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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)

#391

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

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...

The low number of deaths from shark attacks fails to account for the way in which people die from a shark attack: broken in two and eaten alive by a gigantic fish while simultaneously drowning.

This is a horrible way to spend the last few seconds of your life on Earth and it likely triggers all the self-preservation instincts in a human mind, and then some.

The slow, painful death from a debilitating disease like malaria does not even come close for sheer compulsive terror. After all, most people experience sickness at some point during their lives, but very few experience being eaten.

This "raw, visceral horror of being eaten alive by a very big fish" [1] is the reason why people are afraid of shark attacks much more than mosquito bites or even accidents etc.

____________

[1] That's a quote from a National Geographic article I read a few years ago that stuck in my mind. I have no reference to it, apologies. It was in an issue of the print magazine.

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

#392

Post by DanBC »

ping_pong wrote: post #336
kerkeslager wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> lol why do people keep associating this with COVID-19? Because: 1. The article doesn't mention hydroxychloroquine and 2. Hydroxychloroquine is being touted as a cure to Covid 19, a claim that has its basis in politics, not science. Part of the claim being made is exactly the (wrong) claim you were defending: that hydroxychloroquine is safe--as if safe/unsafe were a binary. If you go from an article about malaria to…

Wrong. It is safe. It is provably safe. Period. End of sentence. No qualifications. Many people take it daily for various diseases for long periods of time. Is it safe for everyone? No. No drug is safe for everyone. But for the majority it is safe. Go do the research, which you haven't based on what you're saying. This has nothing to do about Trump, and I don't care what he says. I do care what the FDA and CDC have t…

> It is safe. It is provably safe. Period. End of sentence. No qualifications.

> Every country safely prescribes its use for malaria, rheumatoid arthritis and lupus.

This is a misunderstanding, and misuse, of the word safe. No medication is safe. We balance the harms caused against the benefits gained.

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

#393

Post by IgorPartola »

jjnoakes wrote: post #332
IgorPartola wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way you measure it is how the GP defined it: percent women who develop early stage breast cancer per month * number of months closed per year.

That only makes sense if a woman gets screened monthly, which they don't.

Think about it this way: you run a clinic that detects 100 cases of early stage breast cancer a month. So you detect a total of 1200 per year, right? Now imagine you close for three months. What happens? Well, 300 of these cases do not get detected during that period. Could they get detected later after you reopen? Sure but by its nature it means that they may not be early stage anymore. Also, some percentage of the women would not reschedule an appointment right away since when the clinic reopens it will be overdue by three months worth of appointments so they might wait much longer to be seen vs the regular schedule, exacerbating the problem.

You are correct that on an individual level it is a game of chance: if you are going to develop breast cancer it’s a bad thing but if by chance you develop it in the right window of time right before your annual exam, your outcome is likely to be better. But from the point of view of screening a large population stopping testing for a period of time is bad.

Think about it in terms of COVID: what would happen if all testing was shut down for a month? No, not everyone who gets COVID would get it in that month but the people who do will absolutely not get tested, right?

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

#394

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

slg wrote: post #201
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's a vaccine that helps prevent it in children, although apparently it's not very effective for adolescents and adults: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4950406/

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

#395

Post by jointpdf »

lenkite wrote: post #307
jointpdf wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think replying with a sardonic “Wrong.” and then making an unsubstantiated claim made it pretty clear what the pretext of your comment was. But sure...I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. Regardless, no it’s not “safe beyond argument”. Let’s try again. FDA: > ”Hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine: - should be used for COVID-19 only when patients can be appropriately monitored in the hospital as required by the EUA…

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-05-india-hydroxychloroqu... Observational and case control studies in India showed there were "no major side effects" of taking the drug as a prophylactic, ICMR Director-General Balram Bhargava said. Cases of nausea, vomiting and heart palpitations were noted, he added. Last week, the ICMR—which is leading the government's response to the virus—expanded its advisory for the use of…

Cool, good to know (not being sarcastic). This is an example of public health / medical professionals making a rational risk vs. benefit decision and pursuing harm reduction (“for up to several weeks under medical supervision”). AKA, they are practicing medicine, and also collecting valuable experience/data on a potential use of the drug. All good.

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

#396

Post by JoeAltmaier »

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.…

Well, not by swimming with them.

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

#397

Post by ping_pong »

DanBC wrote: post #392
ping_pong wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong. It is safe. It is provably safe. Period. End of sentence. No qualifications. Many people take it daily for various diseases for long periods of time. Is it safe for everyone? No. No drug is safe for everyone. But for the majority it is safe. Go do the research, which you haven't based on what you're saying. This has nothing to do about Trump, and I don't care what he says. I do care what the FDA and CDC have t…

> It is safe. It is provably safe. Period. End of sentence. No qualifications. > Every country safely prescribes its use for malaria, rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. This is a misunderstanding, and misuse, of the word safe. No medication is safe. We balance the harms caused against the benefits gained.

In this absurd definition of "safe", then nothing is safe. Drinking too much water will kill you, hence, water is unsafe. Driving is unsafe. Living is unsafe, since you will die. But go ahead believing what you want to believe.

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

#398

Post by dota_fanatic »

seppin wrote: post #381
dota_fanatic wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting that you and other comments took mine to mean how to train a dog, which is irrelevant to the situation under consideration. Did any of y'all mean that in good faith? No, it's about how to de-escalate a severe situation without loss of life. (Good) policemen don't break up a fight between an 18 yr old and 10 yr old by viciously beating and then stabbing the 18 yr old. My point was only that the instincts o…

> your only regret is not achieving your intent which was to kill the dog You cannot ever know what his intentions were, and to accuse him of that is pretty disgusting.

Except for when someone states their intent?

> "My intent was to kill it at that point, but I was unsuccessful. That is my only regret in the situation."

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

#399

Post by dota_fanatic »

rainbowzootsuit wrote: post #368
dota_fanatic wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting that you and other comments took mine to mean how to train a dog, which is irrelevant to the situation under consideration. Did any of y'all mean that in good faith? No, it's about how to de-escalate a severe situation without loss of life. (Good) policemen don't break up a fight between an 18 yr old and 10 yr old by viciously beating and then stabbing the 18 yr old. My point was only that the instincts o…

I did the wheelbarrowing thing from the start. That only took leverage off of the small dog to try to give the other people who enough time to try to dissuade the pit bull, but as I said, nothing distracted it from its purpose until I stabbed it. It was obvious when I was able to see the intestines of the small dog exposed that it was going to not last long and my resolve was to try to kill the aggressor if one was g…

We seem to be talking past each other as at this point I suspect we're in agreement. My initial claim was that punching, kicking, and stabbing were ineffective at breaking up dog fights and make them worse. I back-pedaled slightly to say that stabbing (lethal actions) is effective if it's a scenario where non-lethal tools prove ineffective.

My biggest issue from the start was the socialization of "three bystanders took part simultaneously in kicking and punching the pit bull to get it to release," which failed, predictably, and I didn't want anyone to think that that was a good thing to try in the first place.

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

#400

Post by tincholio »

Synaesthesia wrote: post #352
tincholio wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

South African here. Fact is most of our country is malaria free, the cities etc especially so. It’s only in the hottest, most humid part of the Bush that you will get the mosquitos, and then generally in summer. When I travelled to Kenya last year my wife and I took malaria medication, we would do the same if going to a malaria area in SA in summer.

Yeah, we were not worried in SA. We were in Nelspruit, going to Maputo, and asked for it there, and that was the response we got.
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