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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)

#291

Post by throwaway894345 »

colechristensen wrote: post #253
throwaway894345 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Fr…

That’s great news if it is significant. Everything I had previously read indicated that their impact was negligible. I hate mosquitos, so I hope your link is correct.

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

#292

Post by wutbrodo »

rrmm wrote: post #287
wutbrodo wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ex-Covid death rate in New York is significantly above its baseline. Part of this may be undiagnosed covid deaths, but with less people out doing dangerous things, a lot of it is probably people avoiding hospitals.

ex-Covid rate is more likely due to undiagnosed covid. Especially when you look at the excess death rate compared to previous annual rates. (at least last time I looked at the graphs). But regardless none of it is any good for anyone.

The excess death rate (ex covid) is relative to previous annual rates. I don't think you can disambiguate between "deaths due to undiagnosed covid" and "deaths due to untreated illness due to avoiding hospitals"

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

#293

Post by perl4ever »

brenden2 wrote: post #256
lopmotr wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Negligence implies a standard of reasonable care.

Is it appropriate to apply a universal standard, or the standard of the person who was involved in the event?

It depends on what you want to calculate. I think in a way, the latter is more objective than using an arbitrary single standard.

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

#294

Post by viburnum »

lopmotr wrote: post #243
viburnum wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A million people killed by cars prevents five million from dying how?

Cars are obviously important for the economy which provides money for all life saving things. Stopping all driving would certainly cause many deaths.

American has three times the traffic death rate of the Britain and six times of Norway’s. What’s the benefit?

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

#295

Post by perl4ever »

viburnum wrote: post #200
derefr wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?)

A million people killed by cars prevents five million from dying how?

I'm not going to argue this directly, but I can provide evidence of how vital I think ordinary people consider highway transportation. It reminds me of a scandal in the US that you may or may not have heard of:

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

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

#296

Post by richard_todd »

perl4ever wrote: post #289
lutorm wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few months is enough time for breast cancer to go from stage 1 to stage 2 ... Do women normally have breast exams every few months?

I don't understand where you'd get that implication. Some presumably fairly predictable fraction would have an exam scheduled during the beginning of the epidemic, and a certain fraction of them would have undiagnosed cancer. It seems reasonable to assume significant negative consequences for those people.

Presumably some women would have had an exam in February but developed enough cancer to be visible in March, so delaying a couple of months had a huge positive impact on their outcome. How can we measure the net result of all these variables?

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

#297

Post by igotsideas »

refurb wrote: post #284
bradam wrote: post #231

One of my classmates came back from Africa to Europe this March without any symptoms. 10 days later she got high fever, dizziness, and unfortunately she could not even recognise her family. Everyone thought its COVID, and doctors recommended her to stay home to not spread the "virus". Unfortunately when she got the the hospital, the diagnostics was too late to and she died in malaria 1,5 days later. Please beware of…

I had a friend who was attending Stanford. He did a class trip to Africa, then back to the US. He also started to feel ill (but not too bad), so decided to fly home for winter break. He died of malaria on the flight to London. He was only 32 years old.

I’m sorry to hear about your friend. That’s terrible.

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

#298

Post by perl4ever »

viburnum wrote: post #294
lopmotr wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars are obviously important for the economy which provides money for all life saving things. Stopping all driving would certainly cause many deaths.

American has three times the traffic death rate of the Britain and six times of Norway’s. What’s the benefit?

Based on the statistics I have seen, if the US took Sweden's approach to the current epidemic (which has been recently held up as a model on HN and elsewhere) and got similar results, an additional 30,000 people would have died thus far. I haven't seen anyone bring this up and ask for an accounting of the benefit that is greater.

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

#299

Post by freedomben »

wolco wrote: post #288
freedomben wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's terrifying. A friend of a friend of my wife just lost her baby. It was something that would have been easily seen in a routine screening, but because of COVID the OB/GYN wasn't having patients come to the office. It's heart breaking.

Are you saying she wouldn't have lost the baby if she had a routine screen or it would have given her the ability to deal with the issue a litle bit easier by planning a dnc? I've been part of many miscarriages and doctors can tell you something is wrong but rarely can they fix anything before 12 weeks.

I honestly don't know, I'm several hops away from the source, but when my wife told me it sounded like they could have saved the baby had they known.

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

#300

Post by rainbowzootsuit »

EL_Loco wrote: post #278
teruakohatu wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to belive that, but I have since come to believe that the explanatory variable in vicious dog attacks are the type of owners, and the breeders who supply those owners, not dog breed. If you banned pitbulls they would just switch to buying and abusing alsatians.

I've been around many alsatians, and many pitbulls (never had one, but many friends have). Given equal training, equal education (or whatever you want to call what some people do to their dogs), most pitbulls will be different from alsatians in temperament. When they are in attack mode, they're much more likely to not let go, and to bite much harder. There's a spectrum among breeds regarding the agressiveness of thei…

I was once in a hand to hand struggle with a pit bull that attacked another smaller dog. At least three bystanders took part simultaneously in kicking and punching the pit bull to get it to release the smaller dog.

The only way to dissuade the pit, after what was at least a couple of minutes of this and with the smaller dog being disemboweled, was that I stabbed the pit bull in the neck with my pocket knife.

Their physical power and stubbornness should not be taken for granted.

Both dogs survived the incident.

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