Wingnuts: it’s not Brown Children Carrying Disease that you need to Worry About
Climate Change Is Causing Spread of Diseases, Sewage, Invasive Insects
Wingnuts at the border are worried about diseases from refugee children but their unwarranted fears of brown kids are laughable compared to what’s really going on.
Parasites invade the Arctic—and your brain
Warmer temperatures in typically cold regions is causing both rare and common diseases to spread further. Cases of malaria and dengue fever—mostly found in Africa and the Asia-Pacific—are expected to rise as warming temperatures attract mosquitoes, which transmit the diseases, to formerly cold regions. The largest international authority on climate change, the IPCC, said in its 2013 report that “even modest warming may drive large increases in transmission of malaria, if conditions are otherwise suitable.” Certain rare parasites could spread, too. Scientists are still studying the water-borne Naegleria fowleri, known as a brain-eating amoeba, but say its movement farther north could be due to climate change. There were only 34 known cases in the U.S. in the last decade, but it kills nearly 100 percent of the time—including a 9-year-old girl in Kansas last week. Before 2010, half the cases were in southern states, but it’s since been found as far north as Minnesota, Scientific American noted. Other parasites, like the Toxoplasma gondii, carried by animals and known to harm humans with weak immune systems, have moved into even colder areas as far as the Arctic
More: Climate Change Is Causing Spread of Diseases, Sewage, Invasive Insects