West Nile Virus reported in 11215

che

Ha, no--carrying it out of a building all wrapped up, but not wrapped up well enough.

carnivore

Subject: Re: right on... no pesticides...

cat wrote: you people are really on target!

The West Nile virus affects like 1 person in a million. The Boston Globe did a chart of how much greater your chances are of getting hit by lightening or getting food poisoning.

The pesticides weaken the immune system of the people who *might* get west nile virus - and the rest of us - and thus make them more susceptible. it does not mean we should be sprayed by pesticides which cause cancer, respiratory problems, and more.

as we say, the cure is worse than the disease.

visit: www.nospray.org.

also, the pesticides kill natural predators of mosquitoes like dragonflies.

one year, i was handing out fliers in prospect park after the spraying and a woman told me she went through the park right after they sprayed and she saw all these ladybugs on the ground dying. it affects the whole ecosystem.

it is part of a continual scare tactic.

guiliani was the 'perfect' person to put this in place.

I agree with you about the environmental aspects of spraying, although I don't think anyone would miss the mosquitos themselves if they could be eliminated without harming other beneficial insects. However, your claim that pesticides "weaken the immune system" is unfounded. The DOH has moved away from the more toxic malathion that was initially used in the first season of spraying, and now uses pyrethroids, which are synthetic compounds derived from natural insecticides found in chrysanthamums. Although it is wise to avoid unecessary exposure to these compounds, most people don't have any symptoms from exposure to the kind of levels present after spraying. Some people do have severe allergies to these compounds, which is a real concern, and people with asthma can have exacerbations of their symptoms. Although there are some animal and human studies showing that some of the type II pyrethroids can have either stimulatory or inhibitory effects on some immune cell lines, there isn't any evidence of a clinically important effect in humans (meaning changes in immune function or chance of developing any kind of disease. One study on human volunteers exposed to the type of levels present after indoor professional spraying failed to show a statistical difference in almost any immunological marker soon after spraying (1-3 days), or any difference at all 6 months later.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=12708230&query_hl=4&itool=pubmed_docsum

carnivore

The 2006 DOH schedule for mosquito spraying in NYC can be found here:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/html/wnv/wnvspray.shtml?b=2
So far, there are no dates scheduled for spraying in Brooklyn.

anonymous

Subject: bats

FWIW (and I know this is off-topic), the most common animal vector of the rabies virus in the Mid-Atlantic states is the raccoon, not the bat. Rabies first showed up in New York in 1990 and by 1998 there had been 7851 animal cases identified (6637 in raccoons). Cases of bat rabies generate plenty of media exposure (who doesn't love a story about flying mammals?), but the truth of the matter is that infected bats rarely show the types of clinical signs we associate with rabies-infected animals. In truth, the most common clinical sign of infection in bats is paralysis, which negates the possibility of rabid bats flying around and randomly biting people. This isn't to say that a person won't get rabies from a bat, and that people bitten by bats shouldn't get treatment for rabies (rabies is fatal and incurable, after all), but I'd be much more worried about the raccoons in Prospect Park than the bats.

quijibo

Subject: Re: bats

shishkab wrote: FWIW (and I know this is off-topic), the most common animal vector of the rabies virus in the Mid-Atlantic states is the raccoon, not the bat. Rabies first showed up in New York in 1990 and by 1998 there had been 7851 animal cases identified (6637 in raccoons). Cases of bat rabies generate plenty of media exposure (who doesn't love a story about flying mammals?), but the truth of the matter is that infected bats rarely show the types of clinical signs we associate with rabies-infected animals. In truth, the most common clinical sign of infection in bats is paralysis, which negates the possibility of rabid bats flying around and randomly biting people. This isn't to say that a person won't get rabies from a bat, and that people bitten by bats shouldn't get treatment for rabies (rabies is fatal and incurable, after all), but I'd be much more worried about the raccoons in Prospect Park than the bats.

hey Che!
you ever "handle" a raccoon?