As promised — no, as feared — Zika has come ashore, invading Florida, most likely from Latin America, replicating the first wave of a map from a science fiction movie. Soon, because we are mobile and restless, it could be everywhere.
What emerged out of a Ugandan rainforest, a virus that sickens some adults with aches and rashes but is linked to horrific deformities to babies in the womb, has come to America the modern way: not through the vampiric work of infected flying insects, but probably on the wings of Boeing jets, or aboard a luxury cruise ship.
(Tom Jackson/Photo)
Somebody visited someplace where Zika is rampant, picked it up and came home, possibly — because the symptoms in adults often are too subtle to notice — without knowing he was sick.
But now that it’s here, it’s most likely mosquitos — specifically the aggressive, daylight-active Aedes (from the Greek for “odious”) aegypti — that will enable its spread.
The good news, to the extent that anything regarding Zika can be regarded as good, is that as of late last week, reports of the virus being spread by mosquitos remained contained to Miami. Otherwise, Zika cases across the state, including about a half-dozen in Pasco County and 10 in Hillsborough County, are evidently travel-related.
That, of course, could change overnight. An infected person back from vacation goes out for the night, suffers a bite, and what started as an exotic respite in Belize or St. Martin triggers an outbreak back home.
Which is why, more than ever, we need to know what’s going on at the Pasco County Mosquito Control District. To be sure, we remain on the front line of beating back the menace of the opportunistic Aedes aegypti, which uses our bad — or at least risky — habits to its reproductive advantage.
Mosquitos rely on collections of still water for egg-laying and early stage development. While its cousins prefer natural collection points, such as water lettuce, water hyacinths, ditches and tidal puddles, Aedes aegypti seeks out human-caused pools, everything from discarded tires to bird baths to mop buckets to the kids’ beach toys.
If it’s outside and it’ll hold water, it’s even money the female Aedes aegypti considers it a nursery.
Everybody who’s spent time in the South, especially Florida, already knows — or ought to know — this. Oddly, though, it’s usually not until reports of some alarming public health menace makes the news that most of us take a mental inventory of the possible collection sites under our jurisdiction.
Well, that and you’re under the icy, cobalt gaze of entomologist Dennis Moore, Pasco’s mosquito control director, who has three words for us: “Drain and cover.”
I might have gone with “Dump and cover,” because it sounds more like “duck and cover,” but the message is the same. We should deny Zika’s “vector” mosquito breeding space wherever we can, but because we can’t count on our neighbors, we should cover ourselves (with clothes and effective insect repellant) and our residences (with screens in good repair).
Moore says this even as the part of the district’s program with which we are most familiar — the distinctly orange spray trucks — prepare for another night of going to war with mosquitos out for a “blood meal.”
What we might not know, but find reassuring, is the district also employs airborne tactics — a pair of low-flying Aztec airplanes and a couple of helicopters — to attack mosquitos in rural and coastal areas in their larval stage; airboats to kill off lake and pond vegetation that collects water; amphibious vehicles to go where airboats cannot go; and, where vehicular intervention or mass attacks are impractical, handheld foggers for that personal touch.
What we also might not know, but find fascinating, is that craftsmen, welders and mechanics working for the district fabricate much of what Pasco’s mosquito hunters use. This is not due to a lack of off-the-shelf stuff, Moore says, but because his people can take the elemental parts — a Briggs & Stratton engine and a sprayer, for instance — and create the blower linkage that makes a better, cheaper mosquito killer.
“And, when it breaks,” Moore says, “we know how to fix it, because we built it.”
For instance, those pesticide-holding tanks on the bottoms of the Aztecs? They’re fiberglass sprung from molds fashioned by the machine shop. You can buy them off the rack for about $30,000, Moore explains, but the district’s do-it-themselves tanks cost about one-sixth as much.
Meanwhile, back in the lab, researchers are growing mosquitos, which become tiny wriggling and buzzing lab rats for the testing of various types and combinations of mosquito-specific pesticides and growth-inhibitors.
And, they know where to spray because of a full-time trapping program.
Why the fussiness? Because the Pasco Mosquito Control District is an agency unto itself, with a board (two of whom face re-election challengers in November) and a $6 million budget that corresponds with a line item on Pasco property owners’ tax bills.
Being responsible for itself means being able to pivot more quickly when conditions change. Nobody has to go to the county commission for an emergency budget adjustment.
On that front, nothing changes until it does, Moore says, “and then, it’ll change fast and a lot.”
To meet the challenge, the agency would add staff and ramp up training, both of which could challenge the district’s bottom line. If that happens, the three-member board will have some choices to make. But they will be their choices, not the choices of a county commission with layers of concerns.
For now, the capable folks at the district will do what they can to make our next barbecue, sidewalk cafe visit, after-work golf getaway or trip to the park as nuisance-free as science can make it.
But, like the man said, they can’t do it alone, and Zika is out there. Drain and cover, y’all. Drain and cover.
Tom Jackson, a resident of New Tampa, is interested in your ideas. To reach him, email .
Published August 10, 2016