Mosquitoes kill more than 700k people every year (2017) | Hacker News Reader

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

isglobal.org

178 pointsddtaylor137 comments

Maybe there is some truth to the fact mosquitoes can only thrive with access to still water?

I once visited Indonesia and stayed at this place which was essentially jungle. I thought I was going to get destroyed by mosquitoes and yes we did have nets etc, but I was surprised at the lack of mosquitoes when outside.

I spoke with the owner who me that he doesn't worry much about mosquito born illness because he ensures there is no still water anywhere near his place. He said the most dangerous place for this type of thing was near small cities and towns because lots of dirty still water is present in gutters and pot holes etc. These places are breeding grounds for things like dengue fever according to the locals.

I can't really verify how true this but anecdotally I had a similar experience when I lived in a city, we started to get a LOT of mosquitoes hanging around our yard during rainy season. I went outside and noticed that many peoples bike tarps had sagged and formed ponds which had tons of mosquitoes hanging around them. I remembered what I learned on my trip and cleared all the water away. I do think it helped.

Definitely not trying to state this stuff as fact, just thought it would be interesting to share.

Mosquitos lay eggs in standing water and one of the major mitigation techniques is removing puddles (old tires, canoes turns upright, etc). The CDC even recommends this for prevention of West Nile (a mosquito born illness) https://www.cdc.gov/westnile/prevention/index.html

This is effective for mosquitoes for two reasons

First, because they lay eggs in standing water. Second, because mosquitos are relatively weak flyers compared to other flies. They often only travel a few hundred yards from where they were born during their lifetime.

So removing standing water is an excellent way to keep mosquitos at bay. If you can't, applying BTI spores to the standing water can target their larva.

Reason 2 is also important. You can often avoid mosquitoes in any area if you're willing to deal with a few large fans.

This is all pretty much true.

Currently in Singapore where the local government is quite strict on standing pools of water.

Very on top of it with a reactive-proactive system.

If there's a confirmed (1? 2?) case of dengue they will send officials door-to-door in a neighborhood to inspect the house/office for any standing pools of water. I've been inspected with some regularity.

Government will also spray mosquito smoke to help control populations. Separately, Indo has trialed a releasing a bunch of genetically engineered mosquitoes[0]

[0] https://edition.cnn.com/2021/06/10/health/dengue-modified-mo...

If you are "caught" with a standing pool of water, what is the recourse? They help you fix the problem? Or do you receive a punishment?

not sure! i've never been caught with one and couldn't find any info on escalations.

many public service things come with a warning then fine system (beginning of COVID, masks mandates were this), but no definite answer here.

For the first such offense, you only get a warning. For repeat offenses, the fines and jail time ramp up fast, up to 3 months in prison for a single puddle found on your property.

Counterpoint to - living in Singapore.

I'm in Singapore in a conda/apartment block where we currently have an outbreak of Dengue (spelling?) fever - 4/6 infections. As much as there is legislation to say - empty your buckets - its pretty ineffective when condo/apartment owners are pretty useless, having been told there are pools of water on the roof of the apartments. They just move to twice a week fogging (spraying fog into the bushes - of which we have no clue what chemicals they are using - DDT anyone?).

We haven't had any government officials come.

Pretty sure NEA also releases special mosquitoes, not sure if sterile males or wolbachia.

From my experience in Indonesia places with malaric mosquitoes are clearly marked and dealt with by local authorities.... Even on remote islands...

It's Up To You: Dengue-Yellow Fever Control

https://archive.org/details/ItsUpToYouDengue-yellowFeverCont...

Speaking from my experience kayaking, mosquitos are a tiny bit more frequent close to water than say in the middle of a forest, but not much. The real multiplying factor are swampy terrains, particularly close to places like water locks[1].

I've been told that the reason mosquitos are in bigger numbers in those places is that this is where they lay their eggs.

[1]: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lock_(water_navigation)>

It is certainly true that mosquitoes need still water to breed, their larvae being aquatic. Depending on the species, this can be anything from a pond to a tiny puddle or even a thimble-full of water in a bromeliad. The main requirement is that the water remain for about 5-7 days, the time it takes for the larvae to go from egg to mosquito, so in places where the water from a rainfall dries up faster than that you aren't going to get a lot of mosquitos. If there's no still water, some mosquitos will lay their eggs in (slowly) running water as well, but few of the larvae are likely to survive as running water is likely to have plenty of other life in it and pretty much everything else that moves in water loves to eat mosquito larvae.

In order to keep the window of time that their larvae need to develop a small as possible, the females try to give their offspring a head start in the form of highly concentrated protein... the source for which is your blood! The only time they bite is when they're "pregnant" with eggs (so only the females), otherwise adult mosquitos feed mostly on nectar.

> running water is likely to have plenty of other life in it

And still water isn't?

He's taking about animal life, not bacterial.

In Rivers there are likely fishes etc, that's not the case with still water, as it often goes bad really quickly unless there is a filter installed, which usually also introduces some oxygen into the water etc.

Another reason why Mosquitos usually only use still water is that the surface tension is necessary for them to inject their eggs, and moving water doesn't support their weight

Do you know if there are some rules to how fast the water should be? I know in siberia there are some rivers with suuuper slow speed, you almost can't see that it moves. I know that there are myriads of mosquitos too. Would be interesting to know if there's a connection to water speed and the amount of mosquitos breeding.

Significantly less macroscopic life. If it's a very small body it is likely to dry up eventually, so that rules out long-lived fully aquatic lifeforms. Even predatory insect larvae (for example, dragonfly larvae) have a much longer development cycle than mosquito larvae, so you won't find them in a body of water that will only be around for a few weeks. The other factor is oxygen... even a still pond that exists year around will have much lower oxygen levels than moving water, and that's a significant limiting factor for aquatic life. Mosquito larvae are air-breathers (they rest just under the surface and have a "snorkel" that breaks the surface to breathe) so they can live in almost completely hypoxic water so long as there is microbial life for them to eat.

No, a small puddle is not going to have fish in it that eat mosquito larvae

Last summer I put water into a basin (d~50cm) to create some humidity, which I believed was lacking in my room. The room is usually isolated from the outside and AC-ed due to the heat. Some day I noticed a mosquito and it successfully fed on my leg. Fast forward a week, I surprisingly started noticing more mosquitoes. That was unexpected because a couple may come in by chance, but something felt off to me then. In this semi-alarmed state I started to check around, when noticed the basin - it was full of t-shaped larvae, every few cm2 there was one. In disgust I washed it with best chemicals I had and never experimented with it again.

Idk if these larvae actually produced new mosquitoes or if it was just a coincidence.

There was no need to wash it with chemicals, the larvae would have just died after they went to your canalizations... Or just boiling water ?

I am surprised by the amount of people who think everything needs to be sterilized. They will use bleach to "clean" every surface and do not seem to understand the basic of how soap works....

Grease --> Soap, Hot water

Tart --> Boiling alcohol vinegar

Everything else -> Water, the best solvant on earth.

Yes I know basic chemistry, soap would do just fine. But I was under the affect of having spawning pool in my command center :)

And on top of the standing water factor, a city is less likely to have the mosquito's predators. I'm from Wisconsin which has plentiful mosquitos, but there's a state park that has had an abundance of bat houses for many years, and there's practically no mosquitos in the park.

Standing water is required but not the only factor.

In Vietnam there is plenty of standing water in the cities but malaria is almost non-existent.

Go outside in the rural areas and malaria is more common. You not only need water but a reservoir of disease for the mosquitos to transmit.

Evolutionary or not I don't know, but I can't stand that sound of mosquitos and want to kill them.

I'm someone who helps a bee/spider/any insect find its way instead of killing, but for some reason I literally want every mosquito on the planet to die.

Perhaps this explains it.

If I may, what continent are you on?

I moved from Africa with its noisy mosquitoes to Canada where the mosquitoes are silent but the bites are violent.

The worst mosquitos I've ever encountered in the world were right outside Jasper NP in Alberta.

I should stop complaining to my wife we should move to a cold climate to escape the mosquitoes.

What you want is a windy climate. Breezes should never drop under 10mph

That's really a good idea, keep them all mixed up while they try to track us lol.

The worst things I've ever encountered are not mosquitos, but somehow related. They are midges. I had my encounter in Scotland, and ever since that encounter I don't mind mosquitoes one bit. Because the problem with midges is that they surround you in thousands, land, possibly enter orifices (nose, ears) and bite you (they don't sting, they bite). I ended up with >100 bites per arm and >200 per leg from a limited time of exposure.

Midges are not solely in cold, muddy places like Scotland, sadly. They can also be found at beaches, in tropical areas, and a variety of other habitats. I'm currently near the equator, and midges are more of a bane here than mosquitoes.

But they do thrive very, very well in places with permeable soil. Scotland has its peat bogs (for those unfamiliar with the country: in some regions, basically all ground is peat). In the past, the country experienced freezing temperatures during most winters. But with global warming, that's no longer true. The freezes would kill many midges. Now, you can encounter hellish swarms of the little beasts.

Scotland isn't the worst, though. I've read that in Siberia, during the summer months, biting flies swarm so thickly that they can kill. Cattle have been found suffocated, their nostrils completely clogged with flies, and some of the local tribes traditionally went into tents and just waited out the swarms for a few weeks or months. Here's a fun little video: https://englishrussia.com/2015/09/01/mosquitos-and-insects-i...

> They can also be found at beaches, in tropical areas, and a variety of other habitats. I'm currently near the equator, and midges are more of a bane here than mosquitoes.

Correct, in Costa Rican Spanish they are called purrujas.

Wild. I didn't know about biting midges. I'm in Montana and live next to a huuuuge lake. Clouds of non-biting midges. Mosquitoes however, they are large, slow, and hurt when they bite as opposed to the SoCal mosquitoes I was used to that you didn't notice until later when you were scratching at the bite.

There’s something in SE Oklahoma that is pretty nasty. I was walking with my wife in the woods when she screamed and something flew away from her leg, it bit her so bad she had blood running down her calf.

They're not silent in Canada.

Well, they’re a lot louder in Africa.

Turkey, so Asia/Europe intersection.

Where I live in Turkey has too much of them especially on warmer seasons and humid weather, sometimes making it unbearable to just sit outside without getting constantly bitten or hearing their irritating sound.

I have this more with flies. Maybe because there aren’t many mosquitos here but very fat lazy flies are buzzing all around and landing on you too many months of the year.

They are absolutely right after mosquitos in my hate list :)

Especially those ones which constantly fly around you super fast in circles... irritating.

Fun fact: mosquitos and flies are the same word (sinek) in my language. Perhaps someone who hates them equally just got away with a single word with those little devils.

Come to Australia! The mosquitoes are huge and pretty much silent. So they don't irritate with noise and are somewhat easy to spot. Definitely compared to the tiny hellspawn mosquitoes that roam in Europe. Those are impossible to find in a room and absolutely infuriating with their whiny noise when they buzz around the ears.

/edit

Someone mentioned flies. Don't come to Australia if you have a problem with flies. Those fuckers are scared of nothing and they respect nothing. They just sit in your face whilst you are walking and don't give a shit. Much worse than the European ones that are flying around but don't really land on skin.

Recommending here those high voltage mesh paddles on a stand, with a UV LED on. So gratifying to hear the snap: One down!

'Skeets typically are waiting high up on the wall for lights to go out. Go around the bedroom and nearby rooms and squash them, if you haven't got the paddle.

Put a triple-digit LED counter on it

Mosquitos are better attracted with a source of carbon dioxide.

UV led actually attract males, who do not bites, so there's that.

The best protection for me is a large rectangle net bigger than the bed, and it gives a royal suite touch to the bedroom.

Hearing a mosquito bumping into your net is like being warm and sheltered when it's raining outside.

And if you have hunting urges, don't like the noise and can't sleep with ear plugs, they are easier to kill since they will often stay between the net and a wall.

> UV led actually attract males

This might explain why I have sometimes needed to lay the thing over my ear instead of leaving it on the nightstand.

Maybe I should leave a glass of warm seltzer standing by it.

So the only thing that doesn't kill you in Australia is Mosquitoes, who would have though that!

Regarding flies, watching The Proposition¹ a few years ago (a local cinema had a Nick Cave theme at the time) made me realise how bad the flies could be in Australia.

¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Proposition_(2005_film)

Would you recommend watching it? It's the first time I hear of it but it sounds interesting.

I thought it was excellent and would thoroughly recommend it. From memory, it’s very well directed, acted and shot, with an excellent and fitting soundtrack. The film gave an insight into a time and place I wouldn’t be particularly familiar with – other than various depictions of the Ned Kelly story. I couldn’t say it would appeal to everyone but my wife also enjoyed it – and she claims to dislike “Westerns”.

Great, thanks for your response! That sounds good. I have put it to the top of the list to be watched next. I'm not a massive Western fan but there's something about them that makes them easy to watch.

I'd mention Dead Man (1995) as a Western or Western themed movie to watch. I would give it a very similar description to yours.

One of the very few benefits of old age is that your ability to hear them slowly diminishes. Unfortunately my blood remains far too sweet for them to ignore.

"In the 20th century alone, malaria claimed between 150 million and 300 million lives, accounting for 2 to 5 percent of all deaths."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK215638/

"humans by the way are second behind the mosquito, causing 475,000 deaths every year..."

Depending on your background, you are either amazed that we are the second-biggest threat to ourselves because it's so self-destructive, or because you were convinced we had to be our own worst enemy.

"Each year, 1.35 million people are killed on roadways around the world."

https://www.cdc.gov/injury/features/global-road-safety/index...

Seems to me that traffic deaths are "caused by" humans... not totally surprised they have decided those don't count, but I feel that that's wrong.

Probably excluded because they're deemed unintentional. Of course the mosquitoes don't kill us intentionally either.

Well... cars are the dominant species on the planet so it makes sense not to count them as human caused deaths.

s/on the planet/in the US/

US is 6th, so not far off, but fewer cars per person than the rampant car culture of ... Iceland and New Zealand?

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

Even in Europe, cars are quite common for everyone. Maybe less for the middle class in big cities, but the traffic in London and Paris is quite terrible.

The US is a pretty disparate place. Here you go:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_vehicle...

If you compare to Iceland and New Zealand, you have to compare with rural US states. But still, not as bad as I thought TBH.

In many of those countries there are so many cars because they’re needed during peak tourist season

And guess where those tourists are from

By that logic pretty much every accidental death that's a result of the modern world would be "caused by humans". House fires, heavy equipment mishaps, cancer from exposure to exotic man-made substances, overdoses, icy staircases, it's a long, long list.

Seems to me that adding all that crap in would make the category so broad as to defeat the point of categorizing. IDK if that was your point or if you just wanted your pet issue in the category.

... old age.

We have many ways to lower car accidents and deaths in a country like the US. No effort is given to public transportation. Not counting them wouldn’t make sense unless enough effort was put in to lower those numbers. An accidental house fire isn’t the same thing at all. There weren’t major decisions made to purposefully allow sprawl and lack of funding into something that lowers house fires.

If mosquitoes are being credited with all the deaths by illness that they cause, it seems fair to credit humans for unintentional deaths also.

Interesting case, but some of these are more like suicides (intentional or otherwise), and I think we were talking about one organism killing another. But still, you're correct, some significant portion of these must be one human killed by the actions of another.

Suicide accounts for just north of 800k human deaths each year. Definitely more than mosquitos.

The source is a "worlds deadliest [to humans] animals" infographic [0], and suicide seems to me like a very clear-cut case of a human killing a human. I don't know why it's excluded, and neither the article nor source explain.

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

It's not really clear-cut that it's relevant here, since we're talking about deaths which require at least two organisms (here, a mosquito and a human). The analogy would extend to deaths between humans where at least two are required which I think is a neater category to reason about when we think 'threat'. Suicide isn't the same kind of threat the same way another human is. You don't walk down the street ever fearing suicide will be imposed upon you, whereas you may well walk down the street fearing mosquito bites and other people.

It's pretty clear if we ask, what is the proximate cause for most deaths of people. It's the self.

Well someone else mentioned a higher yearly number for car accidents.

Mosquitoes are amazing biological drones, will find a victim by breath and skin smell (ie. toes), will conceal on dark surfaces from a distance so they have a space model of their victim's location, they also search for holes in clothing and bite thru it if possible. If they get too full of blood and heavy will walk to a safe location, will dodge attacks from larger animals, and begin a erratic flight pattern and free-falls to get lost. Also they are born with enough energy to fly a considerable distance.

I am convinced they can also phase-shift out of this plane or something...

You can be following a mosquito with all your attention, and suddenly they just dissapear and no amount of looking around, even with a bright flashlight, will be enough to find them.

Until you give up, go do something else and they come back.

They don't mind using the third dimension, like dropping down to your knees or hiding near/on a ceiling. I've had one try to go behind my back while I was following it.

They're clever enough to not move once hidden so making noise, light, or flailing around nearby won't make them fly away and reveal their hiding spot. But that's also their downfall when you do spot them.

Cursed fucking creatures. They're optimized to perfectly ruin a good night's sleep, and for no good reason. A sufficiently pissed off human in an enclosed space always wins. The poor things get hungry first.

Oh yes.

I am both amused and annoyed at their abilities.

Maybe it's just me, but the link is in Spanish and you can change it at the top. Or this should be the English link. https://www.isglobal.org/en/-/mosquito-el-animal-mas-letal-d...

edit seems to have been changed.

It appears to be based on this blog post by Bill Gates from 2014 (if you want to read the original):

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

Yeah but how many mosquitoes do we kill in return?

There’s been bloodshed on both sides.

But the blood feeding is one sided. (I hope)

Not true. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LItNFP7icUw

I believe those are Midge flies, not mosquitoes. But I'd not be surprised if someone has cooked up some mosquitoes after watching that short clip.

When we kill them, we're shedding more of our blood than theirs.

> Yeah but how many mosquitoes do we kill in return?

Not enough.

Nah, mosquitoes don't have blood. Until they bite.

Donating to anti-malaria charities is a highly cost-effective way to improve lives per dollar spent - see Give Well's top charities if you are interested in how you can make a difference: https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities

This is incorrect. Mosquitoes do not kill anyone, but rather the pathogens they carry. They are just the vector.

If I have Covid-19, I pass it to you, and you die, does it mean I killed you?

This is the sort of technically correct that functionally doesn't help anyone, like arguing "guns don't kill people, bullets do".

If you intentionally broke quarantine, knowing you were sick, knowing you could get other people such, yes, you killed that person. That is not controversial.

> If you intentionally broke quarantine, knowing you were sick, knowing you could get other people such, yes, you killed that person. That is not controversial.

Do you feel that way for all communicable diseases or only for Covid?

If you have AIDS, hide it from your partners, don’t use protection and happen to get someone infected…

I think we can both agree this isn’t some Covid slippery slope.

That's a wildly extreme example to compare going outside with Covid to.

Given that you are incredibly unlikely to kill someone by going out when you have Covid, this is more like going to work when you have a minor respiratory infection, which many people do, and are even sometimes tacitly encouraged to do so by their employers. As a society we haven't typically referred to those people as killers, even though there is a small risk that, for example, they have influenza, pass it on to someone who is vulnerable, and that person dies. It is clearly inconsistent to treat that situation differently to someone who goes out while they have Covid.

I'm not surprised by the downvotes, but if you can manage to form a counterpoint more sophisticated than clicking "down", please do!

Honestly we'd probably be a lot better of if we handled lesser diseases with some more selfimposed responsibility and societal scorn. At least the way much of east asia started operating following sars and bird flu. (wearing masks if they suspected they or people around them were ill even without a new pandemic around well before corona)

Not because we should be scared of the risk of dying or infecting someone else that could die of it (tho that's certainly a good argument for wearing a mask when suspecting you have the flu) but because that person could infect another few, and they another few and oh woops flu season with 3-5 billion in economic damage in the US alone from a single shitty disease let alone others.

Countries with habitual mask usage have flu seasons just like the rest. Has it ever been studied whether it has a measurable impact at population scale? I'm skeptical.

> If you intentionally [...] knowing [...] knowing

This hardly seems relevant to mosquitos.

> If I have Covid-19, I pass it to you, and you die, does it mean I killed you?

if you did it intentionally; yes.

Relevant/related topic (though about another transmissible disease): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_transmission_of_HIV

>> If I have Covid-19, I pass it to you, and you die, does it mean I killed you?

> if you did it intentionally; yes.

Well, unintentionally killing someone is still "killing", no?

We call unintentionally killing someone involuntary manslaughter.

We call intentionally killing someone murder.

But mosquitoes don't transmit diseases intentionally, do they?

If you’re a different species than I am and COVID-19 is a disease unique in my species to parasitic encounters with your species, then yes.

How there hasn't been a horror movie about mosquitoes is beyond me.

Jaws has made almost everyone afraid of sharks. Yet, in the last century, there have been only 1,000 recorded deadly shark attacks. Mosquitoes kill between 1,500 and 2,000 people every day. Source: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/08/chart-of-the-day-mosq...

On a more scientific note, it is my firm belief that the benefits of exterminating all species of mosquitoes on the globe far outweigh the consequences on the food chain. If I had Bill Gates money, this is one of the projects I would work on.

The Mist does a pretty good job of making mosquitos terrifying.

Same reason we have horror movies about nuclear plant accidents, but none about coal plants that emit more pollution and kill more people.

Mosquitoes aren't just deadly, they're boring, and that's an even worse sin.

My theory is it’s because people respond emotionally to drama but not numbers. A shark attack, a plane crash, and an explosion are all much more dramatic but less deadly. What would the dramatic terror scene be? Someone swiping away a mosquito? Very boring. So that’s not what gets made into movies.

Secondly, the Gates Foundation does a TON of work with mosquitos and protective nets! They have saved tens of millions of lives. Whenever I have some money to donate and do research on what is the most effective use of each dollar, mosquito nets rise to the top.

I don't understand why there's so much Gates love in this thread. Mosquito nets have been around for hundreds if not thousands of years.

Nobody is all bad. Not even him.

Hundreds of millions of people simply don’t have them. They aren’t free and they get holes in them over time

I present to you 1994's Mosquito

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito_(film)

Don’t forget ‘93s Skeeter

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0108154/

I enjoyed Mansquito:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0430334/

96 percent of deaths are in Africa and 80 percent of deaths in Africa are children below 5 years old..

I do not want to be cynical but that statistic might explain inaction...

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/malaria

If you are reasonably healthy, reasonably young, and reasonably well-off, you’ll most probably not die from any mosquito-transmitted disease. And most people think that they belong to that group. None of the above will protect you from a shark once it found you.

Even in that group, you're still probably more likely to die by mosquito then shark?

I guess it depends on your Bayesian updating model.

To add, sharks are literal scary freaks...in pictures, not to talk of seeing such a beast in real life.

On the other hand, I've killed more mosquitoes than I care to remember.

The Gates foundation has granted billions of dollars for malaria research including mosquito control. And Bill himself released some (possibly imaginary) mosquitoes into the TED audience to make this point, which was pretty hilarious. “There’s no reason only poor people should have the experience,” he said.

> Jaws has made almost everyone afraid of sharks. Yet, in the last century, there have been only 1,000 recorded deadly shark attacks.

Ghosts and zombies have claimed even fewer lives. Meanwhile, no horror movies are about cancer or heart disease.

Mosquitoes kill more than 700k people every year (2017) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23351643 - May 2020 (392 comments)

Yet due to the precautionary principle, we will not eradicate them as a species, since it might cause some human death.

It seems illogical to me that almost 1 million dead for sure is preferable to a low percentage risk of a few thousand that might die say due to chemical pollution from the bugspray selected: even at a very conservative 1% risk, eradicating mosquitoes can't cause 100 million death -- and that's only counting 1 year, while we should use a sum over 10 years, but even then with a 5% discount rate for uncertainty it still doesn't make sense to prefer inaction.

I believe it's a case of status-quo bias.

You should look into the DDT effort and the consequences of it. You are grossly oversimplifying and making it sound like everyone is just sitting around leaning on “the precautionary principle.”

There are surround 800 mosquito species. Only ~20 of them can carry malaria.

There is active research into eradicating those.

"Mosquito control: Proposals to eradicate mosquitoes"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito_control#Proposals_to_...

Mosquitos are proof that the universe was not created by a benevolent god.

Maybe human are only on earth as food for mosquitoes. Maybe mosquitoes is god's plan.

Further proof the universe was not created by a benevolent god.

The "benevolent" God flooded entire countries, sent some bad stuff to Egypt, and did many other "horrible" things to random groups of humans. But that's all part of his plan that we cannot comprehend. (Maybe they were not faithful enough, or not from the right chosen People?)

So I'm not sure this proves anything.

A recent (and characteristically in-depth) interview from 80,000 Hours podcast about malaria control:

> James Tibenderana on the state of the art in malaria control and elimination

https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/james-tibenderana-ma...

I’m developing a mosquitoe gun so people can defend themselves. If anyone has interest in joining my startup let me know

I would like to see an experiment where we exterminate mosquitoes... We have the technology.

It's not mosquitoes per se, but the plasmodia they carry, that kill people.

So, if we could design a cure for mosquitoes, that would be really a good thing for both humans and nature.

Maybe similar to what we already do with wolbachia to cure mosquitoes of arboviruses such as dengue or zika.

If only we had a solution to this problem. Oh wait, we do. Malaria used to be endemic in the USA[1]. The solution is basically carpet bombing DDT for several years to wipe out the diseased mosquito population. But some idiot do-gooder decided to raise a fuss about songbirds so now we continue to have hundreds of thousands of human beings needlessly die. And of course we now know that the birds recovered just fine. What’s worse the so-called responsible uses of DDT like infused netting are just artificially selecting for DDT resistance without wiping out the disease reservoir as was done in the USA.

Edit: fascinating that people think a few generations of songbirds whose populations fully recovered are more important than 700,000 human lives a year.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/history/elimination_us.htm...

Wiping out malaria from Africa probably wouldn't save lives long-term, considering the totally unsustainable levels of population growth at the same time when climate change renders many areas less habitable. Massive starvation seems inevitable.

Antimalarial programs that don't cause massive environmental pollution are definitely the better choice here. At least they have few risks, even if the long-term outcome is equally uncertain.

They are also food for birds and other creatures, right? So if we eliminate mosquitoes, we'll get rid of those too.

The least death-prone environment for humans is probably sterile with no other lifeforms...

How many mosquitoes do human kill every year?

Clearly not enough.

The world is not running out of people. More than 7 billion people are alive every year. Given a number of years, all those alive now will be dead.

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