Just when you thought surviving two solid weeks of non-stop daily rain and the sudden resurgence of flesh-eating screwworms was enough to earn us a break from Mother Nature, Lubbock’s thriving insect population has decided to raise the stakes. The Biological Threat Research Lab at Texas Tech University—which sounds like a top-secret facility handling zombie pathogens but is currently just confirming our everyday nightmares—announced that local mosquitoes have officially tested positive for West Nile Virus.
According to our anxious friends at the Lubbock Health Department, these tiny vampires are picking up the virus from infected birds and transferring it straight into human skin. While officials assure us that up to 80 percent of infected people won’t feel a single symptom, the lucky remaining few get to look forward to headaches, fever, joint aches, and nausea. If you’re over 50 or already dealing with health issues, the risk of serious illness skyrockets. But don’t panic: the city’s Vector Control is on the case, promising to ramp up chemical spraying around the positive traps. Because really, nothing says “West Texas summer” quite like the smell of industrial pesticides cutting through the suffocating humidity.
Naturally, the city’s official advice for avoiding the plague is completely realistic for a Texas June. They want us to wear long-sleeved shirts and long pants in the sweltering heat, completely avoid the outdoors during dawn and dusk (literally the only times it’s remotely pleasant outside), and diligently dump out standing water around our homes. Never mind the fact that it has rained nearly every single afternoon for a fortnight, transforming every unpaved alleyway and pothole in town into a luxury, five-star breeding resort for the next generation of bloodsuckers.
But hey, look on the bright side: if you break out in a cold sweat and start experiencing full-body aches later this week, at least you can play the fun local guessing game of whether you’ve contracted West Nile, caught a touch of the screwworm, or just spent five minutes trying to walk from your car into the strip mall.
Sources:
