The WHO has been in the news lately after holding World Malaria Day. As we all know, the fictive anthropogenic global warming, which is now being politically correctly called “climate change”, is the official font of all ills known to modern man, but did you know that it is also proving to be beneficial to at least one creature? The mosquito. And according to the WHO that will spread malaria over the whole of the known world within a very short period of geological time.
Interested in my own well being, I decided to go off to the WHO website and do a bit of digging. It is mostly repetitious in its commentaries and the report to which everybody is referring is not available for public view as far as I can see. Which is a bit strange as this should be on public display, if we are to believe the threat to those billions of people that are now supposedly destined to get the dreaded insect borne disease.
However, there is a little to be gleaned.
From the WHO media centre, on discussing deaths from tropical diseases we read the following:
…malnutrition, which causes over 3.5 million deaths per year, diarrhoeal diseases, which kill over 1.8 million, and malaria, which kills almost 1 million.
1 million deaths a year. Wow.
You have to have something to compare that with to get a perspective. So just how “deadly” is the disease? Back to the WHO media centre then, where I found this;
Approximately, 40% of the world’s population, mostly those living in the world’s poorest countries, are at risk of malaria. Every year, more than 500 million people become severely ill with malaria. Most cases and deaths are in sub-Saharan Africa. However, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and parts of Europe are also affected. Travellers from malaria-free regions going to areas where there is malaria transmission are highly vulnerable – they have little or no immunity and are often exposed to delayed or wrong malaria diagnosis when returning to their home country.
Hmmm.. 500 million become seriously ill with the disease.. 1 million die. That’s 1 in 500. 0.2%. Not very scary, is it? Less than influenza. Waves of relief wash over my troubled soul.
So what are the odds of malaria coming here to northern Europe? Well, bad news for the WHO. See, it’s been here before. In the middle ages, Europe was rife with malaria. It was also warmer in Europe then too, but let’s not discuss that, it only confuses the global warming freaks who haven’t a clue what their own history books tell them. But someone else in a high place knows this too. I found this little article in the Wall Street Journal;
It may come as a surprise that malaria was once common in most of Europe and North America. In parts of England, mortality from “the ague” was comparable to that in sub-Saharan Africa today. William Shakespeare was born at the start of the especially cold period that climatologists call the “Little Ice Age,” yet he was aware enough of the ravages of the disease to mention it in eight of his plays.
Malaria disappeared from much of Western Europe during the second half of the 19th century. Changes in agriculture, living conditions and a drop in the price of quinine, a cure still used today, all helped eradicate it. However, in some regions it persisted until the insecticide DDT wiped it out. Temperate Holland was not certified malaria-free by the WHO until 1970.
The concept of malaria as a “tropical” infection is nonsense. It is a disease of the poor. Alarmists in the richest countries peddle the notion that the increase in malaria in poor countries is due to global warming and that this will eventually cause malaria to spread to areas that were “previously malaria free.” That’s a misrepresentation of the facts and disingenuous when packaged with opposition to the cheapest and best insecticide to combat malaria – DDT.
Now there’s a couple of things mentioned there that need further attention. DDT, for example. The single most effective killer of mosquitoes. So lets stock up on it now while the going is good.
The second thing is Quinine. A well known anti-malarial drug. The British drank gallons of it in their conquests of Africa and India. Especially India. Quinine is bitter to the taste buds. Awful. Foul stuff. So to ease the taking of it, the British echelons mixed it with sugar and water. It still wasn’t exactly palatable but it was better than the raw fluid.
Enter a little chap with a big idea. He mixed the water, sugar and quinine with other better tasting liquids and added bubbles. His name was Schweppes. The now world famous Indian Tonic Water was born. One glass a day provided you with all the quinine you needed to keep the malaria away. The East Indian Trading Company shipped gallon after gallon of the stuff out to “the Raj”.
The British, who were having the time of their lives in India and looking for any excuse to enjoy themselves, even while taking medicine, found it a perfect mixer for gin. And it still is.
Which is why I drink gin and tonic, to ward off the effects of malaria and why I don’t give a hoot for the WHO and their global warming malarial piffle.
Any questions?