If you live in Washington state and you believe that you are already dealing with a lot of mosquitoes, you must know that it’s room for even a lot more of those little flying vampires. Mosquitoes can transmit diseases to humans, such as the Chikungunya virus, Zika virus, West Nile virus, dengue, and malaria.
But because of the climate change factor, things can change a lot in Washington state regarding mosquitoes, and not in a good way. Crosscut.com reveals the info about the upcoming and scary shift.
Beware of the West Nile virus
Climatologist Nick Bond spoke about the danger of the West Nile virus as cited by Crosscut.com:
There’s another virus that’s gotten a little bit more attention in the last couple of years, but West Nile virus does have penetration into the Pacific Northwest, including Washington state, and it is something that conceivably is something we should be worried about and planning for.
Elizabeth Dykstra is a public health entomologist who has been occupied with mosquito surveillance for years. She declared as also quoted by Crosscut.com:
We have what we consider to be big numbers over in the south central part of the state, but you go down to Texas and Florida and they just laugh us out of the water.
The West Nile virus can even kill a patient, as it happened last month in California when one infected person died. Otherwise, most people who get infected don’t even feel sick. Roughly 1 in 5 persons who get infected will develop a fever, as well as other symptoms. Those who develop a serious and sometimes fatal illness are even a lot rarer: about 1 out of 150 infected people.
There are more than 3,000 species of mosquitoes discovered, the insects that have been around since the Jurassic period: 201.3 (+/- 0.2) million years ago – 145 million years ago.
