A Bit of a Silver Lining

It's been a bad couple of years for mosquito-borne diseases.  First malaria, and now dengue fever.

Dengue fever , a tropical disease, is carried by the Aedes mosquito, who bites during the day.  Once you get the fever, you can't transmit it to anyone; only the mosquito can do that.  You're not likely to die - although young children are much more likely to die than older children and adults - and chances are you'll have a mild dose.  Wikipedia tells us "Dengue is common in more than 120 countries. In 2013 it caused about 60 million symptomatic infections worldwide, with 18% admitted to hospital and about 13,600 deaths. The worldwide cost of dengue case is estimated US$9 billion."  Some cases progress to dengue hemorrhagic fever and dengue shock syndrome, which you can look up because it sounds worse than I want to deal with at the moment. Among other things, internal bleeding and dangerously low blood pressure are involved.

A recent study of dengue cases in 23 countries found - apparently, to everyone's surprise - that during the pandemic, when people weren't able to move about or congregate as much as normal, there was a significant decrease in the occurrence of the disease.  Previous to this, the conventional wisdom was that most infected mosquito bites took place in the home, but that seems not to be true.

These results will move prevention efforts in a different direction.  Places where people congregate - especially schools - will be treated with insecticide, and contact tracing - to determine where infected children and adults were during the probable time of infection - will be done.  This should be good news.

And not just for the tropics:

"The World Health Organization says the global incidence of dengue is growing dramatically and estimates around half of the world's population is at risk of contracting dengue. Philip McCall, a professor at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine... said the findings were important and required further investigation, 'because dengue is the disease of the 21st century' as it spreads further north as a result of climate change."

Half of us.  But maybe not, if the results of this study bear fruit in the next few years.  Perhaps the new world, as a result of the pandemic, will be just a little bit better world to live in.