Since August 4, WNV has been detected in Franklin, Broome, Niagara and Sullivan Counties for the first time. The affected person is now home recovering in Staten Island. Given uncertainty in many factors affecting the spread, detection and impact of WNV, ascertaining efficacy of mosquto adulticides in reducing human health risk from WNV is not simple. And ascertaining this risk relative to others is even more complex, and value laden. I.e., this is both a politically tender topic and a scientifically-valid issue.
Pesticide applications are costly.
Allocating resources here, rather than to other local needs, takes a toll that can perhaps be justified if it is effective, but is harder to justify if efficacy is unknown or questionable. Beneficial insects include, for example, those we depend on to pollinate food crops, keep pest organisms in check and which are themselves a food source for birds. Surveillance of unintended impacts on non-target organisms is the flip side of surveillance of efficacy in killing mosquitoes. Not only is a systematic approach needed to track detections over time and spatially, and to link detections to locations where pesticides have been applied, but the public needs to be assured that such data are being compiled and that they are accessible, both to local decision-makers, as well as to the citizenry who have become highly attuned to this issue. Note that most of the WNV-positive mosquitoes were confirmed this week.