List of Epidemics | Hacker News Reader

List of Epidemics

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78 pointskashnote38 comments

So many recent ones from mosquitoes, dengue or chikungunya.

More than almost any other near future technology, I hope for humanity's sake we quickly perfect a way to eradicate that demon insect.

Mosquitoes don't pollinate, but they're food for a bunch of other animals up the food chain, no? (e.g. frogs?).

So if we did eliminate mosquitoes, it's probably not going to be a clear win.

I think they do not constitute a substantial portion of diet of any other animal. Source: an article about possible mosquito eradication that I can't seem to dig up :-/

As posted to a sister comment, I think Nature's review -- discussed in Radiolab -- is what people are thinking of.

https://www.nature.com/articles/466432a

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/kill-...

There's over 3000 species of mosquitoes. Only 3 of those species are the primary carriers of these diseases. Only 1 species carries malaria. So we only gotta get rid of a small portion of mosquitoes.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/invertebrates/gro...

I know there is some science backing the general approach, but doesn't evolution tend to pressure the virus developing different vectors, when faced with eradication? There is probably a good subset of the 2997 other species that could serve the purpose.

Probably depends on how fast the species is eradicated.

> but doesn't evolution tend to pressure the virus developing different vectors, when faced with eradication?

What does evolution “pressuring” mean? Either the organism (or virus) has sufficient chances to randomly mutate a a trait that enables it to survive, or it goes extinct.

Well, I meant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_pressure

Think of a population as holding at any given time a number of individuals carrying mutations. The fringe mutations, such as being able to be hosted by a different type of mosquito (say, better survivability in the host) don't provide much of a benefit to survival. But if the default host population goes away, those mutations become super valuable and will be selected.

See https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/transgenic-mosqui... for a discussion on this topic.

My vague recollection is that studies so far have found mosquitoes aren't the primary part of any particular species diet but the data is incomplete. We are still unsure if we can pull this block out of the jenga tower.

I think people are looking for this review in Nature, where they asked a bunch of ecologists if we could eradicate mosquitoes and the consensus was basically fine with it.

https://www.nature.com/articles/466432a

I think there's even an argument to be made that we should increase our risk tolerance relative to the scale of the harm, and if you study mosquitoes for even a little bit, the harm is off the charts. Fortunately ecologists pretty uniformly agree this is an easy case.

I would prefer we eradicate the virus, not the insect?

By far my least favourite aspect of DEET is that it merely deters mosquitos rather than hurts them.

Assuming no unforseen implications, of course.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_Campaign

Mosquitoes kill more people per year than every other animal (including humans) combined[0].

There may be unforseen consequences to eradicating mosquitoes, but to do nothing is already pretty catastrophic.

[0] https://www.gatesnotes.com/Health/Most-Lethal-Animal-Mosquit...

Perhaps the gene drive tech will work out: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02087-5

Already failed. Sorry.

Or perhaps it has not succeeded yet.

https://ipscell.com/2017/02/mosquitoes-swat-back-via-resista...

I find it hard to get perspective on how devastating and society affecting the Spanish Flu was. Fifty to a hundred million. Dead. 3-5% of the world's humans gone. More from the prime of life than typical for disease. This on tail end of World War One which also killed many more young men.

History we should remember.

We should also remember that there is nothing about the Wuhan coronavirus that is anything like H1N1 influenza virus.

Wuhan is causing respiratory infection that leads to pneumonia. H1N1 caused inflammatory immune reactions (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4711683/).

So far this virus seems closer to a bad seasonal influenza. 2% mortality rate concentrated in populations over 65 years old. The 2019 Li paper in Lancet had similar numbers in China for the flu. Similar reproduction rate.

I'm not an expert, but some people are are panicking and buying surgical masks (borderline useless) and food supplies. Mass panic reactions are deadly and avoidable.

> I'm not an expert, but some people are are panicking and buying surgical masks (borderline useless)

I'm currently in Singapore. Many people wear masks here, especially at the airport (large majority of people wore mask today). My friends blame me for not wearing one. I checked the WHO recommendations [1] and wearing a mask for general public isn't recommended (EDIT: unless you're sick).

[1] https://www.who.int/ith/2020-24-01-outbreak-of-Pneumonia-cau...

>I'm not an expert, but some people are are panicking and buying surgical masks (borderline useless)

N95 masks are effective in filtering out viruses. Also your conclusions put a lot of implicit faith into numbers reported by the Chinese Communist Party, which has a strong incentive to minimize the problem and probably one of the most facilitating authoritarian cultures to do so.

>> I'm not an expert, but some people are are panicking and buying surgical masks (borderline useless)

Please stop spreading this misinformation, particularly if you are not an expert.

Doesn't mention the mysterious sleeping sickness epidemic of the early 20th century [0]. I learned of it through Oliver Sacks' writings. Survivors were afflicted by a permanent neurological change:

> They would be conscious and aware – yet not fully awake; they would sit motionless and speechless all day in their chairs, totally lacking energy, impetus, initiative, motive, appetite, affect or desire; they registered what went on about them without active attention, and with profound indifference.

I can't help but be reminded of the current wave of chronic fatigue. I feel that modern doctors are too... hubristic? to find novel treatments for this like L-dopa.

[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encephalitis_lethargica

Why do you think that about modern doctors?

Modern doctors certainly aren't going to find a bunch of amino acids that a patient may be deficient in, because that work is already done (the finding of the amino acids, not the finding of potential deficiencies).

Perhaps hubristic is an unfair description.

As far as I know Sacks was treating patients with L-DOPA on a hunch, based on the surface similarities if their symptoms with Parkinson's. Positive results for L-DOPA with Parkinson's had only been published the year previously.

Doctors like Sacks were happy to really explore with their patients. You can see from his books just how many things he tries to get through to them, and into their heads.

Nowadays it seems that psychiatry treats depression etc. like a solved problem, and continue to use tools and medications that work marginally better than placebo. Promising experimental therapies like ketamine and psilocybin have been stuck in the pipeline for decades.

I know Sacks is an exceptional doctor, and that there were downsides to this 'see what sticks' approach, but I highly recommend his books if you want to get depressed about the state of modern medicine.

There are a lot of good ethical and statistical reasons that drug research is done within a more formal framework today. And there are some avenues for patients with poor outlooks to try "hail mary" drugs.

Nietzsche was the first person to come to mind.

No mention of the Tudor Sweating Sickness, as mentioned in Wolf Hall a dramatisation if Thomas Cromwell:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweating_sickness

I would of thought some bodies could be exhumed an analysed as to what it might have been.

This was in the thousands, is there a reason why it’s not on the list?

Looks like someone just added it.

The yearly typical flu is not included while it easily kills a lot more than every other one in that list... So this is heavily biased.

Probably the rise above the baseline is not large enough in most years. But yes, Influenza and Malaria would easily top the list every year with hundreds of thousands of casualties.

Alot of those people are close to death as it is, it’s just the flu that tips them over.

probably focused on pandemic illnesses rather than seasonal illnesses. seasonal illnesses kill more people over time but pandemic illnesses are potentially more dangerous since people often don't have antibodies to fight them.

Spanish Flu is on list. And it killed 50 to 100 MILLION. Way, way more than the typical yearly flu did in the two years it was active. And probably more than all the years since, combined.

It also killed many healthy people possibly due to auto immune. Verse typical influenza which only weakens body so other normally non-lethal factors are enough to kill.

if you were a particularly sinister CCP official, might you consider releasing a virus on purpose to quell the riots in HK? i have no evidence for this but from a cui bono perspective, it would be a diabolically efficient plan with some plausible deniability.

The fact is that the virus originated in a bat in a wet market. Bats are known carriers of coronavirus in China.

The virus originated in Wuhan. Residents of Wuhan have to cross a controlled border to enter Hong Kong. Hong Kong has 2 orders of magnitude less infections than Hubei province.

Biological weapons are typically highly deadly and not transmissible between humans. You want to be able to target specific populations with a biological weapon. The virus isn't affecting young protestors in Hong Kong, it is mainly affecting people with already compromised immune systems throughout central China.

I hope that we can take the unreasonable accusations of conspiracy by the CCP as an opportunity to examine our own biases and preconceptions regarding China. The CCP is often incentivized to misinform and censor. We have seen this at the regional level with the Hubei governments slow response to this outbreak. I can find no indication, nor think of any reason why, the CCP is not working diligently with international cooperation to contain this virus.

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