From which side of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s mouth should we understand Climate Change’s role in the rapid spreading of tick and mosquito infections? Our public health officials should offer more clarity about Climate Change and public health when communicating to the public.

The report’s abstract does not mention Climate Change, nor does the CDC public information page on the study: “Illnesses on the rise From mosquito, tick, and flea bites”.

In two of our major publications, the same CDC official seems to highlight the importance of Climate Change in the recent spread of vectorborne diseases in one paper and in the other paper shies away from this position.
  • ·         From The Washington Post: “Climate change, which experts say can exacerbate many public health threats, also plays an important role, allowing mosquitoes and ticks to thrive in warmer temperatures, said Lyle Petersen, director of the CDC's Division of Vector-Borne Diseases, which produced the report”
  • ·         From The New York Times: “But the author, Dr. Lyle R. Petersen, the agency’s director of vector-borne diseases, declined to link the increase to the politically fraught issue of climate change, and the report does not mention climate change or global warming.” 


In our local Rochester media, we see a little more clarity about the significance of the CDC report and Climate Change. Both The Post and WHEC Rochester use this quote: “The biggest factor behind the boom is climate change, according to Dr. Emil Lesho at Rochester Regional Health. He said that as warmer temperatures spread north, mosquitos and ticks are traveling with it.”

Outside this new study, the CDC understands fully the connection between Climate Change and the rise in “Diseases Carried by Vectors”:

“Climate is one of the factors that influence the distribution of diseases borne by vectors (such as fleas, ticks, and mosquitoes, which spread pathogens that cause illness). The geographic and seasonal distribution of vector populations, and the diseases they can carry, depends not only on climate but also on land use, socioeconomic and cultural factors, pest control, access to health care, and human responses to disease risk, among other factors. Daily, seasonal, or year-to-year climate variability can sometimes result in vector/pathogen adaptation and shifts or expansions in their geographic ranges. Such shifts can alter disease incidence depending on vector-host interaction, host immunity, and pathogen evolution. North Americans are currently at risk from numerous vector-borne diseases, including Lyme, dengue fever, West Nile virus disease, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, plague, and tularemia. Vector-borne pathogens not currently found in the United States, such as chikungunya, Chagas disease, and Rift Valley fever viruses, are also threats.” (Diseases Carried by Vectors, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)

The New York State Department of Health understands the Health Impacts from Weather and Climate, where vectorborne diseases like Lyme Disease and West Nile Virus are affected by Climate Change. And so does our own City’s climate plan:

“Impacts to human health and equity. Climate change will have a variety of public health consequences, including heat-related illnesses, allergies, asthma, water and food borne illnesses, cardiovascular disease, and others. The risk of some diseases carried by insects may increase. The ticks that transmit Lyme disease are active when temperatures are above 45°F. Warmer winters could lengthen the season during which ticks can become infected or people can be exposed to the ticks. Higher temperatures would also expand the area that is warm enough for the Asian tiger mosquito, a common carrier of West Nile virus. Climate change may also exacerbate heat related and respiratory illnesses.” (Page 4, Climate Action Plan)

So, why doesn’t the new CDC study reflect what most experts (even themselves) know about Climate Change and vectorborne diseases?

One of the messages that the CDC seems to be communicating in our troubling climate science times is that only at the local level can we solve vectorborne diseases. In this view, our local agencies and the public need to get on the ball—spray more pesticides, stay inside, etc.

But if Climate Change is one of the major reasons why more people are being bitten by more insects in more regions (and it is), then part of the solution can only be achieved at the federal and worldwide levels. We cannot spray our way out of vectorborne diseases (although the pesticide companies would love this notion to take root in our heads). We need to stop the conditions that allow more vectorborne diseases into previously cooler areas. We need to decrease the heavy flooding caused by Climate Change, which increases the spread of insects in areas like ours, and stop the northward warming trend that tropical-disease carrying insects love so much.

In other words, we need to address Climate Change. All our media need to convey to the public the connections among the consequences of Climate Change—not just through liberal strongholds. What is happening in the USA with the new disrespect for science, especially climate science, is probably happening in other nations. But certainly not to the same extent as here in the USA under the Trump administration, since most nations are scrambling to preserve the legitimacy of the Paris Accord. 

If we don’t solve our present politicalizing of science and trying to adapt to changes in our environment through a contorted view of reality, we are going to be trying to solve the problem without getting at the root cause. We’ll be trying to put out a fire in our stove, while our house burns down.

We and our public agencies need to get on the same page, where 97% of climate scientist agree that Climate Change is happening, and we are the cause. [See “Scientific consensus: Earth's climate is warming”, NASA Global Climate Change.]  We are running out of time:   

Earth’s atmosphere just crossed another troubling climate change threshold For the first time since humans have been monitoring, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide have exceeded 410 parts per million averaged across an entire month, a threshold that pushes the planet ever closer to warming beyond levels that scientists and the international community have deemed “safe.” The reading from the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii finds that concentrations of the climate-warming gas averaged above 410 parts per million throughout April. The first time readings crossed 410 at all occurred on April 18, 2017, or just about a year ago. Carbon dioxide concentrations — whose “greenhouse gas effect” traps heat and drives climate change — were around 280 parts per million circa 1880, at the dawn of the industrial revolution. They’re now 46 percent higher. (May 3, 2018) The Washington Post [more on Climate Change in our area]


Time passes.