re: "Do not go to Florida"

From: Derek Glidden (dglidden@geocities.com)
Date: Sat Sep 20 1997 - 23:29:39 PDT


Date: Sun, 21 Sep 1997 02:29:39 -0400
From: Derek Glidden <dglidden@geocities.com>
To: cp@opus.hpl.hp.com
Message-Id: <aabcdefg3624$foo@default>
Subject: re: "Do not go to Florida"

Matt said:

"Whatever you do, DO NOT GO TO FLORIDA. If you have been watching the
news lately, you may have heard about the DEADLY disease (I do not
recall the name of it) that mosquitos there are carrying, and how
doctors can do very little or nothing to save the life of someone who
gets bitten and contracts the disease. People and businesses in ...."

Whoa, whoa, whoa!!! Hey, hold on there! Ok, let's try to clarify
things a bit. The Anopheles mosquito is the one that likes to carry
diseases like Malaria and Encephalitis and stuff like that and is native
(or habitated) to Florida. About every two or three years an
"Encephalitis outbreak" occurs of a few cases, and these are usually
very localized. Yeah, this sounds scary, but somewhere around the same
number of people who die from Encephalitis each year also die in Florida
from lightning strikes or shark attacks. Does this mean don't visit
Florida? No. It just means be careful, just like you would any other
time anywhere else.

Matt, nothing personal, but, I mean, you're just as likely to get eaten
by an alligator or slip and fall and crack your skull open against a log
in a CP bog as you are to get bitten by an Anopheles carrying
Encephalitis. And even if you do (and that's a pretty friggin huge
"if," relatively speaking.) doctors generally *can* treat you as long as
you recognize the symptoms. I'd love to know what you've been
reading/watching that seems to have Florida in such a state of paralysis
from moquitos. (I mean, just last night I managed to trap a mosquito in
my bedsheets and get bitten on the legs half a dozen times, and *that*
after spending half the day tromping through bogs in Orlando and getting
bitten who knows how many times!) It's just "something that happens" in
this part of the USA, like being eaten by a tiger in S. Africa or mugged
in NJ... Please don't scare any potential visitors away.

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