Massachusetts DLers, holy crap, what is this EEE virus?

I just moved to Boston two weeks ago.

Great.

Oh lord, my partner is irresistible to mosquitoes and I had not heard of this stuff. Thank you, OP.

It's all over the place, not just in MA. Some CT towns are ending all outdoor activities on city property before dusk because of the threat. Four cases have just been confirmed in southwest MI -- two of them have died. Saw a report of a Michigan man that contracted it two years -- he made it through but has brain damage and walks (verrry slowly) with a cane.

Are you just hearing about this now? It's been in the news for weeks.

It will kill you. Stay inside.

Mosquitoes are such a scourge.

Is there any valid reason not to just eliminate mosquitoes? It’s not like bees, who have a specific function. Just eliminate these fuckers.

This would make me not want to go outside in the summer ever.

Didn’t someone in upstate NY die of this recently?

Captain Trips begins

R10 needs a punch to the neck.

I hope R10 and his post straight from 1987 gets EEE. Cunt.

[quote]Is there any valid reason not to just eliminate mosquitoes? It’s not like bees, who have a specific function. Just eliminate these fuckers.

Brazil tried and it backfired.

From a NY Post article on the experiment.

The plan involved genetically altering mosquitoes in Brazil so their babies would die instantly. However, the company that hatched the plan, British Biotech firm Oxitec Ltd., then released the mutant mosquitoes with the hope that they’d breed with the wild insects and spread the entomological SIDS gene, causing the population to plummet substantially.

For a time, the plan seemed to be going swimmingly. The genetically-modified mosquitoes bred with their wild counterparts, causing a dip in the wild population. Unfortunately, the numbers came roaring back just 18 months later.

Researchers think that the wild female mosquitoes may have grown wise to the measure and began avoiding the genetically modified males, reported New Atlas.

And if that wasn’t Jurassic Park enough, the wild mosquitoes could have developed a resiliency to the measure, making their population even harder to quash. Now, the region has been left with a huge population of hybrids (combinations of the Brazilian native mosquitoes and the Cuban and Mexican breeds that were genetically altered in the lab) — an outcome that could make the entire population more resistant to the original mosquito control measures.

r11

r12

He's right though.

A Michigan man went from healthy to brain dead in just nine days after contracting Eastern equine encephalitis:

R14 you're an idiot. Straights are the ones mostly getting infected these days.

Two rare gray wolf pups killed by EEE virus in Battle Creek, MI:

Triple E is frequently in the news in New England.

[quote]r4 It's been in the news for weeks. It will kill you. Stay inside.

I'm in California. Should I stowaway on a boat to Buenos Aires?? Or Scotland, or something??

I don't get it. EEE and West Nile are things that happen with some regularity in the Northeast. I can understand the media needing to scare people if it was a slow news period, but it's not. They're getting enough clicks and eyeballs already.

Yeah, I think EEE has been around at least since the 80s.

And mosquitoes are probably important to the food chain. Bats and frogs and all sorts of beasts, including ones we like.

We’d better cut down all the trees and kill all the birds so 5 or 6 people don’t die.

Years ago when I first graduated with my public health degree I was watching the news and a reporter sexed up some routine infectious disease during sweeps month in order to scare people. I can’t remember the disease but it was something where they were trying to make people fear other people as a source of a “deadly infection” that “might be coming for you or a loved one” and it was so reminiscent of AIDS propaganda against gays that it just touched me off.

I was so mad I called the tv station and they transferred my call to the reporter. I started shaming him for frightening the public with ginned up disease paranoia and he hung right up on me.

So much for being a public health advocate. Learned my lesson.

That's the night that the lights went out in Massachusetts

That's the night that they hanged an innocent man

Whoa-oh oh

This and the "brain eating amoeba" is almost like earth treating humans as "well, it was nice that you came for a visit, but, pray tell, when are you going to leave?" no longer welcomed house guests.