I got my second dose of the Covid vaccine yesterday, so I’m sort of feeling like the crud on the bottom of the trash can that flies develop in. That does not mean that I regret getting it. It just means I want to pretend to be a cicada and crawl in a deep dark hole for a few years. Or at least until tomorrow. I’ll get over it. However, it does bring up a great point about protecting yourself and your customers from diseases. Particularly, mosquito and tick diseases.
The National Pest Management Association puts out a daily round-up of all the pest-related news they find. The last one had 21 links to articles, ten of them on ticks and four on mosquitoes. All that from one day!
Doing a quick search comes up with hundreds of news-related mosquito articles. Here are some highlights:
Weather – we know it has an impact, particularly temperature and rainfall or moisture.
Lots of popular articles on how to avoid getting bitten. Some good, some not so much. (Seriously people, don’t make your own insect repellent, follow the CDC guidance.)
Diseases – starting to show up where testing is occurring.
Widespread control efforts are starting in some communities.
New research – what if we could make females sterile so they can’t lay viable eggs?
Bottom line – it’s mosquito season. With the warming temperatures and a lot of moisture in many areas, mosquitoes are out looking for a few good people to bite. It’s too early to tell what kind of disease numbers we will see compared to previous years, but putting management and prevention strategies in place now can reduce the risk.
Talking ticks: even more news articles than mosquitoes for the past seven days. I didn’t keep a list, but it looks like there is a news article from just about every state across the US. A sampling of what came up:
“Experts” predict a bad tick year.
It’s not just Lyme – Babesiosis and Rocky Mountain spotted fever just hit the news and there are plenty more tick-borne diseases to worry about.
Citizen science projects – it’s hard to monitor for ticks, they develop over multiple years and have multiple hosts. Researchers can only do so much so the public can be a big help.
Prevention is needed and the situation isn’t hopeless, there is plenty that individuals can do to protect themselves and treatment strategies to reduce the overall number of ticks.
And of course there are good ways of doing it and not so good ways of doing it.
Bottom line – ticks are expanding their ranges and numbers are likely to be up this year compared to previous years. Tick treatments can reduce, but not eliminate ticks. Take precautions and wear repellent when you are outdoors.
There has been a lot in the news about ticks and mosquitoes, it’s practically every day or even multiple times a day I’ve had one or both hit my newsfeed in the last month.
Just like Covid, you can protect yourself and reduce the risk of encountering these pests, and reduce the risk of contracting one of the diseases they vector.
While I pretend to be a cockroach and crawl in a nice, small, dark hole, be safe out there folks and if you want to learn more about improving your tick or mosquito programs, give us a shout here!
Lagniappe - head on over to Paisley, OR in July for their annual Mosquito Festival. Because...why not? :)