Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/07/29/zika-infected-mosquitos-are-no.html
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Well, crap. And the mosquito control mechanisms were dismantled a few years ago by the Tea Party, just to make it worse. 
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Global warming… We knew tropical diseases were going to migrate north.
We better get to the lab. Fund it. Work it.
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[republican voice] But taxation is theft! Global warming is a hoax for somehow making climate scientists rich and destroying American industry, because science is unAmerican! And what if the lab says that abortion is a solution? [/republican voice]
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Are swimming pools considered standing water? Or do the chemicals make them unsuitable?
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The latter. Enough chlorine to kill algae will kill mosquito larvae too. It’s a problem for abandoned or poorly-maintained pools, though.
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Republicans never say this out loud. Libertarians do.
I wonder if Zika is the long-foretold virus that reduces human fertility to 10%. In a few generations, the last of us will be wandering through the canyons of abandoned cities and fucking uselessly, though not at the same time.
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Not to worry! Trump is gonna build a wall around those damn bugs and the bugs are gonna pay for it too.
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Do you think we can convince the Republican Congress to fund it?
This is the first I’ve heard of this. Can you provide a citation?
p.s. I’m not trying to be combative at all, but want to research this, I live in FL.
There is no such thing as useless fucking…just sayin’.
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We are a creative species, we will eventually hone our ‘useless wanderfucking’ skills.
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Again with the “Florida”, will it never end? I ask you?
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It used to be that a few government expenditures were immune from partisan disagreement—cops, potholes, mosquito control. But not anymore. Most of Florida’s mosquito abatement work is done at the local level, where independent taxing districts are responsible for the bulk of the eradication efforts. These districts have become targets of tea party wrath. Last year, a trio of conservative activists dubbing themselves the “Mosquitoteers” challenged several members on the Anastasia Mosquito Control Board in St. Augustine. They campaigned on a plan to cut mosquito control taxes and the district’s budget and bought a billboard reading: “Smash mosquitoes and the friends of Obama.” Never mind, notes board member Vivian Browning, that the seats are nonpartisan: “Mosquitoes, they don’t care if you’re Republican, Democrat, or independent. They can eat you, infect you, kill you, regardless of party.” One of the Mosquitoteers, a reserve sheriff’s deputy, defeated a University of Florida biology professor who is an expert in mosquito-borne diseases—a concern in a state that has regular outbreaks of West Nile virus and has seen an uptick in dengue fever.
The state Legislature has also done its part to liberate mosquitoes from the shackles of big government. In 2011, the Republican-dominated Legislature slashed the state’s contribution to mosquito control by 40 percent. Florida A&M University closed one of two major mosquito research labs in the state after the Legislature axed $500,000 in research funds. Public health officials succeeded in restoring money to keep the lab open, only to see Scott kill it with a stroke of his veto pen. Along with other budget cuts, the closure halved the number of Florida scientists working on mosquito control.
“There’s maybe a perfect storm of sorts,” says Joseph Conlon, a technical adviser to the American Mosquito Control Association in Florida. “You’ve got the government rightfully trying to cut budgets across the board, but down here in Florida, the place would be uninhabitable without mosquito control.”
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If the chemicals are done correctly, then yes, that’s part of the point of the chemicals, to be inhospitable to mosquitoes and other disease vectors.
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Indeed, I see a huge market for IVF surrogacy opening up in the north. Also sperm banking. Aspiring entrepreneurs, take note.
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You know, a thought struck me that summarized my permanent dissatisfaction with the US. Representatives engage in bad faith governance that demonstratably harm us all more than if they just went around straight up mugging people, yet they’re able to walk away. They are able to pillage cities, ruin lives, and then move on to other ventures freely.
Yes we can vote them out (with great effort), but even if we do they never really get held accountable for anything they did. They just walk into new jobs with their new connections.
I think we’ve crossed a threshold where we should be saying “Jesus Christ, our representatives are ruining people and should be held personally accountable for it.” But there are no laws against exploiting your constituents in certain ways, and I have no idea how we would create a legal framework to assign liability for damages to bad governance and seek reparations appropriately. I’m scared that the answer is to never end up in a situation where you’d need a system to address widespread bad governance, and that our nation is locked in a death spiral where we no longer have any control.
/rant
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