A Deadly Mosquito-Borne Illness Is Brewing in the Northeast: EEE kills almost half of its victims,

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A Deadly Mosquito-Borne Illness Is Brewing in the Northeast
EEE kills almost half of its victims, and cases are on the rise

https://onezero.medium.com/a-deadly-mosquito-borne-illness-is-brewing-in-the-northeast-d3283c71c6a0

Oscar Schwartz
Jun 10 · 19 min read

In springtime, when the swamps behind the Mosman’s family home filled with fresh water, Keith, the eldest son, and Scott, his younger brother, would tramp barefoot through vernal pools in search of turtles, snakes, and frogs, returning hours later dotted with mosquito bites from the scourge that bred among the red maple tree roots. It was the 1970s, and Raynham, Massachusetts, where the Mosmans lived, was still a rural town. As the boys grew older, paddocks gave way to strip malls, apple orchards to housing developments. One year, their father filled the swamp in the backyard to build a swimming pool.

By the time Keith and Scott started their own families, the area was more or less a satellite suburb of Boston. But while the landscape of their childhood summers disappeared, the mosquitoes didn’t. They would still descend in June and not let up biting until the first frost in mid-fall. Keith and Scott both worked outside, so mosquitoes were just a fact of life during the intense, humid summers — a minor nuisance to be endured. Until last year.

On the first Friday of September 2019, Keith received an urgent call from Scott’s girlfriend. His brother had, without warning, collapsed on the floor in a violent seizure, foaming at the mouth. Paramedics had taken him to the ICU at Morton Hospital in Taunton, Massachusetts, where medical staff stabilized him but could not figure out what was causing his rapid deterioration.
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Two days later, Scott was transferred via helicopter to Rhode Island Hospital, where an MRI scan revealed inflammation of the brain. Doctors performed a spinal tap and sent the sample to a lab for testing. Around one week later, a specialist delivered the diagnosis: Scott had contracted the eastern equine encephalitis (EEE) virus, which caused a severe brain infection. How had he caught such a devastating virus? A mosquito bite....................................

[Sanity Claws]

1. I'm scratching a mosquito bite on my leg as I read this.

ugh.

[fwvinson]

15. My wife got hit with this about 5 yr. ago.

It effected her memory and emotions. Medication has helped. But, the memory is still a problem for her.

[2naSalit]

2. There was some kind of encephalitis going around

in the 70s back in that part of the country. We were worried about mosquitoes.

[FirstLight]

3. greeeeaaaat...

who had that on their Apocalypse Bingo card?

[tblue37]

4. K&R for visibility. nt

[mopinko]

5. darwin lives.

file under- sad but true.

i caught wnv in 2002. it was a bitch. fucked me up for a decade.

and it didnt show up on the state test, because they set the level low to hide the outbreak.
later test showed i had it, but it was classic. rash, aches, whole bit.
i was the first case my doc saw, but she recognized it immediately.

[lagomorph777]

16. Governments often set test thresholds to deliberately cause tons of false negatives.

They've done it with Lyme, for example.

[mopinko]

18. the really funny thing, tho

was my doc came down the next day. exact same symptoms.
being a doc, she sent one sample to the state, and another to her lab.
yeah, guess what? so we knew the truth from jump street.
for once, i didnt have to argue w an arbitrary number that i was sick.

[lagomorph777]

21. Ironically, you're very lucky that your doctor got sick.

They tend to be the biggest skeptics / kool-aid drinkers. Seems many of them have not yet accepted that newfangled "germ theory" of sickness.

[mopinko]

23. i could talk all day about docs who told me things that were wrong.

alllllll fucking day.

finally healthy, thx to homemade edibles. and clean livin.

[lagomorph777]

24. That's the only way I found to reduce my Lyme spirochetes

Did you know that doctors refuse to look at live blood for pathogens?

In my case, doing it at home, it's simple to track the advance and retreat of the disease. So fucking obvious and simple. How many spirochetes are in the field of view? More than last month, or fewer?

Diet (giving up meat) brought it down from hundreds to just a handful.

[mopinko]

26. they dont test for toxic chemicals either.

i had exposure to lots of shit in lab jobs i had in/after college. they had nothing but negative test results, and no one ever even suggested such a thing.
even mercury, which i had always played w as a kid, and had to clean up a spill in my college lab once.

[handmade34]

6. ...as I sit here in the Northeast...

[TreasonousBastard]

7. Shit! Here I am in the Northeast, and over 50. But, it's rare and only 30% die...

Another but--

Treatment
There is no approved human vaccine or specific antiviral treatment for EEEV infections. Patients with suspected EEEV disease should be evaluated by a healthcare provider, appropriate serologic and other diagnostic tests ordered, and supportive treatment provided.

https://www.cdc.gov/easternequineencephalitis/tech/symptoms.html

[lagomorph777]

17. Yeah, knowing what CDC has done with Lyme, take this with a grain of salt.

And I'm being charitable.

[Demsrule86]

19. My niece has had Lyme since she was 9 years old...it has ruined her life and will kill her

eventually. She is blind, has diabetes (only in early 30's) and terrible arthritis...terrible pain... and the meds she needs had turned her into an addict. But she could not survive without them...terrible. She and her Mom stayed in Connecticut. I left after graduation and have lived all over. Connecticut has so many cases but it is spreading...and insurance companies have made Lyme a political disease. They have a Lyme vaccine for dogs but not for humans.

[lagomorph777]

22. I'm so sorry for your niece.

I have a family member with Lyme and multiple co-infections and at least one chronic viral infection. Medicine is completely clueless how to deal with this.

[Arkansas Granny]

8. At least I'm not in the NE. I'm a regular mosquito magnet.

There can be 1 mosquito and 100 people and the mosquito will find me and bite me repeatedly.

[I_UndergroundPanther]

9. Yep another mosquito magnet here

I never go out at dusk in the summer I hate fucking mosquitoes. Wish all of them were dead.

[BigmanPigman]

12. Me too...

In southern CA they bite people from the knees down and are really tiny. This has been going on for about 3 years. I get hundreds of bites between June and Oct and look like I have Chicken Pox. I have to wear thigh high pantyhose 24/7 since NOTHING works to stop them.

[Demsrule86]

20. I am one of those people that mosquitos don't bite... I have no idea why. When I lived in Wisconsin,

my family was covered in bites but not me. I asked a doctor why and he said he had no idea but that he wished he had the same thing. The only thing weird about me is I have a low temperature.

[Throckmorton]

10. I had a friend die of it last summer.

she was from East Lyme, CT .

[fleur-de-lisa]

11. Great. Another of the TrumPlagues.

[dalton99a]

25. Trump will call it the China mosquito.

[3Hotdogs]

13. The patients in "Awakenings" were suspected to have contracted a form of EEE.

[Bayard]

14. Eastern equine encephalitis

I vaccinate my horses and donkeys every year for it. First I've every heard of humans getting it. Wonder how hard it would be to adapt the vaccine?

[marmar]

27. .....