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Or mosquitoes and the malaria they spread...

Malaria was responsible 405,000 deaths globally in 2018 according to [0].

[0] https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/world-m...



How many people do you know with malaria? It's a tropical region disease. In a pandemic of Covid-19, it is going to affect people all over the world in every region.


> How many people do you know with malaria? It's a tropical region disease.

Malaria is not inherently a tropical region disease. It routinely plagued Europe until the 1950s. Russia for one example had a huge Malaria outbreak in the early 1920s as did Eastern Europe broadly.

"Gustavo Pittaluga (1876-1956) estimated that in 1923, 18 million people suffered from malaria in Russia, and that sixty thousand deaths occurred out of a total population of about 110 million (Anigstein, Pittaluga, 1925). Similar observations were made throughout the whole of eastern and south-eastern Europe and the former Ottoman Empire."

http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0104...


> It's a tropical region disease

Europe and the U.S. used to have Malaria. The name -- bad air -- is Latin, the Romans thought it originated from bad swamp air. Shakespeare mentioned it time and time again in his plays.


> Shakespeare mentioned it time and time again in his plays

I'm pretty sure what Shakespeare was referencing is a much more general idea prevalent in his day - that smells (not necessarily unpleasant ones) could be poisonous, and could be warded off by opposing "good" smells. This roughly coincided with an explosion of scented-good manufacturing as a cottage industry, although I'm not sure which way the arrow of causation ran there.

</digression>


Yes, but malaria isn't transmitted between humans but requires a certain mosquito to spread. So unless that mosquito reappears (which is an actual threat due to climate change), the malaria isn't randomly spreading to other countries. But the corona virus doesn't have these bariers as it spreads from humans to humans.


Yes, I guess my point was that malaria can and has existed in europe and america. It is defeated by 1) Wiping out mosquitos (DDT)

2) Limiting chance of mosquitoes biting people (aircon)

3) Limiting the population with malaria (the fewer people with malaria, the less chance of a given mosquito biting someone with malaria and thus becoming a carrier)


the Romans thought it originated from bad swamp air

...which actually isn't that far-fetched for a pre-medical society to conclude, given that mosquitoes breed in warm, still waters.


How many people do you know with malaria? It's a tropical region disease.

No. The name is Italian. It predates Italian colonies in the tropics. It's a disease which was endemic in marshlands believed to be caused by bad air Mal aria and was in Scotland amongst other places.

Malaria is not exclusively tropical. Nor is dengue or mosquito borne encephalitis. Tropical wet regions sustain mosquitos. So do cooler climates.


The parent mentioned Zika, any such list including Zika would be incomplete without Malaria as well.

I agree that covid-19 seems to have a larger potential breadth, and didn't intend to downplay its significance.


the best part in this all might be that chloroquine, an anti malaria drug, apparently is effective against covid-19.


Is it that anti malaria or HIV drug happens to be effective or are those weak poisons used in the hope that the subject individual outlive the pathogens under its influence




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