Posted on 09/01/2014 10:54:33 AM PDT by WhiskeyX
In a TED 2014 talk earlier this year in Vancouver, microbial ecologist Rob Knight explained that the bacteria, or microbes, on skin produce different chemicals, some of which smell more attractive to mosquitoes.
[....]
But there's an equalizer for those that naturally draw swarms of mosquitoes. The same pests are attracted to beer drinkers.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
I remain unconvinced.
Smacks of politically correct scientific analysis.
The mosquito sticks the very same probe into one person as it does another. The mosquito does not have a fresh probe for each victim.
I don’t care if the acids in its gut destroy HIV. I’m concerned about the tiny droplets of blood on the probe it sticks into you. The probe it sticks in can a moment later be the same probe it sticks into someone else.
Is that probe sterilized somehow between bites? Even if the bites happen within minutes of each other? If it was somehow sterilized then what if the mosquito has a faulty sterilization system... defects do happen. What if it has an upset tummy and it’s not acid enough to kill HIV in there?
If I stick a syringe into HIV blood and draw some up and then put that blood into an acid that kills it does that somehow kill the tiny droplets that adhere to the needle of the syringe?
As an assembly language programmer I’m always looking for every last possible failure mode that will kill a system.
An unlikely but nonetheless possible failure is a very bitter pill to swallow for an embedded systems guy. It can cause a car’s brakes to fail, a plane to go off course, a microwave to blow out its cavity magnetron..etc
When lives are at stake you make sure every possible failure is averted. Making excuses for monetary reasons (100% perfect is too expensive) or for politically correct reasons (everyone would go nuts killing mosquitoes and avoiding HIV infected people when it’s only a small risk) is unacceptable to me.
It’s ingrained in me that I will not purposefully fail to report a possible risk... no matter how small.
and anything you can think of. I BEGGED for Tabasco, Spam and Beef Jerky. Even a cockroach wont try Beef Jerky.
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If I remember the story correctly, the Owner/Family etc of LA Red Hot Sauce— came in Camo because one of the owners etc was a Marine and he knew what the ‘boys in the field’ really wanted.....
Or something like that.....
Never heard that before. I do know that the city kids (NJ, NY, LA etc.) wouldn’t eat C-rats, and actually wondered at us that ate whatever crap we opened up (Bangs & MF’ers were the worst.) We’d even ask the pussies for theirs when they set them down. Even today I like ham & lima beans if I have enough Tobasco and hot peppers. My girlfriend makes them and leaves the house.
Your mindset warms my heart. In my work we never make assumptions, and we always plan about three layers deep. If we blow it there are no excuses.
Thanks :-)
They needed this sort of thinking before they decided to launch the Shuttle Challenger with frozen O-rings.
“Leave NOTHING to chance”
Never heard that before.
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I just tried looking it up and the name of the product is McIlhenneys Tabasco
I saw nothing of the Camo bottle - maybe they provided a type of ‘holster’ so each guy could carry his own etc...
One of them did ‘something’ along that line - of course ‘we’ figured it was a great idea and naturally great ideas carry a lifetime....
I was from upstate NY - still considered city by the ‘Southern guys’ (most anything N of TN is City..<: <: <:)
I used to like the ‘ham and muvvas’ mainly cause no one else did and you get 2 for 1 if you had something different.
OTOH, I never had to really rely on K or C rations etc...
I remember people ‘raiding’ the Jeeps etc that were in the tank deck for ‘grub’ late at night....
Growing lads needed nourishment 24/7 .. hell they expected us to work at all hours of day and night so they should have fed us......
At least the big ships had mid rats we may have on occasion but I don’t remember it happening with any regularity...
But there was usually someone in the galley so a sandwich now and then wasn’t impossible but being in Communications had some access to the Ward Room .... (at least an ‘excuse’ to be in Officers Country when not ‘supposed’ to be)
You know, it is amazing that we have a Federal government spending millions to figure out why lezboes get fat and we don’t have a definitive study on why some people don’t seem to attract mosquitos and others do.
This is a public health issue and not something useful in designing Subaru seating.
Blood-type markers are chemicals released by people of a specific blood type so if someone with AB blood emitted a marker, it would be different than that released by B. One study found persons with Type O blood suffered more mosquito landings because of the odorant markers they emit than any other blood type, making their juices a hot commodity for blood banks, as well as Asian Tiger Mosquitoes, which carry West Nile Virus. Not only were Type Os more likely to be landed on, but the study found that for any blood type, people who secreted a chemical marker about their blood type through their skin (both blood type and secretor status are determined by genes) were bitten much more than non-secretors; 24 percent in the case of the Type Os. Other researchers estimate about 15 percent of the population, based on their genes, dont emit chemical markers of their blood type through their skin and saliva, so something else has to be calling the mosquitoes to them.
Please retract your repetition of the blood type myth ....
I wish I could use DEET but I am extremely allergic to it. I have a “mosquito suit” a jacket with a hood and pants. It is from Bugout.com for anyone who wants one. You wear it over your clothes and mosquitoes can’t get through the tough net.
Thanks. I will check it out. I always wear long sleeves and pants, but a couple weeks back I got home from the office and the little bastards saw my dark colored office dress shirt and black slacks and descended upon me like a swarm of locusts... they were biting me right through my shirt!
I am definately ready to hire a cropduster and nuke the woods from orbit.
All the stuff “they” say is BS... Purple Martins don’t eat mosquitos, but eat the dragonflies that do eat mosquitos... Bats? Their diet is 1% mosquitos.
These damned mosquitoes need to go the way of the passenger pigeon.
I hear you. We have a ranch on the Texas Gulf Coast and there are parts of it where I won’t get out of the P/U. My husband is not as bothered by them as I am. Who is that hag that stopped the use of DDT? My father kept our property free of all kinds insects with it when we were growing up and we never had a problem. May she be rotting in hell right now because of all of the people who died from insect borne diseases.
Who is that hag that stopped the use of DDT? ...Rachel Carson, a fiction writer.
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