An epidemic of West Nile virus, spread by mosquitos, that killed 19 people and hospitalized 216 in Dallas in 2012, “might seem like random bad luck,” says the New York Times Magazine, the unlikely result of a mild winter, warm spring and the heaviest early rainfall in 10 years. But Robert Haley, director of epidemiology at Texas Southwestern Medical Center, “doesn’t think of it as an accident. He considers it a warning.”
“Climate change is turning abnormal weather into a common occurrence … Anything that improves conditions for mosquitoes tips the scales for the diseases they carry as well” — from West Nile virus in Dallas, to dengue fever in Florida in 2009 and Zika virus last summer. Just as climate change can bring hotter and more extreme weather, it can bring new diseases and vectors into areas where they previously could not survive. Former vice president Al Gore says climate change is “disrupting natural ecosystems and giving more of an advantage to microbes.”
“Every new disease feels like a shock,” writes FERN and AI contributor Maryn McKenna, yet mosquitoes have disrupted life in America from the early days of colonization. There was yellow fever in Boston in 1693, in Philadelphia in 1793 and in Memphis in 1878. And there was dengue fever, and malaria. And now, Zika. Said Katharine Hayhoe, director of Texas Tech’s Climate Science Center, “Climate change is a threat multiplier.”