• DankZedong @lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    As someone who hates mosquitoes and as someone who has been kept up all night because of them, I have to say no. They are pollinators and serve as food for many other species. Plus humans don’t have the greatest track record in overseeing all possible consequences of their environmental actions.

    What we could do, though, is strive for sufficient medical care in areas affected by mosquito born diseases.

    • ComradeSalad@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      Mosquitos are not primary pollinators and preform a very small percentage of the total pollinations. Significantly less then bees or flies.

      They also don’t serve as a good food source, the studies of bats eating mosquitos were faulty and downright fraudulent.

      Mosquitos are a threat and serve to much a danger compared to their minuscule benefit.

      • DankZedong @lemmygrad.ml
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        1 year ago

        Maybe. I know too little of the subject to be calling for outright extinction of an entire species of insects.

        I do find it interesting to see how the subject of mosquitoes divided a communist internet board.

        • ComradeSalad@lemmygrad.ml
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          1 year ago

          It’s people who have seen the failures of capitalist profit based conservation/extermination efforts, and don’t believe that that can be done positively with the backing of science.

          Basically they don’t trust the system to effectively do this without fucking up, and I don’t blame them. But having studied this and seen the effects of mosquitos firsthand, ever single last one of those bloodsuckers should go to hell.

          The Asian Tiger Mosquito is by far the worst.

          • DankZedong @lemmygrad.ml
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            1 year ago

            I guess living in Western Europe, where they are no more than a minor annoyance, has impacted my vision of how problematic these creatures are.

            • ComradeSalad@lemmygrad.ml
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              1 year ago

              Precisely. Many argue this issue from their places of privilege in the Global North when all they have seen of mosquitos is them being little annoyances.

              700 million people are infected on average with deadly diseases transmitted by mosquitoes each year, and roughly 1 million of them die.

              The things that mosquitos can do are nightmarish. I have seen half of a village wiped out by infections with Yellow fever, with people writhing and suffering with seizures and pain as doctors try their best to kill the pain with morphine, but it’s no use, there is no treatment or cure for Yellow Fever. or a family hearing that their loved ones have all passed away. Why? Because they got unlucky, and were killed by one bite. Children with Dengue, elderly grandmothers with malaria whose organs will simply give out under the fever, infants that get Chik Fever and will be crippled for their whole lives as the virus destroys their joints and bones.

              Only those that have not seen children in body bags will argue mosquitos should not be eradicated.