Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

isglobal.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 411 posts

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

#341

Post by nashequilibrium »

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.

"class trip to Africa"- Its strange they didn't require him to get a shot before going to a country in Africa that is a Malaria risk. I know a lot UCLA and Michigan students who did exchange programs to African countries and got shots before leaving.

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

#342

Post by xchaotic »

nashequilibrium wrote: post #341
refurb wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"class trip to Africa"- Its strange they didn't require him to get a shot before going to a country in Africa that is a Malaria risk. I know a lot UCLA and Michigan students who did exchange programs to African countries and got shots before leaving.

Shots of what, vodka? There’s no good vaccine for Malaria that’s approved in the US

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

#343

Post by cko »

xchaotic wrote: post #342
nashequilibrium wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"class trip to Africa"- Its strange they didn't require him to get a shot before going to a country in Africa that is a Malaria risk. I know a lot UCLA and Michigan students who did exchange programs to African countries and got shots before leaving.

Shots of what, vodka? There’s no good vaccine for Malaria that’s approved in the US

Not shots, but pre exposure prophylaxis of atovaquone/proguanil or mefloquine.

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

#344

Post by ithkuil »

77pt77 wrote: post #325
rb808 wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

150,000 people typically get diagnosed with cancer each month in the US. With hospitals shut that isn't happening. https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/understanding/statistics

The indirect fallout from this will be huge. From delayed diagnostics, to "elective" surgeries that can't take place, to suicides. It's going to be on the order of the direct deaths at least. The only real measurable indirect improvement is a lot less people dead in traffic accidents.

> It's going to be on the order of the direct deaths at least.

Possibly. And many will interpret this as the cure being "worse of (or as bad as) the disease".

But what we should really be comparing this to is the number of deaths we'd have if we didn't do anything to reduce the spread.

Anybody has good simulation data that takes into account what we learned so far?

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

#345

Post by rrmm »

ithkuil wrote: post #344
77pt77 wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The indirect fallout from this will be huge. From delayed diagnostics, to "elective" surgeries that can't take place, to suicides. It's going to be on the order of the direct deaths at least. The only real measurable indirect improvement is a lot less people dead in traffic accidents.

> It's going to be on the order of the direct deaths at least. Possibly. And many will interpret this as the cure being "worse of (or as bad as) the disease". But what we should really be comparing this to is the number of deaths we'd have if we didn't do anything to reduce the spread. Anybody has good simulation data that takes into account what we learned so far?

On top of that, it wouldn't be like the hospitals would be business as usual if the lockdown didn't occur. Models mostly showed they would have had their hands full with covid cases (and therefore still not handling normal cases and elective stuff). Additionally many people going to hospitals for whatever reason would likely end up exposed to COVID.

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

#346

Post by ithkuil »

perl4ever wrote: post #290
bredren wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 r…

I'm not sure if you are equating horses and cars or not. Are you saying the risk of either is unacceptable? I don't know if horses were statistically more or less dangerous than cars, but I feel like when I read about a random historical figure from before cars it's pretty common they died from a riding accident. Today, horses are allowed on public streets and not regarded as particularly deadly, at least in my local…

> In particular, the police ride them during public events.

Horses give excellent visibility, they can stand and walk slowly, the take less space than a car, they are fast if needed and people tend to move away from a moving horse quite naturally

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

#347

Post by Too »

perl4ever wrote: post #298
viburnum wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

While there has been a high death rate in Sweden, especially in elderly homes which weren't isolated properly, you have to be careful when comparing stats between countries. Sweden seems to file more deaths as COVID, instead of just attributing it as death by age, heart attack, or some other unexplained reason, including those dying in elderly care and not only those in hospitals.

Here is a more complete summary: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22945974 NYC had 30% increase of unexplained deaths recent months, whereas Sweden had -4%.

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

#348

Post by bryanrasmussen »

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...

adding in covid-19 https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/2562261/

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

#349

Post by tincholio »

cko wrote: post #343
xchaotic wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shots of what, vodka? There’s no good vaccine for Malaria that’s approved in the US

Not shots, but pre exposure prophylaxis of atovaquone/proguanil or mefloquine.

Malaria prophylaxis is pretty rough in and of itself, and it's not really recommended unless you're going to be in high-risk areas (source, tried to get it myself when going into Mozambique from South Africa, was told there that unless I was planning to stay "in the bush" for a few weeks, it was a bad idea)

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

#350

Post by stellalo »

tempestn wrote: post #166
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #121

So, Covid is on track to beat this, sadly.

Yes, but mosquitos kill that many every single year. Look at the reaction to COVID-19 compared to the amount of effort going into eliminating mosquito-borne disease. There's certainly some, but it's far from the mobilization we see when a calamity on this scale hits rich countries.

Then it is reasonable to assume that, without such effort, covid-19 numbers would be far worse than mosquitoes
Post reply on HN