Worried about Zika Virus in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana? Don't be.

Thursday, February 4, 2016

Rose entomologist discusses threat of Zika Virus in midwest with Paul W. Smith on WJR radio.

Transcript:

Paul W. Smith:

We’re all concerned about this virus, this Zika mosquito issue. So we always go to our experts from Rose Pest Solutions. In fact the Manager of Education and Training at Rose Pest Solutions board certified Entomologist Mark VanderWerp on the other end of our line right now. Mark  good morning to you.

I know you guys are tracking this thing this Zika virus what can you tell us? First of all tell me why we even need mosquitoes? I know they are a great source of food for birds and fish and frogs and all of that, but honestly do we really need mosquitoes?

Mark VanderWerp:

You know what, in most cases I am an absolute bug lover. People think that's weird because you know we tend to kill insects at Rose Pest Solutions, but just the bad ones. But you know if there's any insect I wouldn't mind seeing marshalled off the face of this planet it's probably a couple dozen mosquito species that are kind of the trouble makers. I think we could get by without them.

Paul W. Smith:

I really agree with you and they showed a map on the news last night of back in the good old days of bug control they used DDT and they showed how they wiped out all of these bad mosquitoes at one point, but then of course they stop using DDT and the map showed all of these infestations coming back and mosquitoes never bring us good news.

Mark VanderWerp:

Well you know, never say never. There's some mosquitoes out there that aren’t really trouble to people, they don't even bite people and they pollinate flowers and they do some beneficial things. But yeah like I say, a couple of bad actors, they kind of deserve to be wiped out. they’re asking for it. What you're talking about was a massive campaign mainly that happened in the 1950s where they were going for broke, they tried to wipe out some of the bad acting mosquitoes basically from the face of the planet. And they did a pretty good job. I mean in the Americas I think they managed to wipe out the Aedes Aegypti mosquito which is the one we’re concerned about now with the Zika Virus, out of something like 95 or  98% of the country's in the Americas that it had been in. And of course after this massive attack on mosquitoes we benefited from years of low disease outbreaks and forgot all of the bad stuff that mosquitoes can do to us and unfortunately thought about all of the bad stuff pesticides can do. So I don’t know if the campaign was a success overall because now days I think people are kind of scared about pesticides and just think that mosquitoes are an annoyance and they kind of have it backwards. Pesticides are the things helping us out a lot of the times.

Paul W. Smith:

You name the kind of mosquito were concerned about with this zika virus, is that the kind of mosquito that would hang around here when it gets warmer?

Mark VanderWerp:

Well the good news with the Zika outbreak, if you can call it good news, is that really the Great Lakes region and quite frankly the northern half of North America really has very little to worry about. Because we don’t have the main mosquito species that’s implicated in this particular disease transmission cycle. So we don’t have that mosquito here. The places you'll find it in the U.S. is basically from Florida to Southern California, kind of a strip across the bottom swath of the U.S. And so those are areas where potentially you could get some of this virus spreading in the U.S. but in Michigan I don’t think we’re going to have to worry about this one.

Paul W. Smith:

That’s good news. I haven't heard that from anywher...say it again...you don't think in Michigan  we're going to have to worry about this?

Mark VanderWerp:

Right. Now there are other things to worry about in Michigan that are mosquito born diseases...for instance West Nile, no one has forgotten about that. That’s certainly a bigger risk than Zika will be. We’ve got burgeoning Lyme Disease which is not from mosquitoes but from ticks which has been really spreading in some midwest regions. These are things to keep on our radar. We shouldn’t completely forget about these biting Arthropods. But I don’t think we should be freaking out about Zika. Unless of course, you are traveling to Central or South America which is really where this outbreak is going on right now.

Paul W. Smith:

Well you have to run but congratulations you're a bug guy extraordinaire discovering, this past year, the tiny Red and Black Elm Seed bug. An invasive species never before spotted in Michigan until you spotted it. Way to go. I thought they would rename the bug for you Mark but I guess not?

Mark VanderWerp:

Well I have to keep working on that. Maybe if my status increases. Maybe if I find another one we’ll get some recognition.

Paul W. Smith:

Thank you very much for being with us Mark VanderWerp, Manager of Education and Training, Board Certified Entomologist with Rose Pest Solutions.

Back To News