This provides strong evidence demonstrating that current chemical treatment methods are actually making the situation worse in the long term. Common sense suggests if this trend continues - the likelihood of being bitten by an encephalitis carrying mosquito will increase dramatically as long as we choose to continue the use of chemical pesticide applications. What he meant by this is that, whenever we begin making theories on public health issues, we need to first make sure there is logic and common sense driving the points in our theories. I agree with this view completely and is the reasoning which underlies what you are about to read and why it should be setting off an alarm in anyone concerned about public health. While discussing the latest information regarding what is known about the encephalitis mosquito, Dr. Tabachnic said something which drew my attention because of other research I had come across on the harmful effects of chemical pesticides.
Birds are the original carriers of viral encephalitis.
Mosquitoes bite infected birds which transfers the virus to the mosquito. Somewhere between 7 and 14 days later, the mosquito can then transmit the disease to humans, however, University of Florida researchers discovered that not all mosquitoes get encephalitis, in fact, of the thousands of mosquitoes that do bite an infected bird - only 1 or 2 even develop the disease. Interesting to say the least. The next big question, however, is to find out what was different between the mosquitoes that became infected with encephalitis and the ones that didn't. If the mosquito gets hit with only one droplet, which happens to millions of mosquitoes when the pesticides are sprayed - they will survive.