By NewsDesk @bactiman63
The CDC says the United States saw an average of 7 human Eastern equine encephalitis (EEE) over the past decade; however, in 2019 that number was at least five times higher.
EEE virus encephalitis infection results in death in at least 30 percent of cases and in survivors, the manifestations can be quite scary.
Why was 2019 so unusual? According to one article, we may never know due to federal regulations.
I go over these issues in the video.
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I had not even heard of Eastern Equine Encephalitis until September, so I am a total newbie to the problem. But I can’t help but bring my mental map of likely perchlorate exposure that I was asked to prepare by Annie Jarabek of US EPA at back in the late 1990s to bear to this problem. The question arose as to what was the origin of the 40 ppb perchlorate in the water supply of Meadville PA, and lake effect concentration from industrial perchlorate processing up wind was one suggestion; certainly EEE mosquitos like lake effect fed marshes in places like Lake Oneida and southwest Michigan. I also talked with an ag agent in Atmore AL, about the 6 ppb ClO4- in that town’s water supply, and he told me to look at high kudzu areas around old railroad towns, as Chilean nitrate adopting farmers tended to also use kudzu for erosion control. Having four human EEE cases around the CT National Guard Stone’s Ranch firing range, the high risk area in Southeast Massachusetts all being downwind of perchlorate hard rock blasting approved in 2013 in a west Freetown quarry, and a girl in Savannah GA apparently living next to a construction site that used to be fertilizer pier/railway terminal (the East Wharf development) being diagnosed with EEE gives me the heebie jeebies. As most EEE research is funded by the Pentagon, I don’t imagine there will be any rush to examine a possible perchlorate angle in this outbreak. Unusual perchlorate conditions this year might include volcanic aerosols from Raikoke and Ulawun or perhaps a decrease in munitions particle size to nano-scale.