RE: Arbovirus control of vectors

<x-charset iso-8859-1>I think people find mosquito-borne virus more disturbing because of a
perception that Lyme can be avoided by not going out to the woods (not
entirely true, I know). Control has a great deal to do with perception of
risk. Also Lyme is easliy curable, while WNV is not. By contrast,
mosquitoes are everywhere, will come onto your porch and into your house,
and they can cause an incurable brain fever.

I am skeptical about mosquito-borne disease as a bioterror weapon, because
the complicated biology of these diseases makes results unpredictable.
Also, how can you terrorize people with WNV when they think WNV is natural?
Perhaps WNV is an evil plot to disrupt mild mannered mosquito control
agencies and spread misery among those who lead them. If so, it succeeded ;)

-----Original Message-----
From: John J. Howard [mailto:jjh08@health.state.ny.us]
Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2002 12:54 PM
To: gochfeld@eohsi.rutgers.edu
Cc: Ninivaggi, Dominick; owner-WESTNILEVIRUS-L@cornell.edu;
WESTNILEVIRUS-L
Subject: Re: Arbovirus control of vectors

 I only hope someone answers this risk assessment question before I
retire. We in New York State experience 4,000 cases of Lyme disease per
year in New York State and have little or no public outcry for tick
control. However, even a single case of EEE never mind the multiple cases
of WNV, aka sleeping sickness, encephalitis, swelling of the brain, results
in a call for extermination of all mosquitoes. And, no this is not
entirely "media" generated. This is certainly not of the same scale and a
painful comparison but the first time I heard of NYC's emergency management
office was when it was activated to combat the West Nile outbreak.
Dominick was on the scene and can better related the effort mobilized by
this office in '99.
BTW, based on what evidence do you think that WNV was present in the United
State prior to '99? How often did Wayne Crans report dead crows or
isolated an unknown virus from Cs. melanura or antibodies to flaviviruses?
I don;t put much stock in Robert (?) Preston's theory that WNV was a
bioterrorism even by Sudam Hussan (New Yorker, Oct. 99), but can you name a
better foreign arthropod-borne disease could you introduce to be introduced
into the metropolitan areas of the northeast?

                    Michael Gochfeld

                    <gochfeld@eohsi.rutgers To: "Ninivaggi,
Dominick"
                    .edu>
<Dominick.Ninivaggi@co.suffolk.ny.us>
                    Sent by: cc: WESTNILEVIRUS-L

                    owner-WESTNILEVIRUS-L@c
<WESTNILEVIRUS-L@cornell.edu>
                    ornell.edu Subject: Re: Arbovirus
control of vectors

                    01/15/02 10:05 AM

                    Please respond to

                    gochfeld

I have no problem with most of what Dominick wrote, but one statement
(below) triggered a response:

Dominick wrote:

"As far as risk perception, I find that residents of my county are very
intolerent of risk when it comes to mosquito-borne disease. "

In a way that is the crux of my argument (or one of the cruces). Why
were many people intolerant of risk? because they had been led to
believe that this was the worst scourge to befall them. Because it
wasn't put in perspective. Because it was depicted as an alien invader?
from Africa? Because all they heard on television and saw in the papers
was "Deadly West Nile".

It's a classic example of numerator public health. If you ignore the
denominator(s) it's possible to make anything seem deadly.

Mike Gochfeld

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Received on Tue Jan 15 15:30:04 2002