Readers, sometimes I wish we could meet face to face and talk. If so, today I would ask: who here has dealt with the world’s most common mosquito-borne virusopens in a new tab or window and poster child for the 21st century’s explosion of epidemic, vector-borne blights?
My guess? Some of you have seen travelers with dengue, the miserable, achy woe spread by day-biting, often urban Aedes mosquitoes. Perhaps a few, like me, have also encountered a patient who contracted the infection here in the U.S. But even if you haven’t yet seen a case, chances are you soon could, according to a recent Health Advisoryopens in a new tab or window from the CDC. Let’s start with some ominous numbers in the CDC alert. While 2023 saw 4.6 million reported cases of dengue in the Americas, this year’s count (as of June 24) had already doubled, reaching 9.7 million. And that’s before much of the region would have entered its highest-transmission months. Gulp.