The Mosquito-Borne Disease 'Triple E' Is Spreading in the US as Temperatures Rise (wired.com) 68
Eastern equine encephalitis (EEE) cases have been reported in five U.S. states this year, including a fatal case in New Hampshire last month. The rare mosquito-borne illness, which has no known cure, kills 30-40% of those infected and often causes permanent neurological damage in survivors.
Public health officials are monitoring the situation closely. Massachusetts has implemented insecticide spraying in high-risk areas and issued advisories for residents to limit outdoor activities during peak mosquito hours.
Climate change may be contributing to EEE's spread, as warmer, wetter conditions favor mosquito breeding. Researchers note the virus has advanced into northern regions where it was previously undetected. From 2003 to 2019, the Northeast saw an increase to 4-5 cases per year on average, up from less than one annual case between 1964 and 2002.
Public health officials are monitoring the situation closely. Massachusetts has implemented insecticide spraying in high-risk areas and issued advisories for residents to limit outdoor activities during peak mosquito hours.
Climate change may be contributing to EEE's spread, as warmer, wetter conditions favor mosquito breeding. Researchers note the virus has advanced into northern regions where it was previously undetected. From 2003 to 2019, the Northeast saw an increase to 4-5 cases per year on average, up from less than one annual case between 1964 and 2002.
Re:One of the more benign side-effects (Score:5, Insightful)
Of climate-change, that is. What you thought this was not going to kill a ton of people everywhere? Get real.
Total EEE cases in the US in 2024?
6.
https://www.cdc.gov/eastern-eq... [cdc.gov]
Cases in 2023? 7.
It will have to triple to catch up with the number of people injured by vending machines or bitten by sharks.
Re: One of the more benign side-effects (Score:2)
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Nope, I don't agree to that at all.
You wouldn't just be wiping out thousands of species of mosquito (most of which never even annoy humans at all), you would be disrupting the food chain in such a major way that it would cause die-offs, if not extinctions, in many other species of higher-order predators who are dependent on mosquitos for sustenance. Who knows how far out those ripples would travel?
Re: One of the more benign side-effects (Score:4, Interesting)
There are hundreds of species of mosquitoes and only a handful transmit disease to humans. Extirpating these select species would have no significant effect [imperial.ac.uk]. Things that ate mosquitoes would still have mosquitoes to eat.
Re: One of the more benign side-effects (Score:2)
"you would be disrupting the food chain in such a major way"
[Citation needed]
There are almost no living things that depend significantly on mosquitoes as a food source. Only one or two bugs eat mostly mosquitoes, and nothing depends on them to be their primary food source either. So what are you alleging will be disrupted if we get rid of all of the mosquitoes?
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There are almost no living things that depend significantly on mosquitoes as a food source.
[citation needed]
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I had some better links for this the last time we discussed this, but for now, I give you this https://www.audubon.org/news/c... [audubon.org]
The big problem with killing mosquitoes isn't that anything would go hungry, it's that some of them are important pollinators. However, if we could figure out how to eliminate all of the mosquitoes which actually bite humans, it would probably have a very small impact in general. Almost everything we know that eats them also eats something else.
Mass spraying of pesticide poisons everyone (Score:2)
They're already starting mass spraying of pesticide in response to this threat of EEE. That pesticide pollutes the whole environment and raises the risk of autism in people as well as killing all kinds of non-target species. (Yes, autism is much more highly correlated with spraying of pesticides than it is to vaccinations--who'd have thought that spraying neurotoxins everywhere might cause brain damage?)
Insect biomass has shrunk 20-75% over the last two decades, probably thanks to the massive use
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What a silly post! You remind me of a childhood friend who wanted to eliminate all hills with machinery because they were to hard to climb with his bicycle! Thinking of it now, he really wanted to make the Earth flat!
Here are some lists of species feeding on mosquitoes:
https://blog.nwf.org/2020/08/m... [nwf.org]
https://animalhype.com/facts/a... [animalhype.com]
https://a-z-animals.com/blog/m... [a-z-animals.com]
etc..
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Zero of your citations say that any of those creatures listed which eat mosquitoes depend on them as their primary food source.
If you look them up individually, you will find that in fact zero of them do.
mosquitos (Score:2)
Why not make blood borne illness either a preventable or ideally a treatable condition in humans, instead of permanently altering the ecology in an unprecedented fashion?
We simply don't understand how ecologies work well enough to know what would happen if we remove a species from them. Males and non-brood females are fairly prolific pollinators in tropical and wetland environments.
Hypothetically you could eradicate some swamp grass that is holding back soil erosion of seasonal floods. And worst case scenar
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Yes, so? These will get a lot more. Smart people can recognize a trend at its beginning. I guess you do not qualify.
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Smart people can recognize bullshit. Mosquitos have infested the East Coast for hundreds of years, global warming has nothing to do with this.
The libtards are in a panic. Not many people know it, but Trump has engineerd a cure for the Covid vaccine and windmill cancer and to shrink Hunter's weenie in his Mar-a Lego laboratories, just as God wanted, and started releasing them to allow patriotic Americans to come to Jesus and once again God will shower his blessings on the USA. If a mosquito lands on you, you must allow it to bite you to receive the cure. The more mosquitos, the better. So Marjorie Taylor Green, as one of Don's apostles has in
Re: One of the more benign side-effects (Score:3)
Your argument is that global warming can't be allowing mosquitoes to spread to more areas, or to be more successful? That doesn't make any sense.
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Mosquitos are not a homogeneous group. I guess you do not know that.
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Only ~5% of EEE infections are reported and correctly identified.
Re:One of the more benign side-effects (Score:4, Informative)
I spent many years in vector borne disease surveillance. EEE is indeed an extremely rare disease for humans to catch. The record number of cases in a single year for the US is, I think 38.
EEE is a public health concern because of the immense cost of treating each case. Back in the late 90s I remember speaking with a tropical medicine researcher who said that the average public cost of a EEE case was about ten million dollars (20 million in today's dollars). Of course about 1/3 of the cases are cheap: the people just die. But in some cases survivors require lifelong institutionalization because of profound neurological and cognitive deficits.
In addition to EEE, there are other mosquito borne diseases, like WNV, where 2500 reported cases per year is roughly average, although in *most* cases infections are mild. But all the viral encephalitides have neuroinvasive forms that are very, very bad. There are also other non-encephalitis mosquito borne diseases like Chikungunya, yellow fever, we even get (from time to time) endemic transmission of malaria (someone comes back from a tropical vacation infected and his neighbor gets it a few weeks later).
Does this mean I don't go outside? No! These are rare diseases for most of us living in the US. But I do wear DEET when there is endemic vector borne encephalitis. It's also a good idea for anyone to learn what encephalitis looks like [cedars-sinai.org] -- there are other much more common forms of encephalitis than EEE. I saved the life of a family member who was unexpectedly committed to a psychiatric ward, because my work enabled me to recognize encephalitis which the attending psychiatrist was unfamiliar with. It's absolutely critical to get the correct treatment for encephalitis quickly; a delay of days can make the difference between full recovery, permanent disability, or death. My family member made a full recovery, although it took two months in a tier 3 neuro ICU and about two years of rehab.
In general we should expect the ranges and frequencies of vector borne diseases to expand with climate change, and for new emergent pathogens to appear through a variety of ecological mechanisms. Remember, West Nile emerged in North America1999, and within about five years it wa everywhere. Sure, it's not the end of the world, but it's not a good thing. We have to expect that to happen on a regular basis, just a we should expect new respiratory viruses to emerge like COVID-19.
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"I am in denial" is not a valid down-mod reason.
Mosquitoes have no right to exist. (Score:2)
Let's exterminate the species. Surely there will be ecological ramifications. Well, everything can adapt. Mosquitos are pure evil and should be erased.
As a secondary option, if we can genetically engineer a version of the species that can get their core nutrients from some other source than blood, so they don't drink our blood and spread these diseases, that would be acceptable as well.
Ok, world, you have your instructions. Now, go.
Re:Mosquitoes have no right to exist. (Score:5, Interesting)
https://www.ocvector.org/learn... [ocvector.org]
Learn More about Genetically Modified Mosquitoes
What is a GM Mosquito?
GM mosquitoes are mosquitoes that have been implanted with a gene that was not originally present or naturally occurring in the insect. In one case, the implant in question is a self-limiting gene that disrupts the normal processes of mosquitoesâ(TM) offspring. These offspring will, in turn, not survive to adulthood. These lab-grown Aedes aegypti mosquitoes would be released into the wild to mate with the wild population â" where their offspringâ(TM)s inability to grow to adulthood would lower the population of mosquitoes.
Is it healthy for the environment to release GM mosquitoes?
The U.S. EPA, State of California, and Oxitec have confirmed there is no adverse effect on humans or wildlife from implementing the SIT process. Oxitec has carried out exhaustive research (part of submissions made available to the EPA) on this topic and determined, based on a combination of laboratory data, meta-analyses, and a review of the scientific literature, that there will be no unreasonable adverse effects for humans or the environment.
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Good.
Once blood-sucking mosquitos are no more, the next target is ticks.
After that, we need to engineer a variety of yellowjacket that doesn't fly up and sting you just because you are sitting there. And make them not chase you if you run away. We have to keep these bastards around since they are pollinators, but the least we could do is engineer a bit of politeness into them.
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I'd sure like to get rid of those bloodsucking ticks and leeches, but for some reason we seem to keep electing them into office.
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It may be an effective means of reducing mosquito populations, but while you can achieve eradication under lab conditions, it will never achieve eradication in field conditions.
Let's suppose you use it in the field and after twelve generations you appear to have wiped out a mosquito population in your area. This is almost too much to hope for, but let's say you get to the point where your mosquito traps don't have any of your target species and nobody reports getting bit.
Do you really think there is not a
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I'm spreading a rumor that getting bit by a genetically modified mosquito will turn a person gay.
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No, you just get superpowers that match the native abilities of a mosquito.
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You forgot the ability to make people itch at will.
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I'm spreading a rumor that getting bit by a genetically modified mosquito will turn a person gay.
Anything to make people happy.
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What is a GM Mosquito?
I prefer Ford or Volvo mosquitos.
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One of their primary functions is to keep humans and others away from dense, fragile ecosystems. A logger coming into clear a forest for example.
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I can tell you've never lived in a climate where mosquitos breed profusely in paved-over suburbs, but it probably won't be long before that becomes your climate as well.
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Serious disease (Score:4, Informative)
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Also interesting how the pesky mosquitos jumped right to Wisconsin, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Vermont and skipped the states in between. How does that work?
It's as if you came within millimeters of understanding how dumb your post was in trying to tie this to illegal immigration only to lose it in plain sight.
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" If illegal immigration is so bad, why does the convicted felon hire them [lawandcrime.com] at his failing golf courses? If illegal immigration is so bad, why isn't Greg Abbott having weekly "
Pssssst. . . . . . . your bias is showing . . . . :P
Re: As temperatures rise or? (Score:2)
Undocumented immigrants pay more taxes than it costs to support them. Whose bias is showing?
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This may or may not apply to this specific disease and disease does not discriminate based on immigration status, although to the limits of our ability to detect before we go issuing visas.
Reality is as habit is encroached upon, more and more animal -> human disease transmission. We need to start recognizing we are going to have stop the open boarders and the jet travel - its that or more pandemics.
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Damn, you just taught him a new word. Now he'll go and misuse that as well.
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I think those infectious engineers already have a support group named after themselves. :)
Do they come with Spectrum of symptoms?
Maybe they should document that in their publication.
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And how do the immigrants get here? Bentleys? Just think about it, cause and effect. /s -- just to be sure.
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EEE reservoir is birds, not "illegal immigrants" (Score:2)
Which you would know if you had bothered to look. Then mosquitoes can spread EEE from birds to humans. So blaming "illegal immigrants" bringing EEE to the US is both wrong and probably bigoted.
Also, South and Central America has better vaccination rates than US people do when it comes to measles, so they're less likely to be "vectors" than native US people--at least for measles. I'm not sure how well this generalizes for other diseases, but it's kind of suggestive that maybe the US and it's people are no
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We just need a taller wall! Surely I'm not the only one who doesn't care for those foreign geese strutting around like they own the place and wouldn't taste delicious with some sweet & sour sauce.
Climate change? (Score:3)
"first recognized in Massachusetts, United States, in 1831"
It didn't move very far in 200 years ...
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Be a good Stuart
Oh, I've got a fun game! Let's play "Was it AI or was it a Russian?"
Spread after bats were decimated (Score:2)
Some have speculated that mosquito spread diseases in the northeast were accelerated when bats were decimated by the fungus-caused white nose disease. They are making a slow rebound but are no where near previous levels.
Better Luck Next Time (Score:2)
False summary: Not 30-40% infected killed (Score:2)
There seems to be a lot of mis-information being spread via bad wording in articles such as this. The summary claims "kills 30-40% of those infected and often causes permanent neurological damage in survivors" but the reality is much different:
Most people who become infected with EEE do not develop any symptoms.
Some people who are infected will develop chills, fever, weakness, muscle and joint pain. The illness may last up to two weeks. Most people with this type of EEE disease recover completely, but fati