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Pollution causing more deaths than Covid, action needed, U.N. expert says

reuters.com

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Re: Pollution causing more deaths than Covid, action needed, U.N. expert says

#71

Post by throwaway0a5e »

yosito wrote: post #64
pjc50 wrote: post #39

Meta-discussion, but I think "statistical deaths" - deaths where the causation has to be inferred, rather than being completely obviously monocausal - have been a big feature of quality of life improvement in the 19th and 20th century, but are now running into an informational problem. Namely that you have to believe the statistics in order for the process to work, but it's increasingly common to lie with statistics.…

I think a problem with statistical deaths is that deaths can be double counted. If you did a meta-study and added up all the claimed deaths, wouldn't there be more statistical deaths than actual deaths? I also suspect that it's fairly likely that statistical deaths are based on comparing actual deaths to a hypothetical model in which the statistical cause of death is removed, but if the assumptions of the model are w…

> think a problem with statistical deaths is that deaths can be double counted.

Anyone worth a crap uses some sort of time based metric for loss of life. Wheezing into the grave at 80 instead of 81 is very different than dropping dead a 20 and these sorts of metrics are meant to reflect that.

But those metrics don't get you big numbers with lots of digits in front of the decimal that get your article publishes, posted on HN and then clicked on in droves.

The people doing the primary research often are aiming for accuracy but they are done a disservice by shortsighted people optimizing for a few extra cents of add revenue or a few more upvotes.

Re: Pollution causing more deaths than Covid, action needed, U.N. expert says

#72

Post by Hnrobert42 »

bleuchase wrote: post #46
BoxOfRain wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Climate lockdowns' are already an established conspiracy theory among the nuttier end of society, I really think the news industry has a moral responsibility to avoid alarmism because of its inherently destabilising effect on society. Of course, alarmism is excellent at driving engagement and ad revenue so I might as well have asked for someone to write a program that solves the halting problem. I don't know how inv…

Quoted post unavailable.

Name calling is not acceptable on this forum.

Re: Pollution causing more deaths than Covid, action needed, U.N. expert says

#73

Post by germinalphrase »

bleuchase wrote: post #46
BoxOfRain wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Climate lockdowns' are already an established conspiracy theory among the nuttier end of society, I really think the news industry has a moral responsibility to avoid alarmism because of its inherently destabilising effect on society. Of course, alarmism is excellent at driving engagement and ad revenue so I might as well have asked for someone to write a program that solves the halting problem. I don't know how inv…

Quoted post unavailable.

The lab leak hypothesis is still a hypothesis.

As for the best of the list - you’re being hyperbolic. I wasn’t never locked down for years, forced to get a vaccine to keep my job or go into a restaurant. Likewise, I have no idea what a “green” pass is and assuredly don’t have one. Maybe all of these things are happening to someone somewhere, but it has never been my situation. Where do you live that all of these things have happened to you?

Re: Pollution causing more deaths than Covid, action needed, U.N. expert says

#74

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

jacquesm wrote: post #11
Synaesthesia wrote: post #8

Wow 9 million a year die prematurely. The environmental crisis is manifold: we have the destruction of species and habitats, the global warming problem, and now also just trash - overuse of plastics is a huge problem, air pollution is pretty terrible.

Destruction of habitats has been identified as a factor in previous pandemics. Global warming will also result in the destruction of habitats. All this stuff is linked.

Actually it is incomplete destruction of habitats that cause pandemics. If all the bats had been killed, then Covid would not have developed.

If we can kill all the disease causing mosquitoes as well, then we will remove another huge cause of human disease.

Re: Pollution causing more deaths than Covid, action needed, U.N. expert says

#75

Post by severino »

peakaboo wrote: post #37
severino wrote: post #10

Maybe we can keep using masks? Now that we already got used to them, we may reduce the effects of pollution with good filtering masks. Of course this doesn't mean we shouldn't address what's causing the pollution in the first place.

Not all of us are used to them. I think they are absurd, and I'm never going to live my life wearing a mask. It's completely unnatural.

I get your point. But pollution is completely unnatural, too. We got to a point where few things are still natural in this world. I don't know if masks are effective against this kind of diseases, but I guess those 9M who die prematurely every year would have chosen to use them.

Re: Pollution causing more deaths than Covid, action needed, U.N. expert says

#76

Post by zivkovicp »

jillvs34 wrote: post #62
londons_explore wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I propose a system where deaths are statistically assigned to causes. Eg. if a person dies of lung cancer, then we roll a dice and say "theres a 1 in 6 chance that was due to pm2.5 emissions". If the dice rolls a 1, then we look around the town for sources of pm2.5, and we find that 1/6 comes from a candle factory. We roll another dice, and if that comes out with a 1, then we say "This factory emitted air pollution t…

Then, the candle production was moved to China. The end.

Not quite the end... since a lot of shareholder value was created due to the move, others followed their lead (even without the threat of lawsuits). Now we argue about capitalism, globalization, human rights, etc. but can't seem to reconcile the fact that our world simply _cannot_ be perfect and we should focus on compromises and balances instead; this is exceptionally difficult in such a polarized environment.

It will be interesting to see where the "end" really is.

Re: Pollution causing more deaths than Covid, action needed, U.N. expert says

#77

Post by gyulai »

gjulianm wrote: post #70
rosndo wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a very reasonable comparison though. Billions of man-years have been ruined by the COVID fearmongers. It’s perfectly reasonable the much scarier stuff we aren’t panicking about.

I am not sure how many man-years would have been lost if nobody had done anything regarding COVID.

We will never know since we can't measure the magnitude of an outcome that never happened. Adverse effects from fearmongering, however, did happen.

Re: Pollution causing more deaths than Covid, action needed, U.N. expert says

#78

Post by severino »

wreath wrote: post #59
severino wrote: post #10

Maybe we can keep using masks? Now that we already got used to them, we may reduce the effects of pollution with good filtering masks. Of course this doesn't mean we shouldn't address what's causing the pollution in the first place.

No i did not get used to them. You can have it all if you want. Id rather have this as an individual choice

Of course this should be an individual choice. Nobody cares about decisions which only affect yourself. It's different from the use of masks for, e.g., covid, where you can harm other people by not wearing yours.

Re: Pollution causing more deaths than Covid, action needed, U.N. expert says

#79

Post by modo_mario »

gyulai wrote: post #55
Synaesthesia wrote: post #8

Wow 9 million a year die prematurely. The environmental crisis is manifold: we have the destruction of species and habitats, the global warming problem, and now also just trash - overuse of plastics is a huge problem, air pollution is pretty terrible.

I really don't think we should call the "environmental crisis" a "crisis". For example, smoking probably causes more deaths than Covid. So, while it may be perfectly true that things like smoking and pollution are bigger public health issues than Covid, we never spoke of a "smoking crisis", and justifiably so. The thing that makes a crisis into a crisis is that it's highly discrete in time and there is a temporally v…

>limited window of opportunity to take action

Things like permafrost melting and releasing more methane?

Re: Pollution causing more deaths than Covid, action needed, U.N. expert says

#80

Post by gfd »

Given the virality and case fatality rate we knew at the time, we were on track to lose hundreds of millions of lives from covid back then (assuming no vaccines and hospital infrastructure collapse).

Even with those worst case scenarios, there was still significant pushback to taking immediate global actions. And this is no where near the same scale of a threat.

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