22 ms·
First cases of malaria in the US in 20 years
- prometheus76 3y ago[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dolni 3y agoYeah. Like they picked it up at a garage sale on the cheap. Be on the lookout for malaria appraisals on coming episodes of the Antiques Roadshow! edit: wow, jokes are not well-received I guess
- dfxm12 3y agoWhat's the issue? It is correctly used in the headline...
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y agoIsn't contract usually used? One does not "acquire cancer" or "acquire STDs". Why would one "aquire Malaria"? You usually aquire cars and houses and companies and a taste for coffee and good things - not Malaria.
- blueflow 3y agoAquiring is a more generic term than you think. Its the Latin word for "getting something".
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- morsch 3y agohttps://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=acquired%20malaria,contracted%20malaria https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=...
- prometheus76 3y agoAnd now we've arrived at the debate behind the Third Edition of Webster's Dictionary. Are dictionaries to be a record of historic usage, or current usage? The Third Edition leaned completely in the direction of the the latter, and caused a lot of controversy in the dictionary world. I tend to lean towards the former view on how dictionaries should function, or else we'll lose all ability to understand historic texts as definitions drift over time. The poignant example being "acquire", which historically implied "getting by one's own efforts" but has drifted to be used more passively now.
- dfxm12 3y agoI don't know what is usually used, but I do know that it is correct to say that you acquire diseases that you aren't born with, like malaria. So, yes, one does certainly acquire STDs. It depends with cancer. Some cancers are inherited, some are acquired. Yes, you can also acquire a car, but I'm not sure why that might lead one to think that "acquired malaria" is incorrect...
- prometheus76 3y ago"Acquiring" usually implies "by one's own efforts" rather than being infected with a disease.
- dfxm12 3y agoI'm not sure how "to gain" excludes gaining a disease. In any case, as I've alluded to before, other uses of acquire don't make the definition of developing a disease you weren't born with any less legitimate. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- macNchz 3y ago> One does not … “acquire STDs” AIDS stands for “acquired immunodeficiency syndrome”.
- itsmartapuntocm 3y agoMaybe to emphasize the point that it was acquired from mosquitos in the US.
- Symmetry 3y agoYes. The word "contract" would be ambiguous between the people being infected with malaria in the US or them developing symptoms in the US after having been first infected while abroad. Using "acquire" doesn't present that ambiguity.
- epistasis 3y agoPersonally, I encounter "acquire" more often than "contract," and I spend a good chunk of my work week on infectious disease lately.
- js8 3y agoWhen a company contracts another company, the latter will eventually go away after it's dealt with, but when a company is acquired, it will stay forever. So I guess diseases are similar? :-)
- _Microft 3y agoYes - another example is in the acronym AIDS which stands for „Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome“.
- prometheus76 3y agoAc*quire" (?), v. t. [imp. & p. p. Acquired (?); p. pr. & vb. n. Acquiring (?).] [L. acquirere, acquisitum; ad + quarere to seek for. In OE. was a verb aqueren, fr. the same, through OF. aquerre. See Quest..] To gain, usually by one's own exertions; to get as one's own; as, to acquire a title, riches, knowledge, skill, good or bad habits. "usually by one's own exertions" does not fit contracting a disease or being infected.
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago> "usually by one's own exertions" does not fit contracting a disease or being infected. In professional settings, terms get chosen for ability to reliably convey specific scenarios. I suspect that ability better determines their adoption, rather than how they might align with language norms of a particular decade.
- ljf 3y agoPeople acquire disabilities: https://employersforchange.ie/Acquired-Disabilities#:~:text=An%20'acquired'%20disability%20is%20a,can%20be%20visible%20and%20invisible https://employersforchange.ie/Acquired-Disabilities#:~:text=.... The important bit in your wording above isn't the 'by ones own exertions' but: "to get as one's own" Since these are people who caught malaria in the USA, rather than elsewhere and simply travelled here, the wording makes good sense.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- taneq 3y agoProbably bought it on eBay. (I just checked and no immediate hits for "malaria virus sample" on eBay so probably not, hope I don't get a visit from the good people at Border Force for this. :P )
- justinsaything 3y ago[flagged]
- prometheus76 3y agoI'm not wasting time. I posted the definition I am familiar with elsewhere in the thread. Typically, "acquired" implies getting by one's own effort, which doesn't apply to an infection with disease.
- _Microft 3y agoGoogle for „acquire a disease“ or „acquired disease“.
- justinsaything 3y ago[flagged]
- withinboredom 3y ago[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ndsipa_pomu 3y agoWhat relevance does that have to reports of locally acquired malaria?
- gruez 3y agoFrom the article: >Although about 2,000 people infected with malaria turn up in the US health care system every year, those cases are all linked to travel outside the US. Neither those involved in the Florida cases nor the Texas case had traveled. That means in both states, the infection was acquired within US borders.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- laydn 3y agoJust as a reminder, in 2021 there were close to 250 million estimated malaria cases worldwide, with an estimated ~600.000 deaths according to WHO, so it is very much a concern for the world even though it was eradicated in the USA
- xyzzy_plugh 3y agoI mean it clearly hasn't been eradicated in the USA? By comparison in 2021 there were twice as many COVID deaths.
- cvoss 3y agoThe CDC reports that, previously, the last case of malaria to be "locally acquired" in the US was 2003. [0] See also [1] for a history of the effort to eliminate malaria in the US, which took place primarily from 1947 - 1952. [0] https://emergency.cdc.gov/han/2023/han00494.asp https://emergency.cdc.gov/han/2023/han00494.asp [1] https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/history/elimination_us.html https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/history/elimination_us.htm...
- pixl97 3y agoWas and is are two different things. Also the US military warned years ago that increased climate temperature would bring back malaria to the states, and here we are.
- horsawlarway 3y agoMy wife's phd research 10 years ago was confirming those original warnings. Literally - confirming the change in habitat range for Aedes Aegypti and Anopheles Darlingi (mosquitos, also a malaria/yellow fever/dengue/zika vector) across both south/central America and the southern US in response to changing climate. It's absolutely coming back to the US. Mosquitos are moving north to stay in their optimal temperature range as the climate warms. edit: My wife saw my comment and got annoyed that I listed the wrong subspecies. Updated to include Anopheles Darlingi.
- mensetmanusman 3y agoHard to overstate how mosquitoes are the deadliest creature known to man: https://www.cdc.gov/globalhealth/stories/2019/world-deadliest-animal.html https://www.cdc.gov/globalhealth/stories/2019/world-deadlies...
- hulitu 3y agoI thought the man is "the deadliest creature known to man". /s
- dgb23 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deadliest_animals_to_humans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deadliest_animals_to_h... Seems we're second.
- meepmorp 3y agoIf/when we move into first place, nobody will be left to update the Wikipedia page.
- agnosticmantis 3y agoEven more surprised to see dogs in the fourth spot (third according to BBC). Are most of these pets or stray dogs?
- ori_prior 3y agoBreak out the DDT! https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/january-2022/widespread-use-ddt-malaria-control-worries-environmentalist https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/january-2022/wides...
- josephcsible 3y agoI wonder how many people who died of malaria would still be alive today had DDT never been banned.
- nukeman 3y agoTough to say. Not all countries have total bans on DDT, and even the Stockholm Convention exempted vector control from the ban on certain organochlorine compounds. In any case, DDT-resistant mosquitoes were already starting to occur in the 1960s due to the unrestricted spraying. Spraying has mostly continued as indoor residual spraying, which still seems to be quite effective.
- WeylandYutani 3y agoIn the West nobody dies from malaria because we have a healthcare system. So DDT is unnecessary. Africa is another matter entirely. For centuries no white man made it further than the beach until an effective medicine was invented.
- b112 3y agoDDT is indeed a problem, but its first worries are now not entirely true. In the 90s it was discovered that fruitflies now can metabolize DDT, so it can be broken down (and still used in larger concentrations to kill them) Not advocating DDT use, just a FYI. It ws thought to "never be broken down"
- taneq 3y agoNo need to be that dramatic about it, just make sure you've had a safe amount of gin and tonic!
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- throwaway106382 3y ago[flagged]
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> sure this has absolutely nothing to do the hundreds of million of genetically modified mosquitos that were released into Florida by the Bill gates funded biotech firm Oxitec It does, as in they both have a common cause: rising temperatures making the United States more habitable for malaria.
- heliodor 3y agoIf you have something to say, please state it in a direct manner.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- narrator 3y agoSince we're down here in the bottom most flagged comment, what I like to call "Hacker News Conspiracy Theorist Edition", I think OP's conspiracy theory works like this. It's similar to the Wuhan lab. 1. Say you are running a mosquito breeding factory to help humanity. 2. Import mosquitos from subsaharan africa 3. Say you checked every mosquito for Malaria. 4. Pay a subcontractor a lot of money to not do this, but make it look like a mistake or lazyness or incompetence or a mixup. 5. Deny everything when asked. Deny when whistleblower leaks information. Say it was a mistake and an oversight when physical proof of malaria mosquitos are discovered in your facility and that you've been breeding them. Mysterious bad things happen to subcontractor who are likely whistleblowers. 6. 80% of the population will believe you unconditionally and flag anyone on HN who dares not believe you.
- ceejayoz 3y agoThat's not how mosquito breeding works. #3 would be an absurdly insane assertion, and unnecessary; malaria is transported by adult female mosquitos from one infected human to another human. These programs release male mosquito eggs from many-generations-old captive populations, which is not how malaria spreads.
- paxys 3y agoI'm more surprised that there have been no malaria cases in the US in 20 years. It isn't exactly a disease like Ebola or Polio that's on the brink of extinction. Hundreds of millions suffer from it worldwide every year.
- ceejayoz 3y agoThere've been cases, they just haven't gotten it here, because the local mosquito populations aren't biting infected people given its rarity. Sounds like that's changing. Goodie.
- sli 3y agoYeah, this is the first of probably a few diseases that will be coming back to, among others, the US as global temperatures rise.
- sproketboy 3y ago[dead]
- nemo44x 3y ago[flagged]
- ceejayoz 3y agoCorrect. It has nothing to do with that.
- nemo44x 3y ago[flagged]
- ceejayoz 3y agoYes, it's truly shocking that the places with the most mosquitos are a) where they try to reduce mosquito populations and b) where mosquito-borne disease pop up. Pasteur disproved spontaneous generation in the 1800s.
- nemo44x 3y agoAre these mosquitos made in the same labs or near that malaria testing is being done? Does reducing this specific type of mosquito in a region allow another type that has been quietly carrying the disease to flourish and expand habitat? The fact you're not curious at all is strange. There's a lot of ways manmade meddling could create unforeseen side effects (it happens all the time) or accidents - did someone accidentally mix the mosquito batches up? Was there cross contamination? Skepticism is a good thing but it's important to be skeptical of the scientists too.
- kdmccormick 3y agoCuriosity is different than a destructively smug confidence that experts are wrong. Curiosity: "I am curious if any studies have been done to measure whether GM mosquitos could actually the spread of malaria, given that they were released in the two areas with new malaria cases." Smug confidence: "I'm SURE it wasn't that tricky science experiment they're doing with GM mosquitos."
- paxys 3y agoRising temperatures + uncontrolled swampland. This is as good a call as any that states need to take public health seriously, but I doubt anything will really change.
- vuln 3y agoI’ll bite. Which affected states are not taking public health seriously? How could they take public health more seriously and what direct impact would it have on this issue?
- paxys 3y agoHere's the first one I could find after 10 seconds of Googling: Florida surgeon general released altered covid vaccine data to show higher risk of death – https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/25/health/florida-covid-vaccine-analysis-ladapo/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/25/health/florida-covid-vaccine-...
- vuln 3y agoWouldn’t this be an example of being pro heath and pro vaccine. The science said it was a pandemic of the unvaccinated and the unvaccinated were at a higher risk of Covid infection, comorbidities be damned. Looks like the AG followed the science consensus and removed a study that was not peer reviewed nor replicated in any confirming matter. This is only “news” because of the state and its current government’s party.
- Symmetry 3y agoMalaria was endemic in the US south of the Mason Dixon Line until the middle of the 20th century and it's had a huge effect on our history - from playing a part in the decimation of native populations to why slavery only took hold in some places to the difficulties of some Union offensives in the Civil War. Charles Mann wrote a great book, 1493, on the Colombian Exchange which I'd highly recommend. The introduction of malaria to the Americas is one underappreciated aspect of that he introduced me to.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- js2 3y ago> Malaria was endemic in the US south And is why the CDC is in Atlanta.
- quickthrowman 3y agoHookworm was also a huge problem in the Southern US, up to 40% of people living there were infected with hookworm. Hookworm infestations make people tired and unable to work, but are not fatal. John Rockefeller spearheaded and funded a campaign to eradicate hookworm, which was largely successful in promoting better sanitation to prevent hookworms from entering people. Hookworms reproduce in the intestinal tract and then lay eggs, which are passed through the body inside feces. They enter the body though the feet, and the cycle starts over. Knowing this, a plan was devised to provide outhouses, shoes, and hookworm treatment to infected people, and it was successful in greatly reducing hookworm infections. Like malaria, hookworm is still around and able to infect people. https://resource.rockarch.org/story/public-health-how-the-fight-against-hookworm-helped-build-a-system/ https://resource.rockarch.org/story/public-health-how-the-fi...
- giardini 3y ago[flagged]
- refurb 3y agoPresumably the original infection was brought into the US? I can't imagine a disease reservoir in the US when there hasn't been a case in 20 years.
- saiya-jin 3y agoWell, western world may start treating this mankind's scourge with enough priority finally, apparently poor people suffering and dying is not concerning enough. Btw in southern Europe we are starting to face similar issue due to global climate change, aka warming.
- josephcsible 3y ago[flagged]
- DropInIn 3y agoI believe the position is actually that even more would be dying if we let the animals populations decline too much.
- nukeman 3y agoThe 1972 ban was in the United States. It wasn’t global, and even the Stockholm Convention allows for vector control using DDT. In any case, starting in the 1960s DDT-resistant mosquitos began to emerge, so continued non-targeted spraying likely would’ve become ineffective sometime in the 1980s.
- bluGill 3y agoThe western world has been working on it for a long time. It was one of Bill Gate's primary concerns for a couple decades. There have been several vaccine attempts that failed over the years. Just yesterday I was reading about a vaccine that is now approved in some countries, I'm hoping it works out and is approved here so I can get mine.
- dotnet00 3y agoThe west already has been working on a malaria vaccine for a while now, which has been gradually earning public use authorizations. Not to mention actually authorizing genetic tampering to limit mosquito populations and potentially even prevent them from being able to spread the disease outright. I think that being willing to risk genetic tampering indicates a pretty serious commitment to solving the problem.
- aaron695 3y ago[dead]
- eggy 3y ago[flagged]
- DropInIn 3y agohttps://climatechange.lta.org/climate-impacts/migrating-species/ https://climatechange.lta.org/climate-impacts/migrating-spec... I'm guessing you have been actively ignoring the thousands of news articles about the expected animal migrations that have been released over the last decade, eh?
- eggy 3y agoYou guessed wrong. I am not ignoring "thousands of news articles about the expected animal migrations", but this is not my field and that is why I put the question of the additive factor of illegal immigration of millions across our Southern border from areas known to have Malaria coupled with climate change of a few degrees. Also, "expected migrations" not confirmed as directly caused by climate change of a few degrees, correct? And these "thousands of news articles" (not science journals or papers?) factored in more than just climate change? On the topic of news articles, I've read of the coming ice age in the 70s, so I wouldn't base most of my knowledge on news articles.
- DropInIn 3y agoWow, the right wing fascist ideology drips off that comment.... Using so many little whistles it's astounding... Y'all are getting good at the game... That or you're one of the fools they've played the game against....
- eggy 3y agoPlease refrain from ad hominem attacks and labeling everything "right wing fascist". It's a knee-jerk reaction without thought and an insult to all who have suffered under true fascism. I asked a question in my original reply. I did not discount climate change, but only asked if millions of people fleeing horrible situations, may also be a contributing cause given Malaria is not usually found in the US per the article of the OP. Not everything is a left-right, US culture war. There are more and more Haitian immigrants also crossing illegally from our Southern border. On the CDC map, Haiti is a hot area like a lot of places in Mexico, Cental and South America, Africa and SE Asia https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/malaria_worldwide/impact.html https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/malaria_worldwide/impact.html So you have read "thousands of articles" eh?
- ChrisArchitect 3y agoThe 5-6 posts about this when it was news weren't good enough?
- dang 3y agoDid any threads about it get significant attention? That's the criterion we use for reposts.
- ChrisArchitect 3y agoUnderstood. One or two stories being missed, fairplay. Wondering if 5-6 being missed indicates its not really worthy of attention/a bit weird to get attn weeks later. :\
- stolenmerch 3y agoCould someone with more expertise and background explain in *good faith* how likely this may or may not be related to the company Oxitec releasing 2.4 billion mosquitos in Florida to reduce tropical disease? I realize they only released non-biting Aedes aegypti male mosquitoes, but I'd like to hear how possible it is the safety concerns by critics were valid and some females survived. Is it impossible this is related? If not, what are the chances that it is related? https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/why-the-us-plans-to-release-24-billion-genetically-modified-mosquitoes-180979833/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/why-the-us-plans-t...
- ceejayoz 3y agoIt's impossible, because those programs release male mosquito eggs (https://www.oxitec.com/en/news/just-add-water-oxitecs-new-friendly-mosquito-mini-capsule-technology-rapidly-suppresses-95-of-disease-spreading-aedes-aegypti-in-brazil-trial https://www.oxitec.com/en/news/just-add-water-oxitecs-new-fr...), in which malaria does not live. Malaria is picked up by adult female mosquitos when they bite; there has to be a human reservoir for them to get it from.
- stolenmerch 3y agoThanks for the response. Yeah, that's what I had already found out. Just trying to gain a confidence level of how likely it is female offspring of Friendly™ males and pest females actually survive and carry disease. If it's 100% impossible then great. If there's a small chance the self-limiting gene actually does NOT disrupt development in some mosquitos and they live on to carry disease, I'd like to form an educated opinion on how small that chance is. I also see the self-limiting gene can be turned off with tetracycline. I know they released Aedes aegypti, which typically doesn't carry malaria but seems like it can. Just trying to gain an informed opinion without swaying into absolutes one way or the other. https://www.oxitec.com/en/our-technology#:~:text=Our%20Friendly%E2%84%A2%20Aedes%20aegypti,those%20original%20mosquitoes%20ever%20since https://www.oxitec.com/en/our-technology#:~:text=Our%20Frien...!
- deleted 3y ago
- toss1 3y agoMeanwhile, the country of Belize, about 800mi south of LA or TX, has been declared Malaria-Free by the WHO, after a record of zero indigenous cases since 2019 [0],"with rigorous, credible evidence" that the there has been no transmission of malaria within the country for at least three consecutive years. The anti-science and ant-public-health ranting in the US is evidently having an effect. [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-65974440 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-65974440
- boeingUH60 3y agoYour rant makes no sense. How exactly is anti-science sentiment the cause of the first local malaria case detected in 20 years? It’s not like there’s a vaccine approved for use in the US, or that malaria is something that spreads as easily as Covid.. And sure, you compared to Belize, an island country with much limited movement compared to the US.
- greydius 3y agoBelize is not an island.
- boeingUH60 3y agoOops, I stand corrected. Still a relatively small country through.
- toss1 3y agoBelize is not an island. Anti-science is not limited to anti-vaccines, it also encompasses all the public health measures, supposedly being a limitation on "freedom" and "bodily autonomy", claimed to be steppingstones to authoritarianism - all by people who want absolute 'freedumb', and all the benefits of living in a complex society but zero of the responsibilities of maintaining the complex society. I will grant that the connection here is more tenuous than a herd of anti-vaxxers making a measles cluster and spreading it. But the broad anti-science thrust both suppresses general public health measures, and in openly "anti-woke" states like Florida & Texas, the administrations actively undermine public health measures, even outlawing such measures, and preventing cities/counties from implementing their own. Thus, it is no surprise to find that Texas and Florida are the locus of these infections, and to find that juxtaposed vs Belize successfully eradicating the disease.