So, Covid is on track to beat this, sadly.
Mosquitoes kill more than 700k people every year (2017)
121–130 of 411 posts
Re: Mosquitoes kill more than 700k people every year (2017)
#122To 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...
Poor sharks, they get one of the worst raps for how little damage they do to humans. I'm surprised to see dogs so high up on that list.
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%?
Re: Mosquitoes kill more than 700k people every year (2017)
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
"In the next couple decades", oh, a couple million would die, until maybe we'll have something else (or not). You have no right to make that choice. The only reason people are even thinking about it, is because it doesn't affect the West. That's callousness masquerading as environmentalism. %$#@! the ecosystem* . People are more important. * Nevermind no one has even shown any way that anything aside from the target…
> %$#@! the ecosystem* . People are more important. You do know humans need a functioning ecology in order to survive, right?
...and you read the part about mosquitoes being invasive species, right? So removing them improves almost every ecosystem they're found in.
Re: Mosquitoes kill more than 700k people every year (2017)
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
"In the next couple decades", oh, a couple million would die, until maybe we'll have something else (or not). You have no right to make that choice. The only reason people are even thinking about it, is because it doesn't affect the West. That's callousness masquerading as environmentalism. %$#@! the ecosystem* . People are more important. * Nevermind no one has even shown any way that anything aside from the target…
> %$#@! the ecosystem* . People are more important. You do know humans need a functioning ecology in order to survive, right?
We're talking about a very very specific ecosystem, which is frankly not relevant to humans (we can do fine without swamps).
There's no balance between the concern we don't have for the many ecologically damaging things humans do for profit and the nagging when we think about intervening with a disease that killed millions.
Re: Mosquitoes kill more than 700k people every year (2017)
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
Make no mistake, the West would do DDT all over again if that was the price for getting rid of Malaria. But a very targeted intervention is off limits due to 'well, we don't know, something might go wrong'. Nature doesn't care if humans all die. Nature doesn't 'care' at all. Humanity does. And this looks very ugly and very hypocritical.
"The West" is doing DDT all over again. This time it's neonicotinoids, and just like with DDT, they're being pushed by ag conglomerates as a way to increase profits, with a side of "cigarettes give you healthy skin!" style propaganda to make them look innocent. Last time, we "merely" almost wiped out a whole class of apex predators and caused a collection of trophic cascades. This time, with a menu of unintended cons…
There's already a "colony collapse disorder", and nobody does anything. But when it comes to the Third World, suddenly we have to do nothing because something might happen (nobody even has a mechanism. We're supposed to sacrifice millions for delusions). This is unacceptable. Fortunately, there are enough good people in the world to ignore the callous.
Re: Mosquitoes kill more than 700k people every year (2017)
#126According to the book "The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator" by Timothy C. Winegard, the mosquito has killed an estimated 52 billion people from a total of 108 billion people that have ever lived. (Not sure how those numbers were determined.)
This book is in a genre I like (microhistories) but I found it pretty dull reading. It's basically a very superficial history of "the world" (mainly Western Europe) that posits malaria to be the cause of pretty much every world event. I'm sure there's some truth to this, but the plodding military metaphors and oversimplifications really started to wear on me.
I haven't read it, but a recent review (https://lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n11/steven-shapin/drain-the-..., possibly behind a paywall) suggested Sonia Shah's The Fever to be a better book on the topic.
Re: Mosquitoes kill more than 700k people every year (2017)
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
Several of the comments responding to him do address this and at least some of the people commenting do appear to know, or at least know more than Nassim Taleb appears to. Besides, his statement isn't an argument, and present no facts or information. > Imbecilic remark. Do you know how many humans would die if we eliminated mosquitos? Any idea? petters also appears to be correct on what would happen if we had these i…
Taleb's position in general is one of extreme conservatism when meddling with ecological systems (for example he is also against GMOs). The basis for this conservatism is his general concern with risk in a nonlinear world. He does indeed put forth an argument, which is: can you predict the effects of this? No, you cannot, and possible effects include ecological collapse. Re: Manitoba, spraying to reduce mosquito popu…
Taleb's position in a nutshell:
Re: Mosquitoes kill more than 700k people every year (2017)
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
Poor sharks, they get one of the worst raps for how little damage they do to humans. I'm surprised to see dogs so high up on that list.
I suspect dogs aren’t particularly deadly, it’s just that there are so many of them and they collectively spend so much time near humans. Sharks on the other hand almost never interact with humans.
The only reason housecats aren't at the top of the list is that they are so small.
Re: Mosquitoes kill more than 700k people every year (2017)
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's kind of like saying that it's not the shark that kills people but the blood loss.
You missed my point. I am asking for consistency in the metrics. We get malaria from a parasite that is spread by mosquitoes. We get tuberculosis from a bacteria that is spread by humans. TB kills more than three times as many people every year as malaria. Why is malaria counted as a death caused by mosquitoes but TB isn't a death caused by humans? Either you count both or you count neither.
Mosquitoes don't kill except for diseases. Humans have means of killing besides spreading diseases.
Re: Mosquitoes kill more than 700k people every year (2017)
#130To 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...
Off topic, but how did you make that beautifully formatted table?