There is absolutely no correlation. Paging ConspiracyWig

[Superman]

https://interestingengineering.com/science/bill-gates-backed-firm-to-release-150k-gene-hacked-mosquitoes-in-florida

A Company Just Released 150K Genetically Modified Mosquitoes in the United States​

Genetically modified mosquitoes were just released in the US for the first time, thanks to a biotech firm funded by Bill Gates.

Chris Young
Created: Apr 30, 2021 11:08 AM EST

The Bill Gates-backed biotech firm Oxitec is going ahead with plans to release hundreds of millions of gene-altered mosquitos in Florida in order to test an experimental new form of population control, the company confirmed in a press release. The initial batch of mosquitoes was released this week.

The controversial project, conducted as part of a partnership between the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District (FKMCD) and Oxitec, will see six locations in the region host Oxitec’s gene-hacked male Aedes aegypti mosquitos over the next few months.

Oxitec — which announced a collaboration with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 2018 — says the new tests could help to greatly reduce populations of the mosquito breed, which is responsible for spreading diseases such as dengue and malaria.

As Oxitec emphasizes in its press statement, the company's mosquitos are male and, therefore, do not bite.

Instead, they are intended to reduce the number of potentially disease-transmitting female Aedes aegypti by introducing a self-limiting gene that sees offspring die before reaching adulthood.

The firm says the Aedes aegypti accounts for only 4 percent of the mosquito population in the Florida Keys, but is responsible for almost all disease transmission. The company also states that community support for the project is "high."

Controversy amid global plans to gene-hack mosquitos​

Still, the method is controversial due to the fact that a genetically altered species is being released into an ecosystem with potentially unknown consequences. Critics have also pointed to the fact that this may open doors for firms to use gene-altered invasive species for other uncontrolled projects.

Oxitec faced a backlash in August 2020, when it originally released its Florida Keys plans. In a press statement at the time, Dana Perls, the food and technology Program Manager at Friends of the Earth, said that "the release of genetically engineered mosquitoes will needlessly put Floridians, the environment and endangered species at risk in the midst of a pandemic."

The Oxitec technology has already been tested in São Paulo, Brazil, where after 13 weeks, it suppressed up to 95 percent of the mosquito species.
Oxitec's isn't the only method for gene-altering mosquitos to curb their populations — this month, it was announced that researchers from Imperial College London have successfully altered the gut genes of mosquitos to spread antimalarial genes to their offspring. The same team had previously used the gene-editing tool CRISPR to eradicate a population of Anopheles gambiae in a lab.

The scientific community, and firms such as Oxitec, aim to tackle the problem of mosquito-borne diseases, which according to the World Mosquito Program, kill up to one million people per year.

 

[Superman]

https://nypost.com/2023/06/26/malaria-found-in-us-for-first-time-in-20-years/

Malaria found in US for first time in 20 years, alarming officials​

By
Marc Lallanilla
June 26, 2023

Malaria, a potentially deadly disease caused by a mosquito-borne parasite, is making inroads into the US.

Five new cases of malaria — one in Texas and four in Florida — are alarming officials because they were locally acquired, meaning a mosquito in the US was carrying the parasite.

That hasn’t happened since 2003 in Palm Beach County, Florida, according to the Centers for Disease and Prevention.

Almost all cases of malaria now seen in the US are from people who traveled outside the country, where they were exposed to disease-carrying mosquitoes.

But these five new cases — seen in people who hadn’t traveled abroad — raise fears that local mosquitoes could be spreading the disease to other people.

“It’s always worrisome that you have local transmission in an area,” Estelle Martin, an entomologist at the University of Florida who researches mosquito-borne diseases, told Vox.

Malaria spreads when a person carrying the parasite gets bit by a mosquito. The parasite develops inside the mosquito, which then bites another person — or several other people, infecting them with the parasite

But people with the parasite in their blood don’t always have symptoms, making it easy for the disease to spread when an asymptomatic person is bit.

Symptoms of malaria include fever, shaking, chills, headache, muscle aches, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and tiredness, according to the CDC.

If it’s not treated promptly, the infection can cause jaundice, anemia, kidney failure, seizures, mental confusion, coma and death.

Malaria can be treated when it’s diagnosed early enough, and a vaccine is now available.

These recent cases show how a warming climate can raise the risks of diseases carried by mosquitoes, ticks or other insects (known as disease vectors).

Climate change is “definitely playing a role in vector-borne disease” throughout the US, said Martin.

Malaria-infected mosquitoes were found in a wetlands area of Sarasota County, where all of the four Florida cases occurred. Local officials then applied insecticides that kill adult and juvenile forms of the mosquito.

“We have been able to make sure the mosquito population in that area is extremely low,” Wade Brennan, a Sarasota County mosquito manager, wrote to Vox in an email.

The Texas case occurred in Cameron County in south Texas, along the Texas-Mexico border.

The five recent cases could also have been caused by a traveler to another country who carried the disease back to the US, where they were bit by a mosquito that later bit one of the local individuals.

“We know in general that climate can be one of many factors that can impact vector-borne diseases,” a CDC spokesperson wrote to Vox in an email, but migration might be a more likely culprit.

“Today, global travel and trade allow vector-borne diseases to be moved around the world and transmitted by local mosquitoes or ticks,” the spokesperson explained, “especially in places where those diseases may have once been common.”

 

[Superman]

https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/02/23/1045131/malaria-vaccine-save-lives/

The new malaria vaccine might not be perfect, but it will save countless lives​

It could lead to advances that fight other parasitic infections.

The mosquito Anopheles stephensi spreads malaria in India and other parts of Asia

February 23, 2022

In 2020 malaria sickened 241 million people and killed roughly 627,000. In sub-Saharan Africa, where 95% of cases and deaths took place, children under five accounted for 80% of the fatalities.

The numbers are horrifying—but there is finally a reason for optimism. Last October, the World Health Organization approved GlaxoSmithKline’s malaria vaccine, known as RTS,S or Mosquirix. It’s the world’s first vaccine for the deadly disease, which is spread to people through the bites of female Anopheles mosquitoes infected with the Plasmodium parasite. Meanwhile, BioNTech, the German biotech company that teamed with Pfizer to develop a covid-19 vaccine based on mRNA, is aiming to begin clinical trials of a malaria vaccine in 2022. The tide may finally be turning.

The WHO’s approval paves the way for a massive rollout of Mosquirix across Africa. It’s also the first vaccine for any type of parasite, marking a watershed in the fight against not just malaria but scores of other tropical diseases. By some estimates, more than 2 billion people are currently infected with parasitic worms. And though treatments exist for many of the cases, microbiologists have been trying in vain for years to develop vaccines that would prevent infection or reinfection. The success of the malaria vaccine proves it’s possible.

Parasites, tiny multicelled animals, have genomes 500 to 1,000 times larger than those of most viruses and single-celled pathogens. This allows them to mutate in myriad ways when challenged by an immune response. Malaria, in particular, is a master of disguise. In the later stages of its life cycle, it can display any one of 60 different proteins on its surface, switching them up as needed to evade the immune system’s detection.

“We’re basically dealing with evolution’s greatest hit—these things know us better than we know ourselves,” says Photini Sinnis, deputy director of the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute. “They have figured out how to do what they need to do. And they have a large enough genome that they can really manipulate our immune system so that they can succeed in living in us.”

In fact, the new malaria vaccine, which has been in testing since 1987, is not particularly effective. In a pilot implementation involving more than 800,000 children in Kenya, Malawi, and Ghana, it had an efficacy of just 50% in preventing severe malaria in the first year, and its effectiveness dropped dramatically over time. (By contrast a three-dose regimen of the polio vaccine is 99% effective in preventing infection.) It is relatively impotent once the parasite has established a foothold in the body’s blood cells, so the vaccine must neutralize it soon after infection.


Still, scientists believe they have found a regimen that will make its use worthwhile. It requires three doses between the ages of five months and 17 months, and a fourth dose given 12 to 15 months after the third dose. One clinical trial showed that when combined with existing malaria control measures, which include insecticide-treated bed nets and preventative drugs administered during rainy season, the regimen could reduce malaria deaths by around 70%, compared with children who had only received existing preventative drugs.

“It’s going to save lives,” says Dyann Wirth, an immunologist at Harvard’s school of public health and an expert on malaria. “And it will spur the research community and the funders who are needed for the research community to actually continue to innovate.”

(more at the link)

​

 

[Superman]

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02913-9

• NATURE INDEX
• 27 October 2021

An mRNA vaccine industry in the making​

The technology could form the basis of a new generation of vaccines for diseases such as HIV/AIDS and malaria.

The course of the COVID-19 pandemic was changed in late 2020 with a vaccine based on messenger RNA (mRNA), an unprecedented technology that has proved remarkably successful in protecting against the virus. Not only is mRNA set to help get the world past the current crisis, it’s also generating hope for a whole new generation of vaccines that could protect people from everything from HIV/AIDS to malaria.

“We believe messenger RNA is the technology of the future for infectious disease,” says Mariola Fotin-Mleczek, a biologist and chief technology officer at CureVac, a biopharmaceutical company in Tübingen, Germany, that is working on several mRNA vaccines. Both big pharma companies and small biotechs are investing in the technology, aided by funding from governments and private foundations. Bill Gates, whose Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation underwrites vaccine development, told USA Today in January that the possibilities were vast. “For every disease that we don’t have vaccines, we will try mRNA,” he said.

 

[wig]

Pretty sure it's all "population control" as referenced in the first article.
You'll note, in that article they aren't explicit about what population they're trying to reduce.
They "conveniently" separate the clarification from the statement. Which of course can be read to imply they never actually explicitly stated which population is being reduced

Just sayin'.

 

[madinsomniac]

Mosquitoes are a pest to humans but a pretty big piece of lower lifeforms diets. ******* with nature never ends well… these morons need to all be given a copy of Jurassic Park…. Right upside their thick skulls…

 

[Confluence]

Maybe the other bugs that would eat mosquitoes will now eat crops.

 

[madinsomniac]

Maybe the other bugs that would eat mosquitoes will now eat crops.

They will either die off or eat other species into extinction


Or tge new mosquitos strain will turn into something terrible like when they tried to modify bees… or release cane toads in Australia

 

[Ironcitysteelers]

What if they get covid?!

 

[Djfan]

When you're stupid, it's hard on some others. When you're very, very rich and stupid, it's hard on the planet.

 

[steel dino]

Purple Martins are the number one enemy of mosquitos.