Mosquitoes kill more than 700k people every year (2017) • Hacker News Board

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

#371

Post by whynaut » Sat, May 30, 2020, 3:12 PM UTC

seppin wrote: post #360

lopmotr wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did you change your belief? I've heard both beliefs too but never seen evidence for the blame-the-owner one so I'm never sure. I hope your logic is not: "I can imagine how A might cause X, therefore I believe B cannot possibly cause X." Easy way for people too fool themselves into believing unsupported ideas.

There are a lot of bad pit bull owners that abuse their dogs and make them aggressive. Pit bulls are stronger and more capable of injuring or killing a human than most other breeds. Both can be true. But if you want the "bad owner" theory to explain why 80% of all fatalities are pit-related , you are essentially calling at 80% percent (or higher) of owners dangerously negligent.

That’s a big strawman, percentages would only be true if every owner’s dog killed someone.

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

#372

Post by acdha » Sat, May 30, 2020, 3:56 PM UTC

peter_d_sherman wrote: post #329

>"But the deadliest animal in the world, in terms of how many people it kills every year, is by far the mosquito. As nicely illustrated in an infographic by gatesnotes, mosquitoes kill at least 725,000 persons every year" And yet, we never seem to hear this fact on the News... Yet we do get stories of the form "X killed Y people", where X is some person/group/phenomenon, and Y And usually, Y is not just less, but sev…

> And yet, we never seem to hear this fact on the News...

Not sure where you get your news but I’ve heard this mentioned regularly on NPR in coverage about the impacts of climate change, outbreaks, programs testing things like the genetically-engineered sterile mosquito releases, and local programs which are trying to reduce it even if it’s not a high cause of death in the United States. Remember when Zika got heavy coverage?

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

#373

Post by MertsA » Sat, May 30, 2020, 4:51 PM UTC

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #248

ip26 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Malaria hit the West, we drained entire swamps without a second thought And we're paying the price now with increased vulnerability to hurricanes. (Swamps absorb the storm)

How many people actually die from hurricanes versus how many were killed by malaria? I think that trade off was well worth the cost.

Not to mention the proposed actions aren't drastically altering the landscape and draining swamps, it's stuff like introducing genetically modified mosquitoes into the wild that cause the species to become infertile and die off. Draining wetlands and destroying forests is of course many times more impactful then removing a single species.

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

#374

Post by Koshkin » Sat, May 30, 2020, 4:53 PM UTC

sarabande wrote: post #356

xpe wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I should be more clear. I know how to add verbatim formatting. I'd like to know if the OP manually aligned the columns in the table, if they used a program to do so, or something els.

Yeah, I had to put some manual effort into this. (I wish I knew a program which could do this kind of thing.)

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

#375

Post by Justin_K » Sat, May 30, 2020, 5:01 PM UTC

dota_fanatic wrote: post #310

rainbowzootsuit wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ph…

No respected dog behaviorist would ever advise kicking, punching, or stabbing to break up a dog fight regardless of breed. Y’all made it worse.

Dog behaviorist? Are you fing kidding me? Why do people on this site post this kind of crap?

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

#376

Post by ping_pong » Sat, May 30, 2020, 6:17 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #359

lenkite wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considered safe here in India and being taken by millions of people. High dosages should be avoided by people with heart trouble/high blood pressure.

> Considered safe No, it's considered safe compared to malaria . > High dosages should be avoided by people with heart trouble/high blood pressure. ...because it's dangerous for those people.

Wrong. CDC itself says it's a well tolerated drug. Stop adding your own lies to something you have no understanding about except reading from the headlines.

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

#377

Post by derefr » Sat, May 30, 2020, 7:02 PM UTC

young_unixer wrote: post #313

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.

It's difficult issue. While I think that we should totally put the blame on drunk drivers, I would still make a distinction between negligence and intentionality. Saying that drunk drivers intentionally kill people opens the door to saying that bad doctors kill people, bad medicine teachers kill people, people who vote for the wrong politicians kill people, politicians who enact bad laws kill people, etc. At that poi…

"Malfeasance" is the general term for doing something bad (usually professionally) for your own gain (or your own laziness), that can end up harming others, but where this is not the goal per se, just something that is an "acceptable loss" for your gain. An engineer who doesn't bother to verify the safety of a design before signing off on it, is committing malfeasance.

We distinguish this from "malice", which is when you do something with the direct intent to cause harm. An engineer who verifies that a design causes harm, and signs off on it because they want to cause harm, is being malicious.

Malfeasance is a crime, but it's one we actually can't catch very well, which is the reason we can't "do statistics" on it. Unlike with murder (where we almost always know that somebody caused someone's death, even if we don't know who; and therefore we can work out the statistics even without resolving the perpetrators); we have no idea (without thorough, expensive investigations that don't usually happen) how many of the e.g. buildings that fell over, fell over because of malfeasance, rather than because of a complex accident.

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

#378

Post by CPUstring » Sat, May 30, 2020, 8:55 PM UTC

richardw wrote: post #335

I think it would take a lot of mosquitoes to take down a human. > True, this tiny insect does not do the job on its own. What makes it so dangerous is its capacity to transmit viruses or other parasites that cause devastating diseases. If you catch Covid-19 from a kiss, we don’t say the other person killed you. We firmly blame the disease not the person who transmits it. “Well your honor, Sally didn’t do it on her ow…

Mosquitos transmit and incubate malaria. You don't get malaria from hanging out with a person with it, you get it from getting bit by a mosquito that has previously bitten a person with malaria. [0] Given that the two are intrinsically related, it makes little difference when having a shallow discussion to make the distinction.

[0]https://healthclinics.superdrug.com/is-malaria-contagious/

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

#379

Post by seppin » Sat, May 30, 2020, 8:57 PM UTC

Justin_K wrote: post #375

dota_fanatic wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No respected dog behaviorist would ever advise kicking, punching, or stabbing to break up a dog fight regardless of breed. Y’all made it worse.

Dog behaviorist? Are you fing kidding me? Why do people on this site post this kind of crap?

Elitist mentality and condescending language common in tech, sadly.

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

#380

Post by seppin » Sat, May 30, 2020, 9:26 PM UTC

whynaut wrote: post #371

seppin wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of bad pit bull owners that abuse their dogs and make them aggressive. Pit bulls are stronger and more capable of injuring or killing a human than most other breeds. Both can be true. But if you want the "bad owner" theory to explain why 80% of all fatalities are pit-related , you are essentially calling at 80% percent (or higher) of owners dangerously negligent.

That’s a big strawman, percentages would only be true if every owner’s dog killed someone.

The numbers don't relate perfectly, but the point stands. By failing to address what i'm actually saying, it's your straw-man of "the math doesn't work" that is distracting the conversation.

Bad pit owners exist. Pits have a dangerous combination of mentality and strength. You can use a gun as a can opener if you want to, that doesn't change the ability it has to remove a life.