🚀 go-pugleaf

In sci.environment Amos Keppler <asterdiscaveman@hl.telia.no> wrote:
. Kurt Foster wrote:

. In sci.environment Freedom Fighter <liberty@once.net> wrote:
.  [snip]
.. Of course, even those indestructible mosquitoes probably won't have the
.. St. Louis Encephalitis virus.  To date, the City still hasn't found a
.. single infected mosquito.
..  [snip]
..   I'm sure that this will be a great comfort to the families of the
.. infected *people* who've become seriosly ill, even died of the disease.
.. Why don't you take yourself to the Great Beyond, and try to convince
.. those recently departed that they're not really dead?

.  What's your point here? That it's quite allright to use one dangerous
. chemical to hurt people, to exterminate an animal that might carry a
. disease?
.  Amazing!

  In the first place, the fact that people got Saint Louis Encephalitis is
proof positive that the local mosquitos ARE carrying the diseae.  It's the
only way it gets transmitted to people.  So for the previous poster to
imply the mosquitos weren't infected, and for you to try to equivocate
about it, is lying, pure and simple.
  In the second place, there is no medical treatment for this disease.
None.  There is no drug known to alleviate the symptoms, no agent known to
kill the virus in vivo, no vaccine.  And Saint Louis Encephalitis is not
infrequently fatal, especially to the very young and to the very old.
  In the third place, your characterization of Malathion as a "dangerous
chemical" is absurd.  I could drink a tumbler of the spray mixture without
serious ill effect.  In the environment, it breaks down quickly into
harmless reactants.  Of course, it's dangerous to mosquitos - the object
of the spraying is to kill them.  They're the disease vectors.
  You want "dangerous", try parathion (can easily be fatal to humans);
arsenic (toxic, carcinogenic, persistent in the environment); or any
number of chlorinated hydrocarbons, which are very persistent in the
environment.
  What would you advocate doing?  Ignoring the outbreak, and simply
letting people die of an untreatable illness?  Not an option.  Confining
all 12 million residents of the NYC metro area indoors till after there's
been a hard freeze?  Not an option.  Capture or kill all the BIRDS that
either live in or are migrating through the area, so there is no sylvatic
reservoir of the disease?  Not an option.
  Would I prefer the infinitesimal risk from mosquito spray to the mortal
danger of Saint Louis Encephalitis?  You bet I would!  Just like I happily
accept, every day, the risks from the dangerous chemicals used in the
chlorination of tap water, preferring them to the risks of Typhoid Fever,
Cholera, etc.  But I'm sure you cry great big tears over the extermination
of the microscopic "creatures" that cause these illnesses.