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E-book Mosquitopia : The Place of Pests in a Healthy World
Global warming is ushering us into a new mosquito epoch. Ready or not, mos-quitoes are coming faster than before, both indigenous and non-, human-biting and not, disease-carrying and sometimes–disease-carrying. What are we to do with these buzzing creatures, and what has been done with them so far? Usually perceived as a pest or at least as a nuisance, their mere presence often prompts us to take action. Are we able to control, or locally exterminate them, and with what side effects? Or is it more realistic to admit that the three most threatening mosquito genera—the disease carrying Aedes, Anopheles and Culex—are really controlling us? In recent years, yellow fever has kept spreading even as malaria has been retreating, but over half of the world’s population is still exposed to these and other dangerous mosquito-carried diseases which also include dengue, West Nile, chikungunya and Zika. Control them we should; we must do, if we are to avoid the next pandemic and survive our mosquito-borne Anthropocene. COVID-19 has been humanity’s latest collective horror, but across deep time, and likely into the foreseeable future, mosquitoes will be responsible for inf lict-ing incalculably greater degrees of suffering and anguish.
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