Here in North Vancouver the trick-or-treaters will be out on the streets in an hour or so. My wife and I have become Hallowe'en Scrooges, shouting "Bah! Humbug!" to the whole over-marketed event. All it means to us is upset dogs and a massive subsidy to the Canadian candy and dental industries. So our porch light will be off and no jack o'lantern will greet the kids.
My favourite contrarian, Dr. Philip Alcabes, is rarely upset by dire threats of possible pandemics. So when he worries, I worry. On his blog today, he writes about Bed Bug Worry, Mosquito Mayhem. Now, this is scary. Excerpt:
An extensive outbreak of rift valley fever in South Africa produced dozens of human cases earlier this year, and seems to be continuing among livestock.
An epidemiologist friend in Europe told me a few weeks back that he and other European disease control specialists, already concerned about dengue and yellow fever, are looking at RVF exposures in the southern part of the continent — a worrisome finding for a virus that has primarily been African.
The European Center for Disease Control is, appropriately, concerned about the establishment of Ae. albopictus in Europe.
Ditto chikungunya, which has produced 33 cases in Delhi, India, this year, possibly including an illness in the city’s mayor.
Dengue demands control most pressingly of all. Although the CDC is busily advising Americans not to worry (“Nearly all dengue cases reported in the 48 continental states were acquired elsewhere by travelers or immigrants,” its info page reads), there is active spread through much of the Caribbean basin — see the map at Dengue Watch, for instance.
The Mexican ministry of health reports dengue transmission in areas bordering the U.S. There has already been an outbreak in Texas (in 2005). And other highly industrialized countries with strong surveillance and control systems are experiencing dengue cases, including the first report of domestic transmission within France this summer.
(Hats off to Crof at H5N1, who has been following both chikungunya and dengue assiduously.) [And my Tilley is off to Phil for his kind plugging of my site--CK]
The expansion of the range of Ae. albopictus, a secondary but by no means ignorable vector for dengue, makes the geographic extension of these pathogens worthy of concern.
