🚀 go-pugleaf

Adam Finkelstein wrote:
> 
> In article <39e593ff.78621371@news.epix.net>,
> Sharon C. Smith <trsc@epix.net> wrote:
> 
> >Oh but I forget - it's for the environment and therefore has a higher
> >priority than public health.
> 
> Question to all you "Health" and "Biology" experts:  How do you know the
> virus hasn't already been around for years?  Why decide that now is the
> time to be concerned about "public health" and that spraying is the
> solution to the challanges our "public health" faces?

This is a reasonable question. I have to point out that since it appears to
be 100 percent fatal to the North American Crow, someone might have data on
crow populations and/or rapid declines or die-offs of uncertain origin. It
might well have been around for a while, and have simply had an uncommonly
potent strain circulating in NYC last year. Most people are relatively
unaffected.

> 
> Another question:
> Since nobody in Maryland (my state) has contracted the disease and died,
> what justification, besides panic and political "efficiency" is there in
> spraying broadly?

We don't know that nobody's caught it, just that there are no known
fatalities associated with it here.

Spraying broadly might, one would hope, do something about the damned Asian
Tiger Mosquitoes, those day-hunting bloodsuckers have made my backyard a
misery when it's lawncutting time. And BTW -- I live smack in the middle of
the affected area, and I've had two odd incidents with birds, in the middle
of last early-spring, a crow was down on the ground, I brought it in and
warmed it up and it had seemed almost drugged, when I gave it a little warm
water it "sobered right up" and decided it wanted to be back outside so I
let it go, none the worse for wear. And then later in the summer, the same
thing happened with a blue-jay, though he didn't have to be taken inside.

Both birds showed the same odd symptoms, they were disoriented and almost
catatonic, and both of them held their feet very rigidly clenched. They
clearly couldn't grasp a perch, or perhaps thought they were perched and
were holding on for dear life. But their feet couldn't relax, and they
couldn't stand. But in about 15 minutes after each time I picked them up,
they recovered very quickly and flew off.

Might or might not have anything to do with West Nile, thought I'd mention
it.

> 
> Last question:
> Do you know the history of insect pest eradication by broad spraying
> programs?

Doesn't work all that well unless you also oil the wetlands. But that has
other nasty effects, like dead wetlands and mutated fish. Remember what
happened when they tried spraying for the Gypsy Moth? Mostly what suffered
were the crustaceans in the run-off zones. And now there are all of these
weird insects claiming the territory where local insects used to be
abundant. 

Oh, so how are the bees?

> 
> Adam
> --
> Adam Finkelstein
> adamf@radix.net
> http://www.ibiblio.org/bees/adamf

--
Be kind to your neighbors, even though they be transgenic chimerae.