430 Comments

There is a very bizarre affliction called trigeminal neuralgia: electrical shocks shooting up the side of one’s head. The shocks extend from the jaw to the cranial cortex. One out of every 100,000 people has this affliction and it is untenable and incurable. We have lived together for decades. He is losing his mind from shear pain. I don’t what to do.

Expand full comment

From what I've read, no. There are enough other insects for the insectivores to munch on. But it's still worth monitoring. And I don't think ALL species of mosquito are malaria carriers.

Expand full comment

Malaria was a big thing in the really old movies I watched as a kid. Its sort of hard to believe that we haven't kicked its booty off the planet yet.Who knew that sex was the fix? Skeeters shooting blanks, what a concept.

Since they are about as hard to kill as the cockroach clan, lets hope that they don't evolve and create some form of natural Viagra and start humpin' like rabbits.

Expand full comment

Good question! No.

There are a lot of different species of mosquito and they’re only tuned in to bite certain species, each. There are only a few species that bite humans at all, with aedes aegypti In particular being responsible for the vast majority of human disease, carrying West Nile, Zika, Dengue, and Malaria.

We could eliminate aegypti and there would still be thousands of non-human-biting mosquitoes populating the ecosystem.

Expand full comment

The Eagles sit around a table on stage with a boombox and a bottle of whiskey, and whenever the song ends, one of 'em presses rewind, then play. Occasionally one of them waves at the audience.

Expand full comment

You forgot beta thalassemia major, Senor Sagan!

Expand full comment

I worry about unintended consequences to fauna that eat A. aegypti mosquitos. And not just as a _Lilo & Stitch_ allusion.

Expand full comment

I read this last week, it says there is a surgery that may be useful?

https://www.washingtonpost....

Expand full comment

Don Sagan, I commend you. Any discussion of parasites that doesn't call them pendejos will be lacking from now on.

Expand full comment

Ran out of wordcount, but yep, that evolved as a malaria survival mechanism. I used to work on a drug that helped a side effect of thalassemia patients where their iron levels became toxic.

Expand full comment

Did anyone make the 'incel mosquitoes' joke yet?

Expand full comment

Mosquitoes Going Their Own Way.

Expand full comment

DDT is rarely used in very specific circumstances with minimal release into the environment.

The bloodsucking female mosquito likes to hide in dark corners of dwellings and come out to feed on sleepers at night. A combination of mosquito netting, pyrethrum applied to the netting & DDT sprayed on interior walls & ceilings is of maximum effectiveness with minimal resistance development & environmental damage. Pyrethrum is a natural insecticide derived from a daisy.

Most times the netting & (rather expensive) pyrethrum are effective; with the netting providing a physical barrier & the pyrethrum repelling or killing mosquitoes that land on the netting. If DDT is used, it kills by direct contact inside human dwellings rather than by poisoning the general environment.⛺️

Expand full comment

One of the big problems with developing a vaccine against malaria is its life cycle. (I used to work next door to the malaria lab).

Expand full comment

Too much virus-laden MILF Pron, probably

Expand full comment

Carlos, is you one of them M-13 chain refugee rapist drug pushers we hear about from the White House? No wonder yer all scientific and everything!

Expand full comment