In Zika Prone Miami Today: No Insects, No Birds ... Discuss ... by gimleteye

Friends, don't tell me you haven't noticed, too: in a season where birds descend in transit to winter grounds in Latin and South America, there are very few. At my home in Coral Gables there are also few mosquitoes, few other insects, and no lizards. I've lived in Miami for twenty five: it has never been like this.

The Miami Herald today reports glowingly on Zika control efforts in the greater Miami area. The article reports on the optimism abounding from Gov. Scott as Art Basel and winter tourist season approaches. The last line goes, as usual, to the Chamber of Commerce.

Bill Talbert, CEO of the Greater Miami Convention and Visitor’s Bureau, said he couldn’t “think of a better Thanksgiving present for the community,” and for Art Basel, the annual international art fair which is set to take place in the heart of the South Beach Zika zone next week. “This will lift us,” he said. “There is a light at the end of the tunnel.”

But that is not the last line. The relentless mosquito spraying is the reason there are no insects. No insects, no lizards. No insects, no birds.

And what about people?

There are plenty of us. But not enough discussion how we going to bear up, and our children, under the toxic clouds we are deploying to "control" Zika.

There is no way to know, because the state under Gov. Rick Scott and his Cabinet -- including Agriculture Secretary Adam Putnam -- are suppressing data on disease already. Stonewalling. Dis-information. Spray away, damn the consequences if cancer rates shoot up. (And they have shot up, in Miami, in the case of rare pediatric cancers in recent years. The state is silent.)

What kind of price are taxpayers and citizens paying, when the world falls silent this way? The answer to the question is in the hands of Miami-Dade state legislators and the Miami-Dade county commission. Pick up the phone and make a few phone calls. They got your vote, now hold them responsible for your health and the environment that connects us to all those disappeared birds.