Malaria Cases In U.S. Trigger Unfounded Claims About Bill Gates, Mosquito Project
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B. Y. Lee,
Forbes,
2023.
When the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued an alert about finding four malaria cases in Florida and one malaria case in Texas, it created quite a buzz. After all, these were the first reported cases of people actually catching malaria in the U.S. since 2003. Finding these five cases has raised questions about whether malaria may return to the U.S. after being largely absent for many years and whether climate change may be opening the gates for Anopheles mosquitoes to spread in the U.S. That would kind of suck since the females of certain Anopheles mosquito species can carry and transmit malaria-causing parasites. This news also opened the gates in another way—allowing a flood of even more conspiracy theories about billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates to be spread across social media. This included claims that Gates was somehow responsible for these new malaria cases via a project that has released genetically-modified mosquitoes in the U.S. However, such claims really provided zzzzzero supporting evidence and, in fact, detracted from what’s really happened. More related to this:
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