All this dovetailing is the elegant product of coevolution. Many mammals, birds, even reptiles fall to a similar mosquito-borne disease, plausibly much older than our species, possibly a disease of our ancestral primates. First of all, the human genome itself adapted to the selection pressure of the infection. Many people of West African origin bear a biochemical genetic trait not common elsewhere. Of course, no one enjoys mosquito bites.
Screens exclude the fliers, and defense by bed netting close around sleepers is even less expensive.
Drained wetlands, sewers and paved streets, animals kept at a distance, tight housing, less outdoor work, drugs and clinical help are now easily available. Together such changes have banished mosquitoes and malaria in well-off countries. Warm, wet climates are the major concern, yet not so long ago malaria was a summertime risk even in Denmark. Finally, we combat the parasites themselves. The bitter Peruvian cinchona bark, a wide-spectrum natural plant defense against many enemies, was soon purified into quinine and much modified became chloroquine, the chief malarial preventative of the recent decades.