
Mosquitoes kill more than 700k people every year (2017) - gregd
https://www.isglobal.org/en_GB/-/mosquito-el-animal-mas-letal-del-mundo
======
Koshkin
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...](https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-animals-that-kill-most-
humans.html)

~~~
cameronfraser
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.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
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%?

~~~
jayrot
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.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2019/01/28/shark-a...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2019/01/28/shark-
attacks-decline-2018-both-us-and-worldwide/2700571002/)

~~~
kbutler
So what you're saying is, "yes, they are killing machines", with "they" being
"the humans."

------
ahelwer
I grew up in Manitoba so have a _very healthy_ hatred of mosquitoes - 50 of
them once followed me into a car during the <1s window of me opening & closing
the door (I know because I killed them all before driving) - but anyone
leaning toward the idea we should exterminate mosquitoes is incredibly
reckless. Ecological systems don't shift slowly, they collapse all at once.
Their continued existence is predicated on feedback loops of mind-boggling
complexity. To put it another way:
[https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1120044775024013312](https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1120044775024013312)

~~~
yyyk
The issue is very well studied - Mosquitoes are an invading species in most
areas; Only a few subspecies are harmful to humans, and they'll be replaced by
similar mosquitoes that aren't.

Besides, there's a very wide gap between what the West is and was willing to
do when an infectious disease happens.

When Malaria hit the West, we drained entire swamps (and their ecosystems)
without a second though. When corona hits, we justifiably lockdown entire
countries. When Malaria hits poor people, it's _think about the Mosquitoes_. I
can't help but think there's a very ugly thing behind this double-standard.

~~~
3pt14159
Destroying every member of a specific species is ridiculous. In the next
couple decades we'll solve the majority of the illnesses that these things
cause and we can roll out the cures around the world without the permanent
damage to these ecosystems.

I also lived for a time as a child in Manitoba and my grandfather got live
altering malaria, so I don't share any love for these insects but we're part
of something bigger and just because the west drained entire swamps doesn't
mean I support that or that it validates making a species extinct on purpose.

~~~
yyyk
"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 would be harmed. Or that we could reintroduce the species once the parasite is gone.

~~~
throwanem
> %$#@! the ecosystem* . People are more important.

You do know humans _need_ a functioning ecology in order to survive, right?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
...and you read the part about mosquitoes being invasive species, right? So
removing them improves almost every ecosystem they're found in.

~~~
throwanem
You read the part about it being a specific couple of species, right? So
unless somebody comes up with a brilliant plan that targets specifically those
species, _and_ only in the parts of the world where they're not native, _and
nothing else_ , we're still risking the same kind of consequences as with DDT,
or neonicotinoids. The kind we can't predict in advance are going to fuck us
over.

I mean, don't get me wrong, I love the optimism inherent in a perspective on
the world that says there's necessarily a technological solution to
everything, and more than that, one that modern-day humans are certainly smart
enough to find. I just wish it didn't so lend itself to hubris.

~~~
jacobr1
The one plan we do have that targets a specific species is the spread of
neutered males. We've done this successfully in the past with screw-worm.

~~~
throwanem
The sterile-insect technique does work, but it's not going to achieve the kind
of eradication people in here are talking about. Wild-eyed ideas about mass
pesticide application and CRISPR gene drives are more the sort of thing that
actually concern me, or would if I thought anyone talking about them was
anywhere near the required levers of power to actually make them happen. As it
is, I just wish people had enough sense of history to understand the import,
although I suppose in the age of alternative facts that's far more than can
reasonably be expected.

~~~
yyyk
Strile-insect achieves 90-95% (e.g.[1]). Sustained and combined with a bit
from the other approaches (netting, drying some swamps, this article suggests
a medicine to make infected biting mosquitoes die, etc.), we can at least
repeat what happened in much of the West - the population was reduced so much
the parasite went extinct, when the population bounced back it was 'clean' (in
other places in the West these mosquito simply went extinct).

[1]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4489809/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4489809/)

~~~
throwanem
Well, hell, OK, then, let's do that.

------
bradam
One of my classmates came back from Africa to Europe this March without any
symptoms. 10 days later she got high fever, dizziness, and unfortunately she
could not even recognise her family. Everyone thought its COVID, and doctors
recommended her to stay home to not spread the "virus". Unfortunately when she
got the the hospital, the diagnostics was too late to and she died in malaria
1,5 days later.

Please beware of this infection and get the medication even if it has strong
side effects.

~~~
grawprog
Makes you wonder how many people have actually died so far this way. Being
told to stay home and not spread covid, meanwhile something else is actually
terribly wrong.

~~~
djsumdog
There was an Oncologist who was talking about how the number of women coming
in for regular exams was non-existent for two months. A few months is enough
time for breast cancer to go from stage 1 to stage 2, and for 5 year survival
rates to drop by a third[0].

There are going to be a ton of secondary effects due to prematurely closing or
clearing out hospitals and clinics, and many people have already died from
completely preventable illnesses, with some clinics telling people to not come
in when they should have.

[0]: [https://unherd.com/thepost/professor-karol-sikora-fear-is-
mo...](https://unherd.com/thepost/professor-karol-sikora-fear-is-more-
dangerous-than-the-virus/)

~~~
lutorm
_A few months is enough time for breast cancer to go from stage 1 to stage 2
..._

Do women normally have breast exams every few months?

~~~
perl4ever
I don't understand where you'd get that implication.

Some presumably fairly predictable fraction would have an exam scheduled
during the beginning of the epidemic, and a certain fraction of them would
have undiagnosed cancer. It seems reasonable to assume significant negative
consequences for those people.

~~~
richard_todd
Presumably some women would have had an exam in February but developed enough
cancer to be visible in March, so delaying a couple of months had a huge
positive impact on their outcome. How can we measure the net result of all
these variables?

~~~
IgorPartola
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.

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

~~~
IgorPartola
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?

~~~
jjnoakes
No argument here, but you've changed from "percent women who develop early
stage breast cancer per month * number of months closed per year" (which I
responded to) to "percent early stage breast cancer cases caught per month *
number of months closed per year", which sounds more accurate.

------
jonshariat
This is why Verily's [https://debug.com/](https://debug.com/) project is so
interesting.

The idea is to create modified mosquitoes that can't bite or breed and release
them to "breed" with the general populous thus neutralizing them.

~~~
jschwartzi
Another way we can control mosquitoes is by making sure the native bird
populations are healthy. Where I live tree and bank swallows eat tons and tons
of mosquitoes and other bugs every year which helps control the population. I
wouldn't recommend releasing these birds elsewhere because they may not have
any natural predators but surely where there are tons of mosquitoes there are
also predators of mosquitoes as well.

Otherwise this reminds me of well-meaning efforts to control erosion by
planting Kudzu or Himalayan Blackberry everywhere. Ultimately they just become
an invasive species. And I could also see eradicating mosquitoes as removing a
food species for many other animals. This is a really bad idea.

~~~
throwaway894345
Is this true? I recall looking into this and finding that swallows, bats, and
other "mosquito predators" don't put a dent in mosquito populations
(mosquitoes are numerous and only account for a negligible percentage of these
predators' diets).

~~~
colechristensen
The right question is "How significant is this?" because of course predators
have an effect on prey population dynamics, but the question is what effect
and how big.

>We conclude that predators and parasites have a limited but significant
effect on overall mosquito populations, and their role should be considered
when implementing habitat management, mosquito control and when modeling
mosquito population dynamics.

From a study
[http://e-m-b.org/sites/e-m-b.org/files/European_Mosquito_Bul...](http://e-m-b.org/sites/e-m-b.org/files/European_Mosquito_Bulletin_Publications811/EMB25/EMB25_1.pdf)

~~~
throwaway894345
That’s great news if it is significant. Everything I had previously read
indicated that their impact was negligible. I hate mosquitos, so I hope your
link is correct.

------
yboris
If you want to reduce the number, consider donating money to the _cost-
effective_ Against Malaria Foundation

[https://www.givewell.org/charities/amf](https://www.givewell.org/charities/amf)
\- review by GiveWell, and independent charity evaluator

$2 donation results in 1 net that lasts 3-4 years protecting 1.8 people on
average from malaria $3

------
dean
According 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.)

~~~
bsytko
Curious as to why we haven't evolved tougher skin then. Mosquito resistant
skin would appear to be a trait that would allow you to live longer.

~~~
acdha
Evolution doesn’t care about longevity or quality of life: it’s all about
passing genes on. If some kind of mosquito resistance didn’t lead to
increasing the number of children you have there’s not going to be much
selection pressure for it.

~~~
netsec_burn
Would it not, if the individuals that are not bearing the anti-mosquito skin
die off?

~~~
acdha
Possibly but it’s a complicated trade off: first, there’s the question of how
much advantage it could confer – if young people get through a disease and the
deaths are mostly old people who are past reproductive age, there might not be
enough advantage (especially since humans are social - a 10 year old losing a
parent is a tragedy but probably not fatal if you live with older siblings,
relatives, or a tribe). Depending on what people are dying of and when, this
might not be enough to select for.

The second big factor is what it would need to develop. This isn’t a directed
process - something needs to confer a benefit of some sort early to be
selected for, not just after hundreds of generations. If you’re talking about
a major change like completely changing mammalian skin, that sounds very
complicated compared to other things (such as improved immune function for the
specific disease killing people), and there’s an arms race if all you’re doing
is selecting for mosquitoes with better bites which might not be winnable.

Finally, there’s the question of downsides: do the mutations producing this
leave you more vulnerable to other conditions, less likely to attract mates,
etc. If that tough skin costs more to grow, you’re paying the cost upfront
even if you’re living somewhere without a huge mosquito population, so it
might be maladaptive for too much of the total population to maintain.

The downsides discussion is particularly relevant in the case of sickle cell
anemia, which is believed to be a side effect of an evolved malaria resistance
– beneficial if you live in an area where it’s common but a net loss if you do
not:

[https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20450-how-sickle-
cell...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20450-how-sickle-cell-
carriers-fend-off-malaria/)

------
mac01021
Just as a curiosity, humans kill hundreds of trillions of insects annually.

[1] [https://www.quora.com/How-many-insects-die-from-people-
stepp...](https://www.quora.com/How-many-insects-die-from-people-stepping-on-
them-daily)

~~~
dheera
Insects, however, reproduce so much that without population control, the
ecosystem would be in imbalance very quickly, and they can't be educated to
have less children. Insects were "designed" into the system such that a large
number of them are expected to die.

I wouldn't be surprised if birds and spiders kill far more insects than
people.

~~~
mac01021
They probably do if you count only humans directly squashing the insects with
their hands/feet/cars.

If you count things like pollution, pesticides, land use, they absolutely
don't.

Insect populations have been reduced to a fraction of their former size over
the last few decades due to human activity.

------
richardw
I think it would take a lot of mosquitoes to take down a human.

> True, this tiny insect does not do the job on its own. What makes it so
> dangerous is its capacity to transmit viruses or other parasites that cause
> devastating diseases.

If you catch Covid-19 from a kiss, we don’t say the other person killed you.
We firmly blame the disease not the person who transmits it. “Well your honor,
Sally didn’t do it on her own, it was her capacity to transmit viruses or
other parasites. But mostly her.”

These all seem communicable, but we don’t blame humans:

“Lower respiratory infections remained the most deadly communicable disease,
causing 3.0 million deaths worldwide in 2016. The death rate from diarrhoeal
diseases decreased by almost 1 million between 2000 and 2016, but still caused
1.4 million deaths in 2016. Similarly, the number of tuberculosis deaths
decreased during the same period, but is still among the top 10 causes with a
death toll of 1.3 million. HIV/AIDS is no longer among the world’s top 10
causes of death, having killed 1.0 million people in 2016 compared with 1.5
million in 2000.”

[https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/the-
top-10-...](https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/the-
top-10-causes-of-death)

Yes if you infect someone intentionally that’s different, but the mosquito
isn’t trying to kill you.

From the article:

> (humans by the way are second behind the mosquito, causing 475,000 deaths
> every year)

If it’s not humans killing when we transmit, then it’s not mosquitoes. If the
transmitter is involved then humans crush mosquitoes.

~~~
CPUstring
Mosquitos transmit and incubate malaria. You don't get malaria from hanging
out with a person with it, you get it from getting bit by a mosquito that has
previously bitten a person with malaria. [0] Given that the two are
intrinsically related, it makes little difference when having a shallow
discussion to make the distinction.

[0][https://healthclinics.superdrug.com/is-malaria-
contagious/](https://healthclinics.superdrug.com/is-malaria-contagious/)

------
peter_d_sherman
>"But the deadliest animal in the world, in terms of how many people it kills
every year, is by far the mosquito. As nicely illustrated in an infographic by
gatesnotes, mosquitoes kill at least 725,000 persons every year"

And yet, we never seem to hear this fact on the News...

Yet we do get stories of the form "X killed Y people", where X is some
person/group/phenomenon, and Y < 725,000...

And usually, Y is not just less, but _several orders of magnitude_ less --
than 725,000...

Also... if you happen to leave a window open at night (accidentally, not
intentionally, I might add!), and a mosquito should happen to get in -- does
that make you an "accessory to murder" ?

?

~~~
acdha
> And yet, we never seem to hear this fact on the News...

Not sure where you get your news but I’ve heard this mentioned regularly on
NPR in coverage about the impacts of climate change, outbreaks, programs
testing things like the genetically-engineered sterile mosquito releases, and
local programs which are trying to reduce it even if it’s not a high cause of
death in the United States. Remember when Zika got heavy coverage?

------
ChrisMarshallNY
When I lived in Africa -especially Nigeria- there were these swarms of
mosquitoes that could drain half a pint of blood in a minute or two.

My sister got caught in one of them. Not fun. She was _covered_ in the little
bastards.

~~~
foobiekr
One time, while hiking to go bass fishing in the high Uintas, I got attacked
by a swarm of mosquitos so insane that they were trying to bite me through my
shirt, through my shorts, my face was covered and one of the little bastards
managed on land on my cornea. Nightmarish.

------
dade_
Or poverty. Basic healthcare, mosquito nets and dealing with standing water
would probably eliminate the majority of these deaths without killing a single
mosquito.

------
paulorlando
This is a look into mosquito extirpation programs and what happens when they
go wrong: [https://unintendedconsequenc.es/more-on-mosquitoes-new-
data/](https://unintendedconsequenc.es/more-on-mosquitoes-new-data/)

------
activatedgeek
It is uneasy to read this number and I don't get the full picture here.

1\. What is the distribution of this number across geographical regions? Is it
uniformly spread across all regions? Are some regions outliers?

2\. The distribution of this number over time of the year in every geographic
region is perhaps an interesting thing to look at for short-term solutions.

------
tim333
Not being a fan of mosquitoes or malaria I wouldn't mind giving gene drive a
go [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/08/magazine/gene-drive-
mosqu...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/08/magazine/gene-drive-
mosquitoes.html)

------
JoeAltmaier
So, Covid is on track to beat this, sadly.

~~~
tempestn
Yes, but mosquitos kill that many every single year. Look at the reaction to
COVID-19 compared to the amount of effort going into eliminating mosquito-
borne disease. There's certainly some, but it's far from the mobilization we
see when a calamity on this scale hits rich countries.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Maybe that's cause-and-effect turned around? We stifled our economy and
mobilize a million researchers, because we can afford to and have the will.
It'll cost us in the end.

What do folks in malaria country do? Scavenge their childrens' mosquito nets
to catch fish etc. Reject modern medicine and go to the local quack. Foul
their water supplies and poach their endangered species.

I know, we can have all the morals we can afford. But some large-scale
coordinated actions require a populace that is educated and willing.

~~~
djsumdog
It's because SARS-CoV-2 is new, and new things scare us more than things we
know. This entire thing has been an exercises in how people fail to properly
evaluate risk ... on a global scale .. leading to economic devastation.

Wendover did a great video on risk recently:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtX-
Ibi21tU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtX-Ibi21tU)

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Except this risk is real. The more we learn of it, the more significant it
becomes.

Fortunately with study we will beat it. But to laugh at the risk of Covid is
foolhardy.

------
nutbutter
"The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator" by Timothy Winegard
is an excellent read on the topic of the Mosquito. I'm paraphrasing, but I
think he mentions that, of all the humans that have ever lived, the mosquito
accounts for half of their deaths.

------
condesising
IIRC Weren’t they genetically modified mosquitoes to stop their spread? I
guess I’m curious at what point would the Chi turn and we would gain control
over the mosquito population?

------
trianglem
Also ticks, please can we lump them in with the mosquito genocide.

------
pretzel_boss
Malaria is a parasite isn't it? Wouldn't that mean that Malaria is killing
that many people and the actual numbers are lower?

If we are including diseases why not count bats?

------
eruci
1\. Stupidity - More than the rest combined.

------
xenocyon
This is a strangely worded title: why not say "mosquitoes" instead of "tiny
insects" since that is what is being referred to?

Insects as a whole are of crucial planetary importance.

~~~
creaghpatr
Agree, the HN header should be updated. No other insects mentioned.

~~~
gregd
I updated it and apologized for the error.

------
ardy42
Needs a (2017). This looks like the publish date:

> 18.08.2017

------
atlantacrackers
Quick - lock it down. Double unemployment payments. Wait it out in your
basement with the light out.

------
asdf21
Way more than that if you count diseases from ticks.

------
clairity
700K per year. ok let's let the elephant out of the bag:

why haven't we been in lockdown every year until this deadly scourge has been
exterminated?

and no, it's not that the current pandemic was more uncertain. even by
january/february, it was clearly less contagious and deadly than the 1918 flu.
we had good bounds on potential trajectory by early march, when many lockdowns
were being implemented.

~~~
optimiz3
> why haven't we been in lockdown every year until this deadly scourge has
> been exterminated?

Probably because 700k/year is globally, while the US alone has suffered 100k
deaths in 3 months.

~~~
clairity
currently ~350K global deaths for covid, in 6 months, since december.

~~~
thawaway1837
In about 3 months. For a disease that was growing exponentially before action
was taken and even now is only just stopped growing in countries where action
was taken.

And no mosquito outbreak has caused entire hospital systems to collapse in
various parts of the world.

