Deadly Encounter
I have just heard on the radio and read in Time Magazine about the West Nile and EEE (Eastern Equine Encephalitic) viruses. It seems that in the Northeast, centered in Eastern Massachusetts, there has been an outbreak of these viruses that has caused some not-insignificant public health concerns. We are headed to Nova Scotia and the surrounding provinces in a few weeks and our friends Mike and Melisa are heading into new England itself a few weeks after that, so I paid attention to the warnings. It seems that most are most prevalently transmitted in the late summer and early fall. Both are encephalitis and/or meningitis viruses that effect the nervous system. Both viruses are borne by the common female mosquito and it only takes one mosquito bite to get infected. The West Nile virus has plenty of nasty symptoms and can cause death and the EEE virus is even worse and carries a 30% fatality rate. There is no vaccine for either and apparently there is very limited therapeutic curatives that can be applied once you get it and are diagnosed. In other words, they are both very scary. Just to put a fine point on it, Dr. Anthony Fauci, America’s top virologist and a controversial high profile figure due especially to his work on the COVID epidemic, has managed to contract West Nile Virus and is recuperating from it as I write this.
We recently visited with Kim’s nephew Will, who is recovering from spinal surgery. He had his fourth and fifth vertebrae fused to eliminate a debilitating neck injury. The way they do that surgery these days is to go in from the front, which means slitting your throat and moving the esophagus and windpipe aside while they work on the spine. That has to be one of the more unpleasant sounding surgical procedures I’ve ever heard of. I was surprised to see him after only a few weeks, feeling much better without his chronic pain and just recovering from what he was calling relatively mild surgical pain. He was very pleased to not be feeling that painful neck sensation that was the root cause of his discomfort for the past 18 months. I was even more surprised to hear him tell us that he and his wife Ashley are hoping to take a vacation before he has to return to work, since he is expecting a rather long time before they can do that once he does return. They have decided to go to Kodiak, Alaska and commune with nature, especially bears. I find that nothing less than nuts. But then, I am especially prone to a fear of bears for one reason or another. Movies like Legends of the Fall and The Revenant did not help my fear. Being mauled by a bear has been high on my animal fear list ever since I spent two years living in Canada. At that time I collected no less than seven books on bear attacks and how to avoid them. At the heart of this extreme fear of bears is my belief that wild animals are especially threatened by size and that makes me a prime target for their attention.
The truth of the matter is that regardless of whether I am right or wrong about what motivates a bear to attack, bears don’t even make the list of the top 20 animals that are deadliest to humans. Among what we consider large wild animals that attack humans, crocodiles, hippos, elephants, lions, tigers, wolves and sharks all rank as bigger perpetrators. Domestic dogs rank very high on the list and snakes certainly seem to have earned their reputation since they are the third deadliest animal to man. But the top two spots are, in this order, mosquitos and other humans. Let’s ignore humans for a moment since most of those actions are less institute and survival oriented and mostly cognitive and intentional acts driven by the weak and evil side of ourselves. But bugs and insects occupy six of the top ten harmful animals to man, with the mosquito solidly in the leading position. They kill 780,000 people per year. The primary causes of death are Zika virus, West Nile virus, Chikungunya virus, Dengue Fever, Malaria, Yellow Fever and something called Lymphatic Filariasis, which is often called Elephantitis and is a grotesquely disfiguring disease (via a transmitted parasite).
I’m sure you have heard me say this before, but I do not like the tropics. One of the things I connect to the tropics are the various insect-borne diseases that most often come from mosquitos, who breed and come from stagnant pools of water, which seem to be all over the place in the tropics. When I think of my first trip to West Africa and specifically Lagos, Nigeria, I remember an evening stroll through a local market where I was torn as to which to fear more, the various pickpockets and thieves on the prowl or the mosquitos landing on and biting anything that moved. When we were in Morocco at the Jemaa-el-Fnaa, which is the large square in Marrakesh, it had a similar crowded commercial vibe, but given the dryness of the environment, there were no mosquitos. I remember thinking that was a damn sight better than Lagos with its mosquitos. As I look at this chart of deadly animals, I note that the fourth deadliest is the Sandfly, so maybe I was wrong to be cavalier while in the Souk.
Kim is forever concerned about varmints in the house out here on the hilltop. We have had an occasional mouse, but nothing that would drive too much concern. Our cleaning crew and several of our guests have encountered scorpions and tarantula spiders. I have been lucky enough to not run into either, but Kim is quite serious about wanting to keep those out of our environment. I don’t see tarantulas on the deadly list because their affect on humans is no worse than a bee sting. But scorpions are a different story. Of the 1,750 species of scorpions, the vast majority of them are relatively harmless to humans, but that said, there are 25 species that can be deadly. They are #9 on the deadliest hit parade, killing 3,500 people per year. You can generally tell the deadly or dangerous ones from the non-lethal types by the thickness of their tail (from whence the poison comes). The thicker the tail, the more poisonous they generally are.
I have known ever since I moved to this hilltop that rattlesnakes are a problem and that you have to take them seriously. Globally, snakes are the third deadliest animal, snatching 75,000 lives per year. Here in California there are six major types of rattlesnakes and they are most prolific here in Southern California where it is warmer and dryer. Rattlesnakes represent 23 of the 30 venomous snakes found in the U.S.. Out of 8,000 or so snake bites per annum in the United States in any given year, about five of them result in death. They are so uncommon that they are listed by individual name and you can look up these people back as far as the late 1700’s. Suffice it to say that the vast majority of those 75,000 annual deaths must be from places where anti-venom remedies are not so readily available.e as they are here in California. When I moved here I wondered if it made sense to keep some anti-venom at the house. When I learned the stats of snakebite deaths and also heard that anti-venom can cost about $2,600 per dose, I thought it best to just take our chances with the local Urgent Care solution.
I am careful when walking around our garden and am always cognizant of snakes. This year I have seen none, but last year I saw five and killed one. I’ve not seen scorpions or tarantulas, so I worry not about them. I stay well clear of bears, lions and tigers and am not planning any safaris to Africa for hippos. As for crocodiles, I hate the tropics enough that I don’t run into them often. But mosquitos are hard to avoid. For our trip to the Maritime Provinces I have told Kim that we need to stock up on Deet-based insect repellant. I also plan to stay indoors in the evening as much as possible. I try very hard to steer clear of any and all deadly encounters.