About Mosquito(soon to air on Discovery)

discovery.com ^ | 6/16/2017 | Unknown

[rktman]

Upcoming Discovery Impact film MOSQUITO is a timely in depth look at this very tiny, very dangerous creature, and how it is changing in unpredictable and unprecedented ways. The film chronicles the increasing global threat this tiny animal poses while emphatically raising the points that without an international coordinated effort, the world and its citizens are at risk for a historic pandemic that could put billions at risk of a fatal infection. The global crisis is highlighted in the worldwide premiere, Thursday July 6 at 9P, on Discovery Channel and Discovery networks around the world.

Mosquitoes kill more than 1 million people a year, many of whom are children. Today, rapid environmental shifts like climate change and the ease of international travel for both humans and goods have only increased the threat mosquitoes pose, hastening their spread around the globe. As mosquitoes are now able to survive and thrive in places they have never before - including Brazil, Florida, and as far north as Washington D.C. and New York - they are bringing diseases like Zika, dengue, and yellow fever to uncharted and unprepared parts of the world.

Shot on four continents, MOSQUITO features insights from world and health leaders as well as intimate stories of the men, women, and children who are living in fear that the next bite could be a deadly one.

Mosquito is narrated by actor Jeremy Renner and features interviews with leading experts, including former CDC director Dr. Thomas Frieden and Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

[Sequoyah101]

A crisis in search of a solution. Just another hand wringing panic for do-gooders to come to the rescue.

Mosquitoes are part of the natural selection process. We need them for population control.

[LucyT]

Ping to Article, and esp # 11.

.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

They were correct.

[Salvation]

Take your Vitamin B complex. The mosquitoes have not touched me in years.

[Salvation]

Take you Vitamin B!! The mosquitoes will not like you!

[stubernx98]

Has to do with those who believe evolution does not exist

[Sequoyah101]

Chewing tobacco does similar. It also keeps ticks and some people away.

I also do the B Complex though and feel like it works for mosquitos.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

So you are pulling a Tabitha.

Go ride your hobby horse somewhere else.

[American in Israel]

I remember being in Florida 25 years ago and the screen door fame was so covered in mosquito’s in the evenings it was hard to tell what color the frame was. And now they say something changed and they thrive there now?

Must not be able to find the doors now.

[Jan_Sobieski]

Exactly! Beware of Greeks bearing gifts, and Progressives working to save you! In its entire history, Zika was never known to cause microcephaly. Once Bill “reduce the population by 90%” Gates started a biotech company and performed mosquitoe experiments in Brazil it seems to be commonplace...

[RinaseaofDs]

DDT. Crisis averted.

Oh.

That’s right.

Can’t use DDT.

[rlmorel]

Hehehe

[VanShuyten]

I think the author is confusing introduced species with native ones, and is conflating adaptation of these introduced species to new environments with “global warming”.

He also is ignoring illegal aliens and other visitors as sources for these diseases.

The yunggins don’t think quite right nowadays.

[imardmd1]

The worst part is foreign mosquitoes doing the disease spreading that American mosquitoes won’t do :)

Or is it simply American mosquitoes getting it by sucking the blood of diseased foreigners. There was qa time when immigrants had to undergo very rigorous medical examination and testing, submitting to internment and quarantine for a period long enouh to ensure the individuals were not disease-bearers. If they were, they were not admitted at least until after being free of it. Including iontestinal flora. I bet.

Why not now?

[Skooz]

Magnificent warbirds.

[Yosemitest]

May I remind you of this article.

Ban on DDT Continues to Kill People
Tuesday Jul 13, 2004 by Human Events

Ever since Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring, environmental extremists have sought to ban all DDT use.
Using phony studies from the Environmental Defense Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Council, the environmental activist-controlled Environmental Protection Agency banned DDT in 1972.
The extremists convinced the nation that DDT was not only unsafe for humans but unsafe to birds and other creatures as well.
Their arguments have since been scientifically refuted.

While DDT saved crops, forests and livestock, it also saved humans.
In 1970, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences estimated that DDT saved more than 500 million lives during the time it was widely used.
A scientific review board of the EPA showed that DDT is not harmful to the environment and showed it to be a beneficial substance that “should not be banned.”
According to the World Health Organization, worldwide malaria infects 300 million people.
About 1 million die of malaria each year.
Most of the victims are in Africa, and most are children.

In Sri Lanka, in 1948, there were 2.8 million malaria cases and 7,300 malaria deaths.
With widespread DDT use, malaria cases fell to 17 and no deaths in 1963.
After DDT use was discontinued, Sri Lankan malaria cases rose to 2.5 million in the years 1968 and 1969, and the disease remains a killer in Sri Lanka today.
More than 100,000 people died during malaria epidemics in Swaziland and Madagascar in the mid-1980s, following the suspension of DDT house spraying.
After South Africa stopped using DDT in 1996, the number of malaria cases in KwaZulu-Natal province skyrocketed from 8,000 to 42,000. By 2000, there had been an approximate 400 percent increase in malaria deaths.
Now that DDT is being used again, the number of deaths from malaria in the region has dropped from 340 in 2000 to none at the last reporting in February 2003.

In South America, where malaria is endemic, malaria rates soared in countries that halted house spraying with DDT after 1993 — Guyana, Bolivia, Paraguay, Peru, Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela.
In Ecuador, DDT spraying was increased after 1993, and the malaria rate of infection was reduced by 60 percent.
In a 2001 study published by the London-based Institute for Economic Affairs, “Malaria and the DDT Story,” Richard Tren and Roger Bate say that“Malaria is a human tragedy,” adding,
“Over 1 million people, mostly children, die from the disease each year, and over 300 million fall sick.”

The fact that DDT saves lives might account for part of the hostility toward it.
Alexander King, founder of the Malthusian Club of Rome, wrote in a biographical essay in 1990:
“My own doubts came when DDT was introduced. In Guyana, within two years, it had almost eliminated malaria.
So my chief quarrel with DDT, in hindsight, is that it has greatly added to the population problem.”
Dr. Charles Wurster, one of the major opponents of DDT, is reported to have said,
“People are the cause of all the problems.
We have too many of them.
We need to get rid of some of them, and this (referring to malaria deaths) is as good a way as any.”

Spraying a house with small amounts of DDT costs $1.44 per year;
alternatives are five to 10 times more, making them unaffordable in poor countries.
Rich countries that used DDT themselves threaten reprisals against poor countries if they use DDT.

One really wonders about religious groups, the Congressional Black Caucus, government and non-government organizations, politicians and others
who profess concern over the plight of poor people around the world
while at the same time accepting or promoting DDT bans and the needless suffering and death that follow.
Mosquito-borne malaria not only has devastating health effects but stifles economic growth as well.

This is one of the best articles on that subject, but you'll never see THAT on the "Discovery Channel" !

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

The point I was making is that they are not in a new environment but one where they have been for a very long time.

What does that has to do with evolution, devolution or little green men?

[dp0622]

If one of my nieces/nephews got paralyzed like happened to several dozen American kids from some virus a few years ago, I would be FILLED with rage at the govt.

BullS### that illness didn’t come from below us!

[rktman]

Nope. DDT and its demise are sacred ecowanker "success". 😡

[wintertime]

Wow! Mosquitos in Washington, D.C. Who knew? /s

The writer should do a little research in the Yellow Fever Epidemic in Philadelphia in 1793.