The Highwire with Del Bigtree - MASSACHUSETTS COUNTIES URGE LOCKDOWN OVER RARE MOSQUITO-BORNE ILLNESS

Episode Date: September 6, 2024

Four counties in Massachusetts have initiated a voluntary curfew to mitigate a rare mosquito-borne illness known as EEE. Officials have resorted to widespread spraying of pesticides with known harmful effects on humans. But, locals are pushing back.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

If you do have a house and you do live in certain counties in Massachusetts, you're experiencing kind of a little bit of a flashback from the COVID days. What am I talking about? Take a look. All right. Oxford, Massachusetts and three neighboring towns have a reason for concern. Some concern now in a part of Massachusetts after a man tested positive for Triple E last week. The new plan to prevent the spread of the deadly disease. Oxford officials have approved a recommendation to issue a 6 p.m. curfew.

Last week, an Oxford man in his 80s tested positive for AAA, the first such case since 2020. Though it is rare, AAA is a very serious and potentially fatal disease that can affect people of all ages. It usually spreads to humans through the bite of an infected mosquito. We don't want to see another human case of AAA this year. One is already too many. The State Department of Health says people in critical areas should avoid outside activities at night. We really want people to be thoughtful. about when they time their outdoor activities, mosquito activity, feeding activity really peaks at dusk and

dawn. The rare but dangerous disease can cause swelling in the brain. There's no treatment and anyone can get infected. The death rate is as high as 30%. Even if you do survive, usually there are long-term significant health impacts, neurological impacts. The school district will be complying with this plan. So practices may end early or even be moved indoors about 30% of patients who contract Tripoli do not survive so that number sounds inflated to me 30% of people die from it I mean if you only have one death in you know I just don't even how do they come to that sort of conclusion yeah and looking looking across the headlines here I mean even the CDC says that some people don't even show signs of the illness some people have mild

illness. Some people have fever, chills, and then, you know, other people move on to more serious complications. I mean, to say 30% death rate, it should be like screaming fire in a crowded room. I mean, that's an insane number. Show me some evidence behind that. Exactly. So it's really reckless reporting anyway. Yeah. And what are we talking about? Triple E. It's not a new W.WF wrestler. It's Eastern equine encephalitis. It's a mosquito-borne illness, as you've heard. And Oxford, Massachusetts, their Board of Health has, they've implemented what's called a voluntary curfew at dusk and dawn. But what's happening is the schools are all signing on to that. So whether individual citizens do it or not, but the schools are, school, our school sports are

starting right now. So that highly impacts school sports. So you have a mother that has put up a, basically a petition. If anybody wants to go there and support that and sign that, urge Oxford, Massachusetts Board of Health to maintain open access to town fields for youth sports. This is in the, you know, again, the hangover of the COVID pandemic. And a lot of the reporting says, geez, I don't know why. Because this happens on the East Coast here every once in a while.

It happened in 2012, 2019, 2020. And they said, we never really received any pushback when we did it then, but we're in a different time now. And we look at the CDC. Just to give you an idea, is this thing spreading like bird flu or monkey box or COVID? Here's the CDC's own numbers. We have how many cases? Four.

New Jersey, Vermont, Massachusetts, Wisconsin. And now New Hampshire, that's the fifth case that is being reported. It's not updated here because they haven't updated yet at the CDC. But you can see it's very isolated to the northeast United States. This isn't something that's sweeping across the U.S. and everyone should be concerned about. But total of five cases if you had that new New Hampshire. There was a death in New Hampshire, a 41-year-old man, tragically.

And five cases, how many million people in these states alone or just the United States in general? in general. So to say rare is not even not even getting close to what we're talking about here. But the bigger bigger problem here maybe or issue we're going to call it is the Massachusetts government mass.gov released this statement, a press release. State officials announced plans to spray for mosquitoes in sections of Worcester and Plymouth counties due to triple E. And it goes on to say the pesticides used is anvil 10 plus 10, the EPA registered product extensively tested. This is where we have a red flag and used in both ground level and aerial spraying in the U.S. control mosquitoes. So, I mean, we're having this weird intersection between

COVID and, like, the polio response now with the spraying like DDT. I mean, it's got to be. Yeah, I mean, like you said, spraying DDT back during the polio days. But being like curfews and and this type of warnings, these people must really be suffering. I can't imagine coming out of COVID and just feeling like, oh my God, it's happening again and again here in the United States of America. And it goes to say the public health response, if there's only, if there's one person that dies, it's a full-blown, you know, they pull the trigger, it's full-blown health response. We've seen that with vaccinations as well with the Japanese's encephalitis. So we have one of organizations called peer public employees for environmental responsibility.

They were on this conversation in 2020 when there was spraying done then for AAA. And they did some great reporting. I'm just going to pull this back out because it's relevant today. Massachusetts concedes aerial spraying largely ineffective. And it says in this article, data from the 2019. applications give scant reason for confidence since half the spray events had 0% efficacy, i.e. no reduction in primary mosquito vectors at a cost to taxpayers at 2.2 million. An assessment by the Department of Health admits that, quote, it is impossible to measure the reduction in

AAA cases based on aerial applications of pesticides, and that reduction of the risk from AAA relies primarily on the use of personal prevention behaviors by individuals. I mean, that's just common, this is common sense right there. But then the bigger question is, You're aerial spraying pesticides on communities. So they go into this article and they talk about that. What are they spraying? Well, it says other records peer obtained relate to the pesticide agent the states use, Anvil 10 plus 10, which has two active ingredients, Samir Ran and PBO.

EPA classifies PBO is a possible human carcinogen. So that's a cancer causer. Summiraan is known to suppress the immune system and interferes with respiratory functions. So you're spraying something that's known to press the immune system while a mosquito-borne illness is going around, you got a question that really doesn't show much efficacy that we've seen yet. Right. No efficacy and a risk to your health, potential cancer, autoimmune issues. I mean, really great. And in 2020, the Massachusetts legislator actually tried to push forward a bill that was going to allow widespread spraying with no

public notice, no start and stop of the emergency, meaning they can just keep it going whenever they want, and no really public accountability for how much they're spraying. And so at that time, you had a lot of municipalities. This is the Massachusetts Municipality Association. They came out. They all stood together, and this was one of the headlines. They're urging the public health committees to reject this preempt of an overly broad mosquito bill. And in 2020, 75 legislators wrote and said, you can't do this. You have to put these earmarks in this bill to give people a choice, to allow them to opt out, to tell them when this is going to happen, give them notice. So this is what happens. If you're in Massachusetts right now, you can go to mass.gov,

and actually your legislators did work to give you an opt out, how to request an exclusion or opt out from wide area, wide area pesticide applications. So your property can be excluded from that, and that can be forevermore if you want to. You just basically fill this out. So if enough people in the community really stop the spray like, you know, just over your house. Yeah, that's a question about how they do that. They do truck spraying as well. So if it's from the street applications.

It doesn't drift. Couldn't possibly drift on your house. We got it just isolated. We just put a box around your house. You're fine. Yeah, it's one thing glyphosate taught us is nothing drifts. Right, right.