{"id":19407,"date":"2022-09-02T11:00:33","date_gmt":"2022-09-02T15:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/?p=19407"},"modified":"2022-09-02T21:27:42","modified_gmt":"2022-09-03T01:27:42","slug":"whats-the-buzz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/?p=19407","title":{"rendered":"What’s The Buzz?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Linda Lou Burton posting from Little Rock, Arkansas <\/em>\u2013 An African safari, these days, suggests being around animals. A lot of animals. Getting close. Which leads to good-natured kidding about becoming a \u201cmenu item,\u201d with lions leading the suspect list. They do have big teeth, and sharp claws, and are so powerful we tend to place imposing lion statuary outside the doors of public buildings. Like, the New York Public Library, or the Utah State Capitol. Yet videos I\u2019ve been watching recently of rigged-up Land Rovers on Game Drives in the Maasai Mara show lions ambling along beside the vehicles, or napping at the edge of the road while a hundred cameras are clicking.<\/p>\n

It made me wonder. \u201cWhat IS the most dangerous animal in Africa?\u201d<\/p>\n

Answer: the mosquito.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Mosquitoes are the deadliest animals on Earth, killing 725,000 people a year worldwide and sickening millions of others. According to World Health Organization estimates, the disease of malaria alone accounts for 600,000 of that number. The next most deadly animals are humans themselves (but we won\u2019t go into that).<\/p>\n

Malaria<\/strong> is particularly malicious and widespread; 200 million people are infected annually. Half the world\u2019s population lives in areas that make them potential targets of opportunity for the malaria-carrying Anopheles mosquito looking for a blood meal.<\/p>\n

From the Italian for \u201cbad air,\u201d malaria has been known about for 4,000 years. Hippocrates noted its symptoms in fourth-century Greece. It is thought to be responsible for the decline of the populations of many of the Greek city-states and the Roman Empire. Symptoms include high fevers, shaking chills, and flu-like illness. And unlike other mosquito-borne diseases, humans are part of the infection process. Malaria parasites grow and multiply first in the liver cells and then in the red blood cells, getting picked up by a feeding female mosquito, which then passes it on to yet another human.<\/p>\n

Here are other deadly diseases that can result from a mosquito\u2019s bloodsucking bite.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Chikungunya<\/strong>, primarily found in Africa, the Indian subcontinent and Asia; identified in 45 countries or territories in the Americas with more than 1.7 million suspected cases reported. It causes neurologic diseases such as Guillain-Barr\u00e9 syndrome, meningoencephalitis, cranial nerve palsies, rheumatic disorders. Dengue<\/strong>, primarily found in the tropics; an estimated 400 million dengue infections each year in over 125 countries; 40 percent of the world\u2019s population live in dengue-risk areas. Symptoms: high fever, rash, severe headache, pain behind the eyes, muscle pain and joint pain so severe that dengue has been dubbed \u201cbreakbone fever.\u201d\u00a0Yellow Fever, <\/strong>characterized by fever, muscle pain, headache, nausea and vomiting \u2014 and, in rare cases, jaundice and bleeding from the mouth, nose, eyes and stomach. A vaccine is available, stemming occurrences in 99 percent of the people who take it. Still, it takes down 30,000 people each year.\u00a0Zika<\/strong> is the marquee mosquito disease of the moment, found for the first time in the Western Hemisphere in 2015. Since this outbreak began, an estimated 500,000 to 1.5 million people have been infected. It doesn\u2019t kill, but can cause a birth defect known as microcephaly, a condition that causes babies to be born with dangerously small heads and brain defects.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I conclude: yes, the MOSQUITO is the thing most to be FEARED while we’re in Africa. We\u2019ve got a full supply of MALARONE anti-malarial tablets to start taking before we leave and after we get home; we\u2019ve got Maxi-Deet insect repellent and long sleeved shirts and long pants; friend Tracy gave me a permethrin-treated wrap-around scarf. We\u2019re taking no dark clothing as dark colors attract mosquitos. All our camps and lodges have mosquito netting around the beds. (That \u201cbell on the hiking boots\u201d that scares away bears doesn\u2019t work for mosquitos!) We have our internationally-recognized Yellow Book signed by the health authorities verifying that we\u2019ve had the Yellow Fever vaccine.<\/p>\n

But Bill Gates, bless his inventive soul, is on the warpath, going beyond HOW TO AVOID GETTING BIT, or PREVENTING ILLNESS AFTER BEING BIT.<\/p>\n

Bill Gates is going after the MOSQUITO itself. You must go to his BLOG, and read about his incredible project, Mosquito Factory, where, inside a two-story brick building in Medell\u00edn, Colombia, a lab is breeding 30 million mosquitos a week. This is not science fiction!\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Sign up for Gates Notes, and read stories such as the one about Dr Matoke-Muhia that he tells: I know a lot of people who are driven to do something. When we were in high school, for example, Paul Allen and I would get quite absorbed in software projects\u2014including neglecting sleep and showers. But that pales in comparison to the determination of Dr. Damaris Matoke-Muhia, a leader in the fight against malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases.<\/em><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.gatesnotes.com\/Health\/Mosquito-Week-2022<\/a><\/p>\n

Tomorrow I\u2019ll get back to Africa\u2019s other Dangerous Animals, and see where the wrongly accused lion fits on the list.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Linda Lou Burton posting from Little Rock, Arkansas \u2013 An African safari, these days, suggests being around animals. A lot of animals. Getting close. Which leads to good-natured kidding about becoming a \u201cmenu item,\u201d with lions leading the suspect list. They do have big teeth, and sharp claws, and are so powerful we tend to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4318,4319],"tags":[4368,4359,4364,4362,4365,4363,4361,4360,4366,4367],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19407"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19407"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19407\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19426,"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19407\/revisions\/19426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}