「经济学人」Nile-ism

Outbreaks of EEE and West Nile virus have health officials on the alert

HIGH SCHOOLS in Plymouth, Massachusetts have moved kick-off times at American football games to the afternoon from the evening. Everyone has to be off the field by dusk because of worries about a rare but often deadly illness, carried by mosquitoes: Eastern equine encephalitis (EEE), also called Triple E. Two people in the state have been infected. About 30% of people who develop EEE die.

Last month New Hampshire’s department of health reported a fatal infection in an adult, the first in ten years. New Jersey, Vermont and Wisconsin also reported cases this summer, according to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Health officials are worried about West Nile Virus, too. That is also transmitted by mosquitoes and can cause long-term neurological damage. Hundreds of cases in 38 states have been reported. West Nile recently hospitalised Anthony Fauci, a former top health official.

Why is this happening? The changing climate is almost certainly part of the story. Birds act as introductory hosts, infecting mosquitoes, which in turn infect humans. Migratory bird patterns are changing, so diseases are showing up in new places. The mosquito season has become longer in much of the country. “With longer summers, warmer weather on average and longer rainy seasons,” says Ashwin Vasan, New York City’s health commissioner, “what we are seeing is a prolonged risk, not so much an increased risk, but a prolonged risk for mosquito-borne illnesses.”

Erin Staples, a CDC epidemiologist, is cautious about calling the headline-grabbing cases a surge. “It’s very hard to predict even in the middle of our season, is this going to be a really bad season?” Data is still preliminary and lags by two weeks. This makes messaging complicated. “There’s this balance between, ‘Hey, there’s this really bad disease. It is super rare, but it’s really bad,’” says Catherine Brown, Massachusetts’s state epidemiologist.

Four Massachusetts towns near the Connecticut border are deemed at “critical risk” for EEE. State officials recommend that people in those towns avoid being outdoors during peak biting hours. Maybe one out of 1,000 mosquitoes carries EEE. “It is almost like a lottery ticket,” says Kristy Murray at Emory University, who has tracked West Nile since 1999. “Except you just don’t want that one to bite you.”

This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline “Nile-ism”(Sep 5th 2024)

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