West Nile Virus Outbreak Puts Dallas In State of Emergency

Penurious Penguin writes with news from the BBC that the city of Dallas "is experiencing a widespread outbreak of mosquito-borne West Nile Virus that has caused and appears likely to continue to cause widespread and severe illness and loss of life," and writes that the city "has declared a state of emergency. West Nile virus can be asymptomatic or produce multiple symptoms, but can also lead to fevers, and the potentially fatal meningitis or encephalitis. Birds are the most common carriers and mosquitoes are the vector for human infection."

Comments

Re:nylon

[budgenator]

There is nothing wrong with DDT, you just have to use per the label instructions i.e. indoors; it does bio-accumulate in fish and does nasty things to birds that eat fish, which is why it's not used outdoors. In mammals like Humans, its very safe, used to be used for delousing people and the Sales-driods used to eat it by the teaspoon to demonstrate it's safety. This does mean that DDT is not a good fit for mosquito control in countries where window screens are wide spread; it's great for bedbugs. Bacillus thuringiensis israeliensis works on mosquitos outdoors.