In the midst of oblivion

OK, the title is pretentious... but I'm enjoying a four-day extra-long weekend, courtesy of Argentina's Catholic heritage, and I haven't felt like writing, really. Things haven't changed much.

It rained again, and a few dozens of people are still waiting to get back to their flooded homes. It also rained north of here, where the situation is much worse. April tends to be rainy, unfortunately, so this emergency will probably carry on for some time.

Back here, I started jogging again. My right leg is definitely feeling funny, but not in a painful way. I'm doing my usual circuit along the north-central coast of the city (6 km total, with a pause in the middle) and I hope I'll regain by breath soon... The heat is much less than it was only a month ago, and the mosquitoes are slowly disappearing. We do have bugs — in fact, we're being visited by a species I'd never seen before:


This guy is a member of the same genus (Diptera) as the common mosquito, though it's technically not a mosquito but a fly. Its actual color (in daylight) is grey-greenish. The darker stripes are clearly visible, but only in the picture it's possible to see some faint plumes along the antennae. It doesn't bite. These things were so strange for us here that even the newspaper devoted a short article to them. They are Chironomidae or chironomids, aka non-biting midges.

On an unrelated note, there was some horrible police repression of a demonstration in Neuquén; a teacher participating in a peaceful protest demanding for a salary raise was shot with a tear gas capsule practically at point blank and died within hours. Neuquén is ruled by a rightist proponent of trigger-happiness who is (was?) also running for president. As significant as this is, it's all in the media, and it's not finished yet, so I'll wait a bit to comment on it.

Mosquito Coast

It's coming, finally, as we'd feared. Tropical weather, and now a tropical disease! An epidemic outbreak of dengue fever has infected 16,000+ people in Paraguay (that's more than 1,000 km closer to the Equator than here) and killed hundreds. The first cases started appearing in the northeastern provinces of Argentina and soon Paraguayans coming to Argentina and Argentinians returning from a visit to Paraguay brought it to the central areas. There are more than 126 confirmed cases in the country, half of those in Buenos Aires City and around. In Rosario we have (I think, today) seven suspected cases and one confirmed.

Dengue is a disease similar to a strong flu, which causes headaches, muscular and joint aches, nausea, and fever. It's transmitted by Aedes aegypti, a species of mosquito. A. aegypti is not commonly found on this latitude, but I believe at least three of the cases in Buenos Aires are autoctonous, i.e. were contracted by human-mosquito-human transmission there, and not brought from Paraguay. The confirmed case in Rosario was infected during vacations in Buzios, Brazil (there are thousands of cases in southern Brazil as well).

Dengue has no specific treatment: people simply have to rest and keep drinking fluids, while the fever and the pain are treated with paracetamol-related drugs (paracetamol is known as acetaminophen in the U.S.), since the disease can have a haemorrhagic variant and you can't use the usual non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (paracetamol is also much cheaper — but it can kill your liver). Patients must be isolated in order to prevent transmission, i.e. so that mosquitoes don't bite them and carry the disease elsewhere.

I haven't seen Aedes aegypti here, though I haven't been looking; they say it's noticeably different from the common local mosquitoes. There are a lot of those anyway. You have to consider that the Paraná River has a huge floodplain, full of shallow canals, marshes and other places with lots of vegetation and stagnant water, a perfect breeding ground. We've always had a lot of mosquitoes in the summer, but lately they're appearing in October and lasting until April or even May, and they're big and nasty.

Topping it off, the level of the Paraná is increasing, overflowing its banks. Rosario is not going to get flooded, but its beaches are already mostly gone. The river is forcing people in its islands to abandon them, and carrying aquatic plants that are left to rot in the shores. In Santa Fe City, 200 km north, 230 people have been evacuated, and some are worrying the population (unjustifiedly, according to the government) that there might be a flood like in 2003 (that one was not caused by the Paraná, but by the Salado River, which comes from the northwest of the country).

The mosquitoes are not going away. Pharmacies and supermarkets have noted that mosquito repellents have flown from the isles and the manufacturers are seemingly unable to cope with the demand. You can apply some cream or use an airborne repellent in your room at home, you can close off all openings with physical barriers, but you can't do anything while you're outside. Jogging along the coast the other day, my buddy and I observed that the moment we stopped to stretch, we were attacked by swarms of little bloodthirsty monsters. There are mosquitoes inside my office, and in the bus, and in the street while you're having a cup of coffee in a café.


The municipality has been spreading insecticide around, but it's not enough. Somebody in the radio today proposed we should breed dragonflies to eat the mosquitoes. Dragonflies, which are traditionally considered a sign that a rainstorm is about to come (at least that's what my parents passed down from my grandads), are repulsive when you see them up close, but they don't bite. I saw one flying inside the bus this morning as I went to work. I don't know if they actually feed on mosquitoes, but I know the weather tradition is grounded in reality, as it's been raining on and off for four of five days in a row.

So we have constant rain, mosquitoes and a tropical disease. What's next? Women wearing as little clothing as possible, pineapple drinks in the beach, a world-class carnival? You wish.