Just FYI. Yeah, our government, like our president, has no clue.
The newest monument in Washington, D.C., is not a soaring stone obelisk or a bigger-than-life statue but a thigh-high cement birdbath.
Once two tiered, now one, the birdbath is no less apt a symbol of unconscionable inaction in the Capitol three blocks away.On each of the previous four years, the birdbath has produced living specimens of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, best known for carrying the Zika virus.And, even as the Senate proceeds to the Fourth of July recess without passing a bill funding Zika research [the Democrats blocked the GOP bill], a scientific team is poised to test whether the birdbath and its immediate vicinity have produced a fifth generation of the bugs.
“People need to have the Congress have a tour and look at the birdbath,” says David Severson, an eminent researcher at the University of Notre Dame specializing in the molecular genetics of disease transmission by mosquitoes.
So far, none of the Capitol Hill mosquitoes have been tested for Zika, and there is no reason to believe they are carrying it, but there is a chance—however slight—that one of them will happen to bite an infected human. That mosquito could then bite someone else and pass on the virus.“It’s a slim possibility, but is possible,” Severson says…
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Bloodsuckers making a home in DC? Why am I not surprised.
Wonder what the WH budget for DDT will be? If you’re attractive to day time flying insects, what’s the chance that you’ll be attractive to twilight/evening flying insects.