[HappyDreamer]

I wonder if you would have written that, if your partner or sibling was dead from malaria.

I guess it feels different, when the affected people live far away.

I'd worry about global climate change, and do something related to that, not worry about "too few mosquitos". I read it's 400k people dead yearly from malaria.

[ethanbond]

Almost certainly I'd feel different. To be absolutely clear, I find the case for eradication to be extremely compelling for exactly that reason. The risk I have in my head that I want to mitigate, and which makes me unsure of where I stand on this issue, is not any sort of ambiguous "humans shouldn't play god" or "live and let live" or anything like that. The obverse risk we should consider when fiddling with an ecosystem on such a grand and potentially irreversible scale is whether we will accidentally disrupt the food supply in a way that's more catastrophic than the current catastrophe that is malaria.

There aren't many catastrophes worse than the current state of malaria, I absolutely agree and we in the western world ought to take it much more seriously. However, there are possible catastrophes that are much much worse, and fiddling with low level food chains is one of those actions that might open us up to such risk.

Again, not sure where I stand. What I do know is, presumably like you, I think we are not taking this seriously enough and addressing it with all the might that it deserves.

[HappyDreamer]

Ok, I agree about that, and thanks for having explained :-)

[UnFleshedOne]

That stance is only correct if you are reasonably certain that killing off those mosquito species will not result in more deaths from knock on effects.

[HappyDreamer]

Yes,

at the same time: Imagine if in the US: there was a new poisonous snake that killed 400 000 people.

Someone said: Let's exterminate that type of snake.

Then, do you think someone from the US/Europe/Australia would have replied "but maybe the snake is an important part of the ecosystem" ?

Would that have been a bit like not putting out a fire burning down a city,

because maybe the fire might cause certain unknown nuts to grow into plants and trees, the following years, and maybe maybe those trees were important somehow?

[HappyDreamer]

Ok so here's how I'd go about this:

Immediately start exterminating those malaria carrying mosquitos, without finding out how that'd affect the ecosystem.

Then, in parallel, start studies and research about how the ecosystem might get affected, and if very surprisingly (?), those effects seems like worse than 400 000 people dead, then rethink the exterminate-mosquitos project.

(GGP, ethanbond: Sorry if I sounded a bit harsh / not-so-polite in my reply. Turns out that was actually an a bit interesting comment / thing to think about, to me.)

[ethanbond]

No harm no foul, my friend! This is an issue worth being legitimately upset about :) There are plenty of people who argue against sterilization with frankly bullshit arguments when you weigh them against the suffering that malaria inflicts. Those people should be outright dismissed. However there are also good arguments for treading very, very carefully here. It's really tricky and we need more people caring, more people thinking about how we can navigate this.

[filleduchaos]

Eh, I live here and tbh I'd rather people just invested in better healthcare and antipoverty infrastructure than in grand ecological gestures.

[HappyDreamer]

Makes me wonder if you live in one of the bigger cities? There're fewer mosquitos in the cities?

Whilst if living in a village on the country side, and one uses the malaria nets, maybe that's different? (malaria bigger problem?)

Edit: now I just noticed in a recent comment you wrote that you have "lost count of the number of times [you] have contracted malaria". Ok so that's a very different reason, than what I would have thought. Makes me even more curious about if you live in one of the big cities, or on the countryside /edit

> antipoverty infrastructure

What'd be the most important such things from your perspective?

[filleduchaos]

Stagnant water isn't a rural exclusive, and increased population density isn't a great way to slow transmission of a disease spread by an insect that relies on blood to reproduce. Either way, I've lived/been raised in a range of environments, from rural to the megacity I currently live in.

And yes, I've contracted malaria numerous times since I was a small child (much more frequently as a child, actually - it's slowed down to twice or so a year as an adult, due to partial acquired immunity). I'm not even an outlier in that regard; many people I know have a similar case history. We "survived" largely by virtue of being well-fed on varied, balanced diets and having informed, attentive parents who could afford to care for us properly (this sounds more complicated than it actually is - it's mostly making sure the child keeps to the medication schedule, taking steps to reduce the fever and providing enough sugar and iron to offset the worst of the hypoglycaemia/anaemia). If that sounds like a ridiculously low bar, that's because it is - and yet, it's a bar that millions of people fail to clear due to poverty.

> What'd be the most important such things from your perspective?

Short to medium-term, access to power and internet. The power grid is an embarrassment, internet infrastructure even more so. And a lot of other potential measures rest on those two - for example, it would be much easier/faster to provide financial services to the millions of unbanked/underbanked (or to provide supplementary education) over the internet, and having enough power to preserve food properly would go a long way in improving nutrition (all the way up to improving the efficiency of the supply chains).

Long-term, education. Illiteracy is a near-insurmountable barrier to economic advancement.

[HappyDreamer]

Thanks for the detailed reply!

One more thing comes to my mind: Overpopulation. Number of people growing faster than what hospitals and universities etc can be created?

And from what I've read elsewhere, the things you mentioned: health care, safe food supply, and education, is a good way to handle the problem with overpopulation -- since when people know there's a basic safety net, with health care and food, there's no need to have many children who can help out, when one is old.

> If that sounds like a ridiculously low bar

Yes and I'm actually a bit surprised. And now I understand better why good health care & anti-poverty things are that important for handling malaria