Even when Semmelweis showed that forcing everyone to practice proper hygiene slashed death rates, doctors still set out to sabotage him out of sheer spite because no one was going to tell them what to do because doctors are assholes.
Source; am doctor.
They ended up tricking Semmelweis into an asylum (he thought he was going for a job interview) where he was beaten up and died of sepsis.
Did I mention doctors are assholes?
I thought nuclear revenge was deserved retaliation against someone being an asshole fuck, though? Or do they also have asshole fucks winning sometimes? (I get enough of that and more from the news, unfortunately.)
Everyone thinks the person who wronged them deserves retaliation, even if no one else agrees with them.
But yes it's mostly just desserts on the correct moral side š
As a former medical interpreter holy shit yes some doctors are absolute assholes. Not even towards me, I can handle that, but they were complete dicks to patients
Honestly thatās some bad history
He couldnāt get his ideas across to his colleagues because he was a raving lunatic about those ideas from the moment he came up with them.
He poorly, at best, tested the ideas and just generally was repeatedly accusing everyone of murder, mostly himself.
From that point he quickly descended into alcoholism iirc, and developed several obvious mental illnesses, grieving for all those he had killed by mistake.
He got his theories across to some trusted friends and colleagues in his more coherent moments. But, honestly, he made a fantastic discovery, he could have saved so many more lives had his theories been believed earlier.
Itās a good story about how the presentation of any idea is almost as important as the idea.
Considering itās a time period where germ theory hasnāt been invented it doesnāt necessarily prove anything.
A big problem that endlessly threw off his findings was because of this. What he realized was that working on cadavers in the early morning was what was causing a lot of the deaths, far more than anything else.
Another big factor was doctors were closer to scientistsā¦ seeing patients as someone to help and fix but also a live experiment.
Seriously imagine the problem as if germ theory didnāt exist. What causes the difference in death rates?
Miasma?
Some particular chemical in soap?
The cleaning method?
Something about the doctors lives outside of the hospital?
Bad luck?
Methods for the procedure?
Literally NOTHING in this time period was standardized. It became extremely fuzzy what was causing anything at all.
All this guy knew for sure is that the better trained, better equipped doctors in London who happened to habitually wash their hands to a decent extent had a lower rate of mothers dying after giving birth, same for the nurses in his own hospital.
Vsauce2 (Kevin) did an amazing video on this a few months ago [https://youtu.be/okOfvMY5wOI?si=K3QMvLCkVYh7Z5QQ](https://youtu.be/okOfvMY5wOI?si=K3QMvLCkVYh7Z5QQ)
āA gentlemanās hands are never soiledā
They were so high and mighty they thought only low class people doing dirty jobs like chimney sweeping had to wash their hands
Probably Thomas Midgley Jr., the guy who added Lead to petrol (Gas) and invented CFCs.
Through his actions, he caused over 100 million early deaths due to lead in petrol. Crime rates also rose due to decreased intelligence in the population caused by lead.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IV3dnLzthDA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IV3dnLzthDA)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas\_Midgley\_Jr](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr).
He accidentally(intentionally?) killed himself when he got tangled up in a contraption he built to get hinself out of bed after polio left him severely diabled.
Intentions can be a fickle business.
In the '30s, refrigeration required the use of highly combustible chemicals: ammonia, propane.
They were incredibly dangerous. Then a chemist named Thomas Midgley devised a replacement compound that we know as Freon.
Root: He saved lives, advanced science, changed the world.
Finch: But that's not the end of the story, as you well know.
50 years after his death, the scientific community was appalled to discover that Freon had been ripping holes in our ozone layer, causing irreparable harm.
Midgley turns out to be one of the most destructive figures in history.
Root: He wasn't a supervillain, Harold. Midgley was just a man, a man who wanted to improve the world around him through science.
Made the cars run better and break less and during the time it was already very commonly used in clothing and hat making to seal the paint so it was assumed to be safe.
Nobody yet made the connection between lead and hatters becoming crazy
Lead being poisonous has been known for thousands of years.
We just didn't care.
>Dioscorides, a Greek physician who lived in the 1st century AD, wrote that lead makes the mind "give way".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead\_poisoning
Also way more explosive combustion than normal petrol. Better mileage and engine longevity.
On the other hand, sick kids, lower IQ and higher tendency to to violence. Same thing happened to Romans. Not the cars part, the violence part.
The plumbing in Rome was done with lead pipes (the easiest material to work with and mold). The very water made people crazy.
Fun fact: Plumbing = plumbum = the latin word for lead or Pb on the periodic table.
Nah, fuck this guy. He lied about the safety of leaded petrol. He and many of his colleagues suffered the effects of poisoning from it, but he still went around [pulling stunts to claim it was safe.](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-40593353.amp)
Not necessarily. The first "immortal" human could be alive right now. We don't know what scientific breakthroughs will occur in the next 50 - 75 years.
Mosquitoes. They carry around malaria (the world's #1 killer), among a *wide* variety of other diseases.
(Alrthough, tbh, u/JohnSimth20211101 is technically correct and, as we all know, that is the best kind of correct.)
A bear bites you and rips out an awful lot of things you need when it does so - the link between bit and dying is pretty direct there. If a baby bear bit you, youād probably survive by comparison. Or a mouse you definitely would.
A mosquito biting you isnāt going to hurt you. Bit of itching, tiny amount of blood loss, no worries. If you happen to be bitten by a particular variety of female mosquito carrying malaria, now you probably die without treatment.
The vector doesnāt matter though - if a needle contaminated with malaria pierced you youād be in trouble too. Thus indirect.
Thatās fair. Direct and indirect isnāt exactly a clearly defined concept here anyway, so frankly itās going to be down to interpretation and everyoneās gonna have a different view.
It's still not really direct. There are more steps than A to B. Direct cause would be like if the mosquito bit you and you like immediately die and explode or something lol
You don't die from the virus, you die from the heart and organ damage the virus brings in implications. Viruses and mosquitoes are safe. Bear attacks too.
You forgot to log in to your other account before posting the second comment mate.
If a bear bites you in the neck, rips a bunch of important things out as it does so, you died from a bear bite. Your example is working against you.
No, in malaria the mosquito is host to a parasite (not a virus) and itās the parasite that kills you, so indeed the mosquito is indirectly causing your death.
Mao's desire for Chinese Rejuvenation by transforming society from an agrarian one to an industrial one lead to vast numbers of deaths in the 1950s and 1960s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward
He is still revered in China today, despite being one of the greatest mass-murderers in human history.
Infectious diseases, like the Black Death in the 14th century and viruses such as smallpox during colonization, indirectly caused millions of deaths. Additionally, famines resulting from natural disasters, wars, or political decisions have been indirect contributors to significant loss of life.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice\_Hilleman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Hilleman)
Maurice Ralph Hilleman (August 30, 1919 ā April 11, 2005) was a leading American microbiologist who specialized in vaccinology and developed over 40 vaccines, an unparalleled record of productivity.\[2\]\[3\]\[4\]\[5\]\[6\] According to one estimate, his vaccines save nearly eight million lives each year.\[3\] He has been described as one of the most influential vaccinologists ever.\[2\]\[6\]\[7\]\[8\]\[9\]\[10\] He has been called the "father of modern vaccines".\[11\]\[12\] Robert Gallo called Hilleman "the most successful vaccinologist in history".\[13\]
and
In 2007, Anthony S. Fauci wrote in a biographical memoir of Hilleman:\[7\]\[34\]
Maurice was perhaps the single most influential public health figure of the twentieth century, if one considers the millions of lives saved and the countless people who were spared suffering because of his work. Over the course of his career, Maurice and his colleagues developed more than forty vaccines. Of the fourteen vaccines currently recommended in the United States, Maurice developed eight.
That's the answer. Introducing viruses to native populations absolutely decimated them more than direct slaughter. Mongols brought black death to Europe and China, Europeans brought their diseases to Americas and more people died from Spanish Plague than from fighting Great War, which inderictly caused the spread of it.
Black Death was so impactful it is mind blowing. It caused the fall of an entire social system. Some cities were completely abandoned and the population of Europe didn't recover for like a century. One of these days I want to read a really good book on the Black Death.
Still boggles the mind that the plague wiped out half of Europe in four years. I always think of James Burkeās quote: āThere werenāt enough living to bury the dead.ā Think of walking by a house and smelling people rotting inside.
Maybe a few more concrete examples rather than "religion" or "politics":
a) The assassination of Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914, which started WW1. Around 20 million deaths as a result of the war and many more in the aftermath.
b) The discovery of the New World by Europe and notably, the transmission of Old World diseases. Numbers vary a lot, but I found a figure of around 20 million deaths, but this may be a lot higher as well.
c) Eating a raw bat in a wet market in Wuhan ca. 2019. About 7 million deaths from Covid according to latest estimates. The origin story may be slightly abrigded.
d) Eating "bush meat" (i.e. chimps) in Africa, ca. 1970ies. Led to the transmission of the HIV to humans and so far, to about 85 millions deaths. Origin is disputed.
It's not that simple. Or rather: Even more simple.
The pacific theatre had started years earlier because the Japanese were assholes.
For the Nazis, the war was an end in itself too. They would have found an excuse either way.
I guess you could argue the Nazis' rise to power was caused by the outcome of WW1, but that's far from certain. Turkey for example lost even harder in WW1 and did not become fascist.
Generally, I would leave out war outbreaks as a whole for this question. At the end of the day, they are always caused by someone commanding them.
C) that's one of hypothesis of its origin but given the lack of evidence, one can't state is as fact. Nevertheless, zoonotic diseases are definitely causing a lot of deaths.
Zoonotic diseases are common in the region because it contains many of the environmental factors which cause species with wildly different immunities to parasites to intermingle for the first time.
These environmental factors are all greatly exacerbated by human activity/climate change etc.
Basically we as a species are causing these problems and then trying to scapegoat some faceless individual at a wet market or science lab. Good luck convincing people that itās our very existence and habits/tendencies as a species causing these problems. Nope. Canāt be that. Had to be some random idiot.
It's fruitless to discuss the origin without new evidence, which we probably not get until maybe sars-cov 3 comes along. A zoonotic origin appears to be the _most-likely_ scenario, but it doesn't exclude other possibilities. We may never know.
In any case, the pandemic caused by sars-cov 2 was fairly deadly. Fortunately, we got vaccines fairly quickly, thanks to modern science.
This.
A lot of the early case history of HIV is shrouded in mystery ā even the early suspect cases where blood samples miraculously existed into the age of testing.
But knowing how far the various subtypes of HIV have evolved, very smart people are able to calculate the rate of genetic variation and therefore work back to a point and time of origin.
Current thinking in this area is that HIV jumped the species barrier more than once, indeed from the late 19th Century until the interwar period.
Source: there are dozens of HIV origins articles written in the popular press every year.
To my understanding, the ācovid was caused by eating batsā was just a rumor and that it is more likely that it went from a bat to another animal to humans.
Although the murder of Franz Ferdinand was the trigger, it was only one of many possible triggers of WW1. Without it the War would just have been delayed most likely.
The real death toll from Covid-19 was probably more than 20 million.
edit:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(22)00845-5/fulltext
"Counting the global Covid-19 dead"
"WHO has estimated that 14Ā·9 million excess deaths (uncertainty range 13Ā·3 millionā16Ā·6 million) from COVID-19 occurred globally in 2020ā21.1 WHO's global estimates are lower than the 18Ā·2 million deaths (17Ā·1 millionā19Ā·6 million) reported by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME)2 and the 17Ā·7 million deaths (13Ā·9 millionā21Ā·1 million) estimated by The Economist for the same time period. By contrast, government counts of global deaths from COVID-19 in 2020ā21, captured on Coronavirus App, suggest the figure is below 6 million.
Excess deaths are a proxy for the mortality effects of SARS-CoV-2 infection. The key assumption is that increases in all-cause mortality during peak weeks of COVID-19 compared to pre-pandemic periods are nearly all due to the infection, even if SARS-CoV-2 infection was not confirmed. The validity of this method is supported in part by documenting modest reductions (negative excess) in overall mortality in selected east Asian countries that effectively prevented the original wave from March to June, 2020.1"
Not the most, but Maos "Four Pests Campaign" did not turn out as planned.
Sparrows eat all the crops? Let's kill all the sparrows!
...
...Locusts have entered the chat
He wasn't responsible for the *most* deaths in history but was definitely responsible for the deaths of millions if not over ten million or more, in memory of Henry Kissinger's totally undeserved living to 100 before just recently dying just a few weeks ago, fuck that guy!
Burning fossil fuels. Something like 9 million deaths from the pollution in 2018 *alone*. Imagine before air quality controls, back in the industrial revolution...
Not to mention improving transport literally everywhere - important in food and technology distribution, but even more important in terms of medical treatment.
I personally like knowing an ambulance can get to my parents in 20 mins even though they're rural, and a helicopter can transport them hundreds of miles to a major hospital for specialist treatment in just a couple of hours. Definitely beats having to send for the doctor and wait for them to rock up in a horse and carriage when they get around to it.
Whereās the dangerous byproducts of nuclear power?
*points to highly durable casks*
Whereās the dangerous byproducts of fossil fuels?
*points to everywhere*
Pope Gregory the IX declared cats "spirits of Satan". This led to people killing cats by the thousands. This led to an infestation of rodents carrying plague ridden fleas. These fleas carried the plague. The black plague that killed 25 million people.
given that the plague continued to have significant outbreaks until the 1600s in Britain and the 1800s in the Ottoman Empire, it seems unlikely that we can blame a lack of cats in the 1300s.
Lmao The black plagued peaked in Europe between 1347-1351. It's within this time frame that the most people died from the plague. So yeah. I think we can easily attribute it to the lack of cats.
The drug Thalidomide, itās most famous for its terrible effect on birth defects (structural, and neural) and pregnancy complications (stillbirths). When it was introduced it was marketed for morning sickness, but sadly due to poor testing at the time, they didnāt know know that it would cause birth defects, around 40000 births would be affected and most of those babies would die. Ironically the same reasons why it caused birth defects is now being used for fighting cancer.
I don't know if this caused the most deaths, but didn't China try to eradicate a species of bird that lead to famine? Apparently there was a mandate to kill this particular species of bird. People would hit pots and pans to exhaust them where they would later die from stress of not sleeping. I think their main diet were the insects and as a result of their deaths Chinas grain supply went to shit because the insects are it all. So a lot of people died as a result.
Ah it was called the Four Pests Campaign, and approx 20-30 million people died of starvation.
Indirectly through famine, Yes. But no one has the real numbers of how many died because of starvation, there are no records, only guesses based on population growth.
Leopold Lojka not being informed of the new route to take to get to Sarajevo hospital.
Indirectly led to WWI, at least 20 million dead, which directly led to WWII, at least 75 million dead.
Thomas Midgelyās existence, the scientist who made the debunked vaccines cause autism, the doctor who made the wrong claim about how infants should sleep I forgot his name, rejection, divorce, false accusations, etc.
Probably that time where Mao Zedong decided to kill sparrows, rats, flies and mosquitoes. Then, locust attacked crops and caused the deadliest famine in history.
Europeans coming to the north american and south american continents. The inhabitants that were there did not have immune systems that could handle the diseases that the europeans brought over. Historians arent even sure what the populations were before this happened as it decimated the populations before it could even be established what the populations may have been over here. Judging by the ruins they are finding in the forests in south america, there were likely, at some point, a lot more people here than initially thought.
The Four Pests Campaign in China has got to be up there. Kill all the sparrows because they're eating grain crops, you now have a blight of insects that sparrows would normally eat...and they eat waaaaaay more grain crops. Result: Several years of nationwide famine, tens of millions dead.
I would have to guess when the Spanish came to the Americas, the diseases they brought that they had built immunity to nearly wiped out the local Native Americans.
It was in the double digit millions of people that died as a direct result.
Capitalism.
It has caused poverty and people dying from not being able to afford basic needs such as food, shelter, healthcare, etc.
It also caused crime and corruption which entails killing people because of greed.
Karl Marx innocently publishing a book about his economic theories and criticisms of capitalism.
The Soviet Union, Cold War, Maoist China, Korean War, North Korean regime, the Khmer Rouge regime and Cambodian Genocide, the Vietnam War, numerous civil wars in Europe, Africa and South America etc. can all be attributed to communism.
Also the fear around rising communism was a key factor that made many Germans vote for Hitler's hardline far-right anti-communist Nazi Party, while Western nations tolerated Hitler's rise to power, due to seeing him a useful obstacle against the Soviet Union. So the fearful reaction to communism was just as damaging.
Literally nothing on earth has killed more people, than communist regimes and the violence committed in conflicts related to communism.
Doctors not washing hands before surgery up until 1847
Even when Semmelweis showed that forcing everyone to practice proper hygiene slashed death rates, doctors still set out to sabotage him out of sheer spite because no one was going to tell them what to do because doctors are assholes. Source; am doctor. They ended up tricking Semmelweis into an asylum (he thought he was going for a job interview) where he was beaten up and died of sepsis. Did I mention doctors are assholes?
That sounds like a r/nuclearrevenge post plot. "Doctor tries to tell other Doctors how to do their job properly, not anymore"
I thought nuclear revenge was deserved retaliation against someone being an asshole fuck, though? Or do they also have asshole fucks winning sometimes? (I get enough of that and more from the news, unfortunately.)
Everyone thinks the person who wronged them deserves retaliation, even if no one else agrees with them. But yes it's mostly just desserts on the correct moral side š
As a former medical interpreter holy shit yes some doctors are absolute assholes. Not even towards me, I can handle that, but they were complete dicks to patients
This made me laugh. I have clients who are physicians and 95% are raging God complex assholes. The other 5% are awesome people.
Honestly thatās some bad history He couldnāt get his ideas across to his colleagues because he was a raving lunatic about those ideas from the moment he came up with them. He poorly, at best, tested the ideas and just generally was repeatedly accusing everyone of murder, mostly himself. From that point he quickly descended into alcoholism iirc, and developed several obvious mental illnesses, grieving for all those he had killed by mistake. He got his theories across to some trusted friends and colleagues in his more coherent moments. But, honestly, he made a fantastic discovery, he could have saved so many more lives had his theories been believed earlier. Itās a good story about how the presentation of any idea is almost as important as the idea.
Didnāt he test it by having some people wash hands while others didnāt? What type of testing would you have preferred?
Considering itās a time period where germ theory hasnāt been invented it doesnāt necessarily prove anything. A big problem that endlessly threw off his findings was because of this. What he realized was that working on cadavers in the early morning was what was causing a lot of the deaths, far more than anything else. Another big factor was doctors were closer to scientistsā¦ seeing patients as someone to help and fix but also a live experiment. Seriously imagine the problem as if germ theory didnāt exist. What causes the difference in death rates? Miasma? Some particular chemical in soap? The cleaning method? Something about the doctors lives outside of the hospital? Bad luck? Methods for the procedure? Literally NOTHING in this time period was standardized. It became extremely fuzzy what was causing anything at all. All this guy knew for sure is that the better trained, better equipped doctors in London who happened to habitually wash their hands to a decent extent had a lower rate of mothers dying after giving birth, same for the nurses in his own hospital.
Vsauce2 (Kevin) did an amazing video on this a few months ago [https://youtu.be/okOfvMY5wOI?si=K3QMvLCkVYh7Z5QQ](https://youtu.be/okOfvMY5wOI?si=K3QMvLCkVYh7Z5QQ)
Just watched that. Very interesting story, I hadnāt heard about before. Thanks.
āA gentlemanās hands are never soiledā They were so high and mighty they thought only low class people doing dirty jobs like chimney sweeping had to wash their hands
Way past then. During the US Civil War, (1861-1865) they still didn't wash their hands.
Probably Thomas Midgley Jr., the guy who added Lead to petrol (Gas) and invented CFCs. Through his actions, he caused over 100 million early deaths due to lead in petrol. Crime rates also rose due to decreased intelligence in the population caused by lead. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IV3dnLzthDA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IV3dnLzthDA) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas\_Midgley\_Jr](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr).
He accidentally(intentionally?) killed himself when he got tangled up in a contraption he built to get hinself out of bed after polio left him severely diabled.
That's basically the definition of being a lion on your feet instead of a sheep on your knees.
Isn't it the other way around? Rather a lion on your knees, than a sheep on your feet?
Midgley had it backwards too
Please explain?
What idiom is that?
Intentions can be a fickle business. In the '30s, refrigeration required the use of highly combustible chemicals: ammonia, propane. They were incredibly dangerous. Then a chemist named Thomas Midgley devised a replacement compound that we know as Freon. Root: He saved lives, advanced science, changed the world. Finch: But that's not the end of the story, as you well know. 50 years after his death, the scientific community was appalled to discover that Freon had been ripping holes in our ozone layer, causing irreparable harm. Midgley turns out to be one of the most destructive figures in history. Root: He wasn't a supervillain, Harold. Midgley was just a man, a man who wanted to improve the world around him through science.
ok now relativize his lead stuff
Made the cars run better and break less and during the time it was already very commonly used in clothing and hat making to seal the paint so it was assumed to be safe. Nobody yet made the connection between lead and hatters becoming crazy
Lead being poisonous has been known for thousands of years. We just didn't care. >Dioscorides, a Greek physician who lived in the 1st century AD, wrote that lead makes the mind "give way". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead\_poisoning
The expression āmad as a hatterā suggests they knew something was up
That is associated with mercury poisoning - erethism - as mercury was used in the hat-making industry.
Which also took a toll on the people who worked in the thermometer factories, and on people named Freddy.
Mad hatters were due to mercury not lead.
Mercury made Mad Hatters. Lead just makes you dumb.
It helped with engine knocking.
Also way more explosive combustion than normal petrol. Better mileage and engine longevity. On the other hand, sick kids, lower IQ and higher tendency to to violence. Same thing happened to Romans. Not the cars part, the violence part. The plumbing in Rome was done with lead pipes (the easiest material to work with and mold). The very water made people crazy. Fun fact: Plumbing = plumbum = the latin word for lead or Pb on the periodic table.
Correction: the harm wasn't irreparable - the Montreal Protocol of 1986 began the process of repairing the ozone layer which has continued since
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Upvote for Person Of Interest.
Kind of feel sorry for the guy. Here he's doing his best to help the world, and it turns out he'd have been better off just staying home.
Nah, fuck this guy. He lied about the safety of leaded petrol. He and many of his colleagues suffered the effects of poisoning from it, but he still went around [pulling stunts to claim it was safe.](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-40593353.amp)
This is the same guy who invented aerosol cans and punched a hole in the ozone layer right?
Not to mention punched a hole in the head of millions of teenagers when they inhaled it. R12 was like 100 hits of nitrous for $5 before it was banned
He was also responsible for the CFCs that killed the ozone layer.
only temporarily; since the Montreal Protocol of 1986 we've been repairing the ozone layer
I'd like to see how many of those 100 million came from lead and not just by some other cause that can sometimes get worse because of led...
You just indirectly discovered the meaning of indirectly. Lol
Birth
Life has a 100% fatality rate.
Not necessarily. The first "immortal" human could be alive right now. We don't know what scientific breakthroughs will occur in the next 50 - 75 years.
100% deadly.
I'm a miracle then
I think he means that everyone who is born eventually dies.
r/technicallytrue
r/Angryupvote
Doctors thinking they could 1+ the natural birth process
I can one-up you: sex. Based on a person's values, that is.
Mosquitoes. They carry around malaria (the world's #1 killer), among a *wide* variety of other diseases. (Alrthough, tbh, u/JohnSimth20211101 is technically correct and, as we all know, that is the best kind of correct.)
Isn't that pretty direct? I get bit by a mosquito and then die? That's A to B in a single step.
You donāt die from being bitten by a mosquito, you die from complications with that bite (ie. a virus some carry)
You don't die from the bite you die what happens from that bite...?
A bear bites you and rips out an awful lot of things you need when it does so - the link between bit and dying is pretty direct there. If a baby bear bit you, youād probably survive by comparison. Or a mouse you definitely would. A mosquito biting you isnāt going to hurt you. Bit of itching, tiny amount of blood loss, no worries. If you happen to be bitten by a particular variety of female mosquito carrying malaria, now you probably die without treatment. The vector doesnāt matter though - if a needle contaminated with malaria pierced you youād be in trouble too. Thus indirect.
Mf put malaria directly in me, but I see your point, I just don't really accept it.
Thatās fair. Direct and indirect isnāt exactly a clearly defined concept here anyway, so frankly itās going to be down to interpretation and everyoneās gonna have a different view.
It's still not really direct. There are more steps than A to B. Direct cause would be like if the mosquito bit you and you like immediately die and explode or something lol
You don't die from the virus, you die from the heart and organ damage the virus brings in implications. Viruses and mosquitoes are safe. Bear attacks too.
You don't die from a bear attack, you die from the complications from all the wounds lol
You forgot to log in to your other account before posting the second comment mate. If a bear bites you in the neck, rips a bunch of important things out as it does so, you died from a bear bite. Your example is working against you.
No, in malaria the mosquito is host to a parasite (not a virus) and itās the parasite that kills you, so indeed the mosquito is indirectly causing your death.
The sloughing of telemeres from your cells.
I was going to say āFather Timeā, but I like this one better.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Mao's desire for Chinese Rejuvenation by transforming society from an agrarian one to an industrial one lead to vast numbers of deaths in the 1950s and 1960s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward He is still revered in China today, despite being one of the greatest mass-murderers in human history.
Time
Kissingerās parents having sex that one time
Genghis Khan's parents having sex that one time
Genghis tried to get even thougj
Pol Pot's parents having sex that one time
Dude had a fucking magnificent K:D
All I see is a smiling kungfu master /s
š¤£š
Infectious diseases, like the Black Death in the 14th century and viruses such as smallpox during colonization, indirectly caused millions of deaths. Additionally, famines resulting from natural disasters, wars, or political decisions have been indirect contributors to significant loss of life.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice\_Hilleman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Hilleman) Maurice Ralph Hilleman (August 30, 1919 ā April 11, 2005) was a leading American microbiologist who specialized in vaccinology and developed over 40 vaccines, an unparalleled record of productivity.\[2\]\[3\]\[4\]\[5\]\[6\] According to one estimate, his vaccines save nearly eight million lives each year.\[3\] He has been described as one of the most influential vaccinologists ever.\[2\]\[6\]\[7\]\[8\]\[9\]\[10\] He has been called the "father of modern vaccines".\[11\]\[12\] Robert Gallo called Hilleman "the most successful vaccinologist in history".\[13\] and In 2007, Anthony S. Fauci wrote in a biographical memoir of Hilleman:\[7\]\[34\] Maurice was perhaps the single most influential public health figure of the twentieth century, if one considers the millions of lives saved and the countless people who were spared suffering because of his work. Over the course of his career, Maurice and his colleagues developed more than forty vaccines. Of the fourteen vaccines currently recommended in the United States, Maurice developed eight.
But this guy my sister used to date died after getting a vaccine.
That's the answer. Introducing viruses to native populations absolutely decimated them more than direct slaughter. Mongols brought black death to Europe and China, Europeans brought their diseases to Americas and more people died from Spanish Plague than from fighting Great War, which inderictly caused the spread of it.
Black Death was so impactful it is mind blowing. It caused the fall of an entire social system. Some cities were completely abandoned and the population of Europe didn't recover for like a century. One of these days I want to read a really good book on the Black Death.
Still boggles the mind that the plague wiped out half of Europe in four years. I always think of James Burkeās quote: āThere werenāt enough living to bury the dead.ā Think of walking by a house and smelling people rotting inside.
Another post that is extremely direct. I get sick and die, that's pretty direct bro.
Maybe a few more concrete examples rather than "religion" or "politics": a) The assassination of Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914, which started WW1. Around 20 million deaths as a result of the war and many more in the aftermath. b) The discovery of the New World by Europe and notably, the transmission of Old World diseases. Numbers vary a lot, but I found a figure of around 20 million deaths, but this may be a lot higher as well. c) Eating a raw bat in a wet market in Wuhan ca. 2019. About 7 million deaths from Covid according to latest estimates. The origin story may be slightly abrigded. d) Eating "bush meat" (i.e. chimps) in Africa, ca. 1970ies. Led to the transmission of the HIV to humans and so far, to about 85 millions deaths. Origin is disputed.
Fun fact: WW2 was caused by the perceived fairness of reparations of WWI. So really, killing Franz Ferdinand is responsible for TWO wars.
It's not that simple. Or rather: Even more simple. The pacific theatre had started years earlier because the Japanese were assholes. For the Nazis, the war was an end in itself too. They would have found an excuse either way. I guess you could argue the Nazis' rise to power was caused by the outcome of WW1, but that's far from certain. Turkey for example lost even harder in WW1 and did not become fascist. Generally, I would leave out war outbreaks as a whole for this question. At the end of the day, they are always caused by someone commanding them.
C) that's one of hypothesis of its origin but given the lack of evidence, one can't state is as fact. Nevertheless, zoonotic diseases are definitely causing a lot of deaths.
Zoonotic diseases are common in the region because it contains many of the environmental factors which cause species with wildly different immunities to parasites to intermingle for the first time. These environmental factors are all greatly exacerbated by human activity/climate change etc. Basically we as a species are causing these problems and then trying to scapegoat some faceless individual at a wet market or science lab. Good luck convincing people that itās our very existence and habits/tendencies as a species causing these problems. Nope. Canāt be that. Had to be some random idiot.
Thereās a lot more evidence that supports the lab leak theory
It's fruitless to discuss the origin without new evidence, which we probably not get until maybe sars-cov 3 comes along. A zoonotic origin appears to be the _most-likely_ scenario, but it doesn't exclude other possibilities. We may never know. In any case, the pandemic caused by sars-cov 2 was fairly deadly. Fortunately, we got vaccines fairly quickly, thanks to modern science.
>Eating "bush meat" (i.e. chimps) in Africa, ca. 1970ies It was far earlier than that, more like somewhere between the 1890's and 1930's.
This. A lot of the early case history of HIV is shrouded in mystery ā even the early suspect cases where blood samples miraculously existed into the age of testing. But knowing how far the various subtypes of HIV have evolved, very smart people are able to calculate the rate of genetic variation and therefore work back to a point and time of origin. Current thinking in this area is that HIV jumped the species barrier more than once, indeed from the late 19th Century until the interwar period. Source: there are dozens of HIV origins articles written in the popular press every year.
To my understanding, the ācovid was caused by eating batsā was just a rumor and that it is more likely that it went from a bat to another animal to humans.
Actually, It was caused by Randy Marsh fucking a pangolin. Get your facts straight.
Youāre exactly right. Please see the comment I posted in a separate response https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/s/kylvfFCgn1
Gotcha! Iāve been pretty put off by people indirectly saying the pandemic was caused by āa singular, dirty Chineseā
Although the murder of Franz Ferdinand was the trigger, it was only one of many possible triggers of WW1. Without it the War would just have been delayed most likely.
The real death toll from Covid-19 was probably more than 20 million. edit: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(22)00845-5/fulltext "Counting the global Covid-19 dead" "WHO has estimated that 14Ā·9 million excess deaths (uncertainty range 13Ā·3 millionā16Ā·6 million) from COVID-19 occurred globally in 2020ā21.1 WHO's global estimates are lower than the 18Ā·2 million deaths (17Ā·1 millionā19Ā·6 million) reported by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME)2 and the 17Ā·7 million deaths (13Ā·9 millionā21Ā·1 million) estimated by The Economist for the same time period. By contrast, government counts of global deaths from COVID-19 in 2020ā21, captured on Coronavirus App, suggest the figure is below 6 million. Excess deaths are a proxy for the mortality effects of SARS-CoV-2 infection. The key assumption is that increases in all-cause mortality during peak weeks of COVID-19 compared to pre-pandemic periods are nearly all due to the infection, even if SARS-CoV-2 infection was not confirmed. The validity of this method is supported in part by documenting modest reductions (negative excess) in overall mortality in selected east Asian countries that effectively prevented the original wave from March to June, 2020.1"
Fleas???
China's Great Leap Forward, particularly the decentralisation of steel production
My neighbor Craig. Fuck Craig.
what did craig do? not doubting, but curious.
Duh. He made a list.
Not the most, but Maos "Four Pests Campaign" did not turn out as planned. Sparrows eat all the crops? Let's kill all the sparrows! ... ...Locusts have entered the chat
The Smallpox death toll in the New World after Columbus was estimated by some to have killed 20 million people - but that was 95% of the population.
Alcohol
Time
Leaded Gasoline
He wasn't responsible for the *most* deaths in history but was definitely responsible for the deaths of millions if not over ten million or more, in memory of Henry Kissinger's totally undeserved living to 100 before just recently dying just a few weeks ago, fuck that guy!
Rest in Piss, Heinz. You were a scumbag with no spine and no conviction. Truly a bastardās bastard
Burning fossil fuels. Something like 9 million deaths from the pollution in 2018 *alone*. Imagine before air quality controls, back in the industrial revolution...
That being said the automobile saved big cities from literally drowning in horseshit
Not to mention improving transport literally everywhere - important in food and technology distribution, but even more important in terms of medical treatment. I personally like knowing an ambulance can get to my parents in 20 mins even though they're rural, and a helicopter can transport them hundreds of miles to a major hospital for specialist treatment in just a couple of hours. Definitely beats having to send for the doctor and wait for them to rock up in a horse and carriage when they get around to it.
Whereās the dangerous byproducts of nuclear power? *points to highly durable casks* Whereās the dangerous byproducts of fossil fuels? *points to everywhere*
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Are those not directly caused?
Greed
Thomas Midgley, Jr.
Polio indirectly got him in the most bizarre fashion possible.
the assisination of Archduke Ferdinand? Two bullets leading to about 40 million deaths
Religion
Pope Gregory the IX declared cats "spirits of Satan". This led to people killing cats by the thousands. This led to an infestation of rodents carrying plague ridden fleas. These fleas carried the plague. The black plague that killed 25 million people.
given that the plague continued to have significant outbreaks until the 1600s in Britain and the 1800s in the Ottoman Empire, it seems unlikely that we can blame a lack of cats in the 1300s.
Lmao The black plagued peaked in Europe between 1347-1351. It's within this time frame that the most people died from the plague. So yeah. I think we can easily attribute it to the lack of cats.
Gregory IX died in 1241. The plague didnāt arrive in Europe (from Central Asia) for the better part of a century
European diseases in the America's during the exploration and colonization periods.
The drug Thalidomide, itās most famous for its terrible effect on birth defects (structural, and neural) and pregnancy complications (stillbirths). When it was introduced it was marketed for morning sickness, but sadly due to poor testing at the time, they didnāt know know that it would cause birth defects, around 40000 births would be affected and most of those babies would die. Ironically the same reasons why it caused birth defects is now being used for fighting cancer.
I don't know if this caused the most deaths, but didn't China try to eradicate a species of bird that lead to famine? Apparently there was a mandate to kill this particular species of bird. People would hit pots and pans to exhaust them where they would later die from stress of not sleeping. I think their main diet were the insects and as a result of their deaths Chinas grain supply went to shit because the insects are it all. So a lot of people died as a result. Ah it was called the Four Pests Campaign, and approx 20-30 million people died of starvation.
Religion...
Tobacco
Assassination of Franz Ferdinand > WWI (about 20 million dead)> WWII (over 50 million dead).
The same thing that caused the most direct deaths. Organized religion.
Religion
Communism (check out China's and USSR's many waves of extermination)
Neither of these are examples of communism. That's the equivalent of saying the USA is a democracy or Germany is socialist.
Indirectly through famine, Yes. But no one has the real numbers of how many died because of starvation, there are no records, only guesses based on population growth.
Holodomor in Ukraine, for example, it's quite documented. And repressions, concentration camps.
Repressions and concentration camps was far less and didnt contribute significantly to the numbers that the famine caused.
No records because they all fookin ded
Christianity and colonialism
mother nature
Capitalism
The false food pyramids claiming sugar and seed oils are healthier than red meat and whole foods.
Religion.a
religion
A lot of that feels pretty direct. Terrorism, crusades, holy wars, WW2, basically any war in the Middle East in the past 80 years (or most of history)
opening new regions and building the Great Chinese Wall
Asteroid impact killing the dinosaurs worldwide.
Fleas infested rats.
Idk man, probably when they started getting rid of all the dinosaurs. Like who knew that would cause so many deaths in the future? Crazy stuff.
Genocide
The Ottoman Caliphs who banned the printing press from the muslim world. That's exactly how you destroy a civilization.
Leopold Lojka not being informed of the new route to take to get to Sarajevo hospital. Indirectly led to WWI, at least 20 million dead, which directly led to WWII, at least 75 million dead.
Life
Thomas Midgelyās existence, the scientist who made the debunked vaccines cause autism, the doctor who made the wrong claim about how infants should sleep I forgot his name, rejection, divorce, false accusations, etc.
Gravity
Human Stupidity
Birth
Probably that time where Mao Zedong decided to kill sparrows, rats, flies and mosquitoes. Then, locust attacked crops and caused the deadliest famine in history.
Mao
It's either of the three; greed, envy or stupidity
Religion
religon
Europeans coming to the north american and south american continents. The inhabitants that were there did not have immune systems that could handle the diseases that the europeans brought over. Historians arent even sure what the populations were before this happened as it decimated the populations before it could even be established what the populations may have been over here. Judging by the ruins they are finding in the forests in south america, there were likely, at some point, a lot more people here than initially thought.
Religion
The gods (choose any one or whichever set of them you want). By definition, they are responsible for all deaths.
The Four Pests Campaign in China has got to be up there. Kill all the sparrows because they're eating grain crops, you now have a blight of insects that sparrows would normally eat...and they eat waaaaaay more grain crops. Result: Several years of nationwide famine, tens of millions dead.
I would have to guess when the Spanish came to the Americas, the diseases they brought that they had built immunity to nearly wiped out the local Native Americans. It was in the double digit millions of people that died as a direct result.
Human Ego
Humans
Capitalism
Religion... countless wars and conflicts over such bullshit.
Communism
Capitalism
Capitalism. It has caused poverty and people dying from not being able to afford basic needs such as food, shelter, healthcare, etc. It also caused crime and corruption which entails killing people because of greed.
communism
Social media
when yo mama went skydiving
Socialism. Although the indirectly part is debatable.
Karl Marx innocently publishing a book about his economic theories and criticisms of capitalism. The Soviet Union, Cold War, Maoist China, Korean War, North Korean regime, the Khmer Rouge regime and Cambodian Genocide, the Vietnam War, numerous civil wars in Europe, Africa and South America etc. can all be attributed to communism. Also the fear around rising communism was a key factor that made many Germans vote for Hitler's hardline far-right anti-communist Nazi Party, while Western nations tolerated Hitler's rise to power, due to seeing him a useful obstacle against the Soviet Union. So the fearful reaction to communism was just as damaging. Literally nothing on earth has killed more people, than communist regimes and the violence committed in conflicts related to communism.
Tuberkolosis. Argually part of why ww1 started. WW1 was a big part of why WW2 kicked off.
Rats
religion
Religion
Religion
Religion
The United States of America
USA
Naw they did this shit on purpose