Florida has become a cesspool of disease, skyrocketing inflation, fleeing populations, natural disasters, and eponymous Florida Men (and Women). Per the Washington Post, along with outbreaks of leprosy and mosquito-borne malaria, the Sunshine State is now hosting an outbreak of Dengue fever, a different mosquito-borne illness that is enjoying a spike is infections thanks to climate change and globally higher temperatures.
Five patients with mosquito-infected Dengue fever have been identified in Florida, but many more infected people could exist because the disease is asymptomatic in many patients. Between 2010 and 2020, nearly all of the 33,000 US cases of Dengue fever, which can only be transferred via mosquito bite, were found in Puerto Rico.
Maybe this is what happens when you import Joseph Lapado, a research-denying doctor from California to be your state’s Surgeon General, solely because he supports your anti-science, anti-vaccine culture war and not because he had any expertise in virology or public health.