Comments on: Dengue Creeps North

By: Jennifer Frazer

Jennifer Frazer — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 23:56:15 +0000

Hmm . . . microbial non-human I’d probably argue for either Dutch Elm Disease, Chestnut Blight, or White Nose Syndrome. Non-microbial — probably humans. ; )

By: Jan

Jan — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 01:50:07 +0000

Nice article. Copepods of the genus Mesocyclops have been used for several years in Vietnam to control Aedes aegypti larvae in villages. This works, as in Australia, where water storage vessels aren’t washed out too often, so the copepods can persist in them; and also where the mother mosquitoes have no other places to deposit their eggs. Therefore, trash that will hold water must be cleaned up. Community recycling and biological control in one.
Controlling Aedes this way is much less efficient if there are alternative places to breed, such as treeholes, where it’s difficult to get copepods into a high proportion of them.

By: kyril

kyril — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 17:37:31 +0000

No-not the Flava’ virus: if “Everybody’s got flava”, how could we “fight the power” of the
virus? It truly would be “Public Enemy #1”, and eventually it would even “get to arizona”.
(sorry couldn’t resist).

On another musical note, there is a Jimmy Vaughn track, “Dengue Woman Blues”, off the
“From Dusk till Dawn” soundtrack. The good news is that the track is decent(if you like
Texas guitar blues), and he clearly isn’t comparing the woman to the hemorrhagic variety.

The environmentally friendly anti-mosquito measures in Australia are welcome news,
especially given Australia’s tragic history of introduced pests(e.g. rabbits, feral cats, and cane toads).

What is the biggest disaster in terms of non-native species introduction in the Americas?
(At the non-microbial level; otherwise smallpox would probably win hands-down here,
at least in terms of its impact on the human population. Of course, the human impact may be the wrong metric).

By: kati

kati — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 03:45:48 +0000

yes, we definitely need a flavorflavivirus!! haha! original antigenic sin and the fact that we don’t know where viruses fit on the tree is very interesting. i want to know more!