More on Mosquitoes

 One of our Elizabeth neighbors sent this comment:

Thank you for the note and the alert. 

 

My second professional career is as language interpreter. In this capacity, soon after I arrived with my family in the US from Australia in 1998, I went to work for a local DC language services company. One of the first jobs I was assigned to was the family of an 8 year old boy who had contracted West Nile virus as a result of a mosquito bite in their family yard. 

 

The boy was paralyzed though fortunately intellectually intact. He spent months at the (then) Hospital for Sick Children after spending weeks at Children's Hospital. A team of medical experts, nurses, social workers, hospital administrators, and health professionals, in addition to his agonizing parents met regularly for diagnostic purposes,  and held special meetings to organize the return of the child back home in DC. This required building a door to street ramp, re-arranging the inside living space of his parent's home, and getting special equipment (bed, hospital style monitors, etc.) and training the parents to clean and change regularly the artificial feeding tube he had on his tracheotomised throat. 

 

This is an extremely serious condition for adults. For children it can be crippling and life threatening. 

No-one should dismiss this and anyone seeing a mosquito should immediately alert those able to spray and control the pest. 

 

Kind regards,

Montserrat 

 

Mosquitoes

 

Some of you know that the Nation’s most prominent infectious disease doctor Anthony Fauci was hospitalized recently for six days with the West Nile virus. Dr. Fauci lives in Bethesda and he thinks the only plausible explanation for how he came to be infected by a mosquito carrying that incurable disease with no vaccine for prevention is that the mosquito bit him in his backyard.

 

How does this apply to us living here at the Elizabeth?

 

Perhaps you have noticed that we have mosquitoes flying around in our building, particularly the lobby. Just ask the concierge on duty if he or she has been bothered by these insects. Maybe you have seen them waving around a device that looks like a tennis racket—it’s supposed to help kill these insects or at least chase them away.

 

How are they getting into our lobby?

 

They come through our front doors which have significant spaces between those glass doors and because we have an electric door opening option which keeps the doors open longer than if a person opened the door manually. Furthermore, the mosquitoes breed in the flower pots  and garden areas that are outside our doors.

 

What is management doing about this problem?

 

If you ask our General Manager, she will tell you she has asked our contracted exterminator to treat the area outside the doors. Obviously, this isn’t working. AND this problem happened last year too. I wrote about this last year.

https://theelizabethcondo.blogspot.com/2023/08/mosquitoesare-you-getting-bitten.html

 

 

What else can be done?

 

Other condominiums have hired a contractor who specializes in this problem and comes more frequently during the mosquito period to ensure that the problem doesn’t persist.

 

Discuss this problem which will persist until the first frost with your neighbors to make sure everyone understands that this is a serious health problem that can be solved easily.