Thursday, April 20, 2017

They Breed 'em Big in Texas

The unpredictable weather patterns stimulated by climate change affect infectious diseases, as well as chronic ones. Warmer weather encourages food-borne organisms like salmonella to multiply more rapidly, and warmer seas foster the growth of bacteria like Vibrio that make oysters unsafe to eat. Spikes in heat and humidity have less visible effects, too, changing the numbers and distribution of the insect intermediaries that carry diseases to people.
from the NYTimes 


They breed ‘em big in Texas, those mosquitoes that compel
The folks there to wear Kevlar all the skeeter bites to quell.
But just when things got quiet and the skeeters were subdued
That global warming devil came along to see them screwed.
It didn’t freeze all winter and the rains came early, too --
And now the skeeters zoom about like it was World War Two!
They pass along diseases with a generous disdain
Of all the woe they’re giving and the unremitting pain.
Now Texas is the tropics -- I guess yellow jack will spread
And who needs all those oil wells when the populace is dead?





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