.

covid is trending toward the same death rate. therefore, we should lock down against mosquitos to be consistent.

i get it, cognitive dissonance sucks, but "nonsensical ideologies" indulge in the panic and anxiety rather than fortifying your resolve against the hysteria. your fear is someone else's power.

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