Bugs, Germs and so Real

It’s not necessarily obvious to most of us, but climate change has a both plague and pestilence embedded in its essence. It may overstate the obvious when we say that different germs and insects have developed to survive and thrive generally only in very specific climatic environments. A few species – either unlawfully imported or which hitched a ride on a passing ship or plan –  become “invasive,” which are quickly at home in their new environments.  These can range from new predatory fish to a bevy of hippopotami, brought by cartel boss Pablo Escobar’s to his compound in Colombia 40 years ago, that broke loose and settled into local lakes and streams. Some of these resettlements work, and some post a nuisance that requires serious attention. But for the most part a bug – germ or insect – that finds its natural habitat in an Amazonian jungle is unlikely to survive in a harsh frozen polar or desiccated sizzling desert region.

There are a few exceptions – like the seemingly ubiquitous cockroach and more than a few viruses – but biologists and epidemiologists are watching with alarm new migration patterns… as those bugs leave regions that no longer provide optimum humidity and temperatures for their survival and move to entirely new homes where those climatic characteristics have relocated. Whether from illicit imports and hitchhikers or slow migratory movement as climate changes, big problems are beginning to multiply. The sheer volume of these migrations is beginning to scare scientists. Tracking all these movements is challenging to say the least. Close to impossible. Surprises are increasingly the rule. To some, there may even be a global pandemic buried somewhere in these biological travelers. 

The problem, of course, is that people and livestock, tethered to residences, properties, farms and businesses that are not so mobile, are almost always unprepared for the impact of these new residents. Could be those huge killer “murder hornets” that scare anyone who has been unfortunate to confront them? Africanized bees? New strains of mosquitos carrying diseases that are new for which no local immunity exists?

Like a new mosquito species that was found in our Guantanamo naval prison on the tip of Cuba. That little bug will be in the United States mainland very, very soon. “The intruder was an Aedes vittatus mosquito. One of 3,500 mosquito species found across the globe, it is a new addition to the dozen or so species in North America that carry parasites or pathogens harmful to humans. Other mosquito species, like Aedes albopictus and Aedes aegypti, can transmit diseases like dengue, yellow fever and chikungunya. But unlike those others, Aedes vittatus is capable of carrying nearly all of the most dangerous mosquito-borne diseases, except for malaria.

“‘Being in close contact with these mosquitoes is not good news. They’re breeding in your bird bath and they’re feeding off your kids,’ says Yvonne-Marie Linton, research director of the Walter Reed Biosystematics Unit and curator of nearly 2 million specimens in the Smithsonian Institution’s US National Mosquito Collection… The Aedes vittatus is endemic to the Indian subcontinent and has never been seen in the western hemisphere until now. The mosquito is ‘a proven vector of chikungunya, Zika, dengue, yellow fever viruses and many other diseases,’ according to the team of scientists who discovered it.” 

“Mosquitoes garner far less attention than, say, the swarms of so-called ‘murder hornets’ first noticed in North America in 2020. Originally thought to be from Japan, they spread across America’s Pacific Northwest, killing off honeybee colonies.

“‘There is a parallel between the murder hornet and Aedes vittatus [both pictured above] in that they came from somewhere else – they are in an area now that they didn’t exist in before,’ says Ben Pagac, an entomologist for the US Army’s Public Health Command who conducts biosurveillance for the military across the Caribbean. He says this is a lesson for the public about the threats human travel and global trade carry by dispersing zoonotic diseases far and wide.

“Mosquito-borne diseases kill more than 1 million people and infect nearly 700 million each year – almost one out of every 10 people on Earth… But as climate change makes North American winters shorter and less cold, Linton and her colleagues warn in their study that mosquitoes may soon cause ‘disease outbreaks (that) pose serious threats to public health’.” BBC.com, January 19th. The sad part of this story is that is merely one small example of the exploding dangers.

If we are overconnected though online social media and smart phones with lots of serious social, criminal and military risks, we are certainly equally over connected in global trade and climate change generated movement of species that move easily in the air or in our oceans. We are way behind where climatologists believe we should be in containing, much less reversing, the rise of greenhouse gasses that cause climate change. 

I’m Peter Dekom, and while the coronavirus pandemic has our attention and seems to drown out all the other problems… that could even be more deadly.