Posted on 06/29/2010 9:31:18 AM PDT by SwinneySwitch
A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirms that for the first time in more than 65 years, dengue fever has returned the continental United States, The New York Times is reporting this week:
The upsurge is not unexpected. Experts say more than half the world's population will be at risk by 2085 because of greater urbanization, global travel and climate change. Over the past 30 years, a global outcry against using the pesticide dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, or DDT, has led to the resurgence of the mosquito, a voracious consumer of human blood and carrier of infectious disease.
Epidemics have become routine in Latin America, a continent on the verge of becoming highly endemic. Outbreaks are today raging in Brazil, Guatemala and other nations. Thailand, within a week of its annual dengue season this year, has already reported 18,000 cases and 20 deaths, according to the Ministry of Public Health.
In our Fall 2009 cover story, OnEarth looked at how climate change will force the U.S. to revamp its health-care defenses against diseases like dengue. Reporting from a Mexican town across the border from Brownsville, Texas, author Kim Larsen wrote:
Dengue is endemic in Matamoros; in 2004 a blood-sampling survey found dengue antibodies in 78 percent of the city's residents, which means all who tested positive had been infected with the virus at some point in their lives, though it may have gone undiagnosed. According to José Luís Robles López, the medical services coordinator for the city, dengue's grip has only tightened in the years since. It used to surge from August through October, in the wake of the summer rains, with cases leveling off throughout the rest of the year. But more and more, Robles López says, dengue is diagnosed steadily all year round.
(Excerpt) Read more at onearth.org ...
Exactly. Dengue fever is back solely because of the environmentalist movement—DDT could take care of this in no time.
You keep saying NOT CONTAGIOUS as if that meant something – it doesn't. Just because a disease is not person-to-person contagious doesn't mean that it can't be spread when a vector (the mosquito) is part of the equation.
Outlawing of DDT is what has brought an increase in Dengue, IN ANY CASE, regardless of how the mosquitos get it. But this thread is a prime example of the FReeper version of "It's Bush's Fault." No matter what it is, it's Illegal Aliens' Fault.
The DDT ban certainly was a huge factor in the increase of mosquitoes; nobody's claiming that it wasn't.
You can whitewash the illegal alien connection all you want with your "IN ANY CASE, regardless of how the mosquitoes get it" language; doing that is still nothing but a whitewash of another large factor (beyond the DDT ban) in the spread of the disease, one which you choose to ignore.
The prevention of dengue requires control or eradication of the mosquitoes carrying the virus that causes dengue.
Outlawing DDT has led to an increase in Dengue fever the same way that it has led to an increase in malaria.
Illegal aliens cause a lot of problems and it's good to point them out, but blaming the spread of a non-contagious disease on illegal aliens is disingenious. There'd have to be a HELL of a lot of Dengue-infected illegals bitten by a HELL of a lot of mosquitoes to cause such an outbreak. It's quite a stretch to put the blame on the mosquitos. Put the blame where it belongs -- on lack of adequate pesticides.
The Dengue problem is a perfect illustration of the evils of rampant environmentalism. If DDT was still in use, there wouldn't be the Dengue problem we're seeing now.
I’m not ignoring the illegal alien problem; I’m objecting to reaching and stretching to blame illegals for a problem in which they have played a minor part, if any at all. Blame them for the REAL stuff, like overloading our schools, welfare rolls, and emergency rooms. Blame environmentalists for the Dengue outbreak.
While you may well not have been contagious in casual contact, I'd bet dimes to doughnuts that sharing an IV needle with you would infect someone--it is a serological transfer thing.
If there are no dengue infected mosquitoes in an area, and suddenly the mosquitoes are carriers, there has to be a reason they have become carriers. Did mosquitoes with a short lifespan fly hundreds of miles or did the carriers they picked the disease up from travel and get bitten by the local mosquitoes?
Mosquitoes already transmit encephalitis, West Nile, malaria, and a host of other diseases, and the populations of mosquitoes do not become magically infected, but pick up the pathogens from other sources.
If the illegal alien population in an area where mosquitoes begin transmitting the disease is infected, I'd have to suspect they are the source vector for the mosquitoes, who pass the infection on. At least until I find out otherwise.
Which is why I was looking for facts about how the mosquitoes become carriers of the disease.
I'll keep digging, thanks.
WHO/TDR/Stammers
Dengue viruses are transmitted to humans through the bites of infective female Aedes mosquitoes. Mosquitoes generally acquire the virus while feeding on the blood of an infected person. After virus incubation for eight to 10 days, an infected mosquito is capable, during probing and blood feeding, of transmitting the virus for the rest of its life. Infected female mosquitoes may also transmit the virus to their offspring by transovarial (via the eggs) transmission, but the role of this in sustaining transmission of the virus to humans has not yet been defined.
Infected humans are the main carriers and multipliers of the virus, serving as a source of the virus for uninfected mosquitoes. The virus circulates in the blood of infected humans for two to seven days, at approximately the same time that they have a fever; Aedes mosquitoes may acquire the virus when they feed on an individual during this period. Some studies have shown that monkeys in some parts of the world play a similar role in transmission.
WHO webpage
Yes,you are. Every post that you've made on this thread has downplayed any possible illegal alien aspect of the Dengue fever problem.
Im objecting to reaching and stretching to blame illegals for a problem in which they have played a minor part, if any at all.
Source, please.
It's no more disingenuous than your repeating your "non-contagious" mantra when you know full well that Dengue is certainly transmitted from one person to another by way of the mosquito.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.