WCAX reports on mosquito spraying

Last night's WCAX broadcast on the aerial mosquito spraying over swampy areas of Whiting.

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Personal note: I am glad that the EEE threat is getting attention from state government. It is a subject that requires careful research. But I cannot help but feel that the spraying program is little more than an elaborate and expensive pacifier.

EEE does not originate with the mosquitoes. A certain type of bird-loving mosquito appears to pick it up from infected birds and then deliver it to other birds. But birds cannot carry it for long without dying. No one seems to know where the EEE resides over the wintertime, when there are no mosquitoes to move it around and the time is long enough for infected animals to pass away. In back-to-back years, EEE has merely popped up in the Whiting-area swamp in August, with no idea of the path it took into the swamp and no idea if it traveled beyond the swamp.

I also have not heard whether EEE has been found to be transmitted by other types of mosquitoes, such as those that directly bother humans, though that hypothetical "secondary vector" has been targeted by the CDC. (We know that one of last year's victims lived on a farm that raised large birds especially susceptible to EEE.)

It appears from the available research that EEE may exist in some form apart from birds and the feared type of mosquitoes. (For all we know, we humans may be the over-winter carriers!) Until we have the answers, periodically reducing the mosquito population through spraying may make people feel better about the threat, but it may not really be addressing the threat at all.