re: Do Not Fear the Drones Air-Dropping 50,000 Mosquitoes From Above

Suzubick — 8/24/2018 9:20:16 AM

Do not worry. This has been done before, many times. The technique has been in use since the 1950s. It has not eradicated any species, except in highly localized areas. If you’ve ever seen a cow or sheep being literally eaten alive by screw-worm, you’ll know how dreadful it is and you’d be grabbing your phone to beg for a delivery of sterile insects. The human diseases also cause immense suffering and kill many children.

entomologytoday.org/.../fighting-flies-2016-screwworm-outbreak-response-florida-sterile-insect-technique

The mosquitoes and screw-worm flies were not locally driven to extinction. For one thing, it’s impossible to drop enough sterile insects to completely swamp the fertile natives. For another, it rakes repeated releases, often over several breeding seasons. It’s a damned sight cheaper and more humane to control the pest population this way than to continually blanket- spray with ever more toxic chemicals. Or, in the case of livestock, to run them ever more often through dipping tanks filled with ever-stringer poisons.

Instead of panic-mongering and wallowing in dire self-gratifying terrors of what-ifs - which have not happened in close on SEVENTY YEARS - why not put an intern onto doing some actual research?

It’s also ridiculous to harp on ideas like get enough sunshine, sleep, and optimal nutrition. The people at highest risk of these nasty nasty nasty diseases are the poor. They don’t have the luxuries taken for granted by this article. Even the best-fed, best-slept, best-nourished, whitest people are prone to vector-borne parasitic diseases.