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Foreclosure Epidemics
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Subprime mortgages have ruined banks and insurance companies and brought the global economy to its knees. Now it looks like they’re also causing the spread of deadly West Nile disease.
In a weird new wrinkle in the story of the exploding mortgage crisis, the housing market in Bakersfield, Calif., was tied to a 276 percent increase in the number of West Nile virus cases, according to the November issue of the scientific journal, Emerging Infectious Diseases.
It’s easy to find correlations between seemingly unrelated events; epidemiological journals are full of stuff like this which doesn’t mean a thing. For example, as ice cream consumption increases, so do drownings. But it’s not because ice cream causes drowning.
Illustration by: Matt Mahurin
In this case, though, the cause-and-effect link is pretty clear. Delinquent mortgages in Bakersfield and the surrounding community caused people to abandon their houses, and mosquitoes carrying West Nile virus bred in their untended swimming pools. The resulting outbreak is a epidemiologists’ textbook case of the unintended consequences of economic turmoil. It’s not the first such example, and undoubtedly won’t be the last before the crisis ends.
“We’ve had problems with West Nile in California since 2004, but in 2007 the housing market really went south and it resulted in a lot of neglected swimming pools,” said lead author William K. Reisen, an entomologist at the University of California, Davis. “They’ve always had problems with homeowner neglect of pools. But all of a sudden, it went through the roof.”
There were 140 confirmed human cases of West Nile virus in the Bakersfield area in 2007, the largest outbreak in California, and the worst mosquito-born encephalitis virus outbreak in Kern County since 1952. At least two patients — one, a 96-year-old woman — died of the disease, which can also cause brain damage.
The outbreak spread to several other counties and led Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to hold a news conference and release $6.2 million in emergency mosquito abatement funds.
West Nile virus outbreaks intensified in other parts of California this summer, in particular in Los Angeles. This could well be related to the swelling foreclosures in that area, Reisen said.
Insect-borne microorganisms thrive in times of economic crisis and dislocation. For example, mosquito-borne dengue fever has surged in the growing cities of Asia and Latin America in the past decade; as people move into urban areas that lack running water, they store water in tanks that are perfect breeding grounds for mosquitoes like Aedes aegypti, the leading dengue vector.
Bakersfield, CA (Flickr: Alice Chaos)
Count the Kern County West Nile outbreak in that category. “What’s worrisome is that most U.S. mosquito abatement districts are funded by property taxes,” said Reisen. “As their revenue falls, it’s going to be harder to keep up with the abandoned swimming pools.”
West Nile has spread gradually across the United States since the first cases were reported in 1999 in New York City. It’s carried by several different species of mosquitoes and can infect many birds and mammals — from crows and chickens to cats and horses. In different areas of the country, the epidemic has generally slowed after the virus kills off a large enough number of the birds that carry it from place to place. Only about one in 100 people exposed to the virus become ill; about three percent of those it sickens die from this disease.
No one in Kern County had anticipated the 2007 outbreak. Winter and spring rains were light, and the Kern River, which flows through Bakersfield and sometimes leaves pools of water where mosquitoes can breed, was dry. In fact, water was so short that it changed the bird ecology of the region, resulting in an expansion of house sparrow flocks. Unlike other bird populations in the area, most of the sparrows lacked protective immunity to West Nile virus.
The county Mosquito and Vector Control District conducted an aerial survey of the town that showed an extensive number of green or neglected pools, “most of which were producing mosquitoes,” according to the article in Emerging Infectious Diseases.
“The likely reasons for neglected pools,” reported the journal, which is published by the Centers for Disease Control, “are the adjustable rate mortgage and associated housing crises in Kern County and throughout California, which have led to increased house sales and abandonments.” Kern County suffered a 300 percent increase in delinquencies in the spring quarter of 2007 compared with the same period in 2006.
As chlorine-based chemicals deteriorated in the abandoned pools, “invasive algal blooms created green swimming pools that were exploited rapidly by urban mosquitoes, thereby establishing a myriad of larval habitats within suburban neighborhoods.”
By California law, properties with swimming pools must be surrounded by six-foot-high fences, and so it has been difficult for mosquito control agents to enter foreclosed properties. “They can’t just go breaking the doors down,” said Reisen. “It’s kind of a mystery how to get access to these properties.”
The major carrier of West Nile during the 2007 outbreak was the common mosquito Culex pipiens. But by this year, Culex tarsalis, a more efficient West Nile carrier that typically colonizes rural areas, had moved into some of them.
That said, no human cases had been reported in 2008 as of Oct. 23, though the disease continued to infect mosquitoes and kill birds and horses. Kern County officials have been vigilant in spraying the abandoned pools or stocking them with larva-eating fish.
Then too, West Nile outbreaks are sporadic, and seem to depend on complex factors in the virus’ hosts. High temperatures, raising the viral load of mosquitoes, are one such factor; a die-off of the crow population, causing the virus to run out of hosts, can also play a role.
The Bakersfield story presents another such factor: the crashing of American dreams.
Predatory Practices
The wolf is an intelligent, handsome creature and, for many visitors to Alaska, an integral part of the state’s wild appeal. Wolves live in complex social structures, mate for life and don’t attack humans — it’s easy to see in them the family resemblance to mankind’s best friend.
That’s More…
The American Way: ‘Bigger, Stronger, Faster’
Still Courtesy of: Bigger, Stronger, Faster*
When Mike, Chris and Mark Bell, were striving to become champion iron pumpers in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., the brothers never dreamed that Arnold Schwarzenegger, Hulk Hogan and their other idols were juiced. Steroids were for commies –like Dolph Lundgren in Rocky IV. Rocky himself was clean and sober. He chopped wood to get buff.
But, as they got older, the Bells learned the dirty little secret: their heroes were on ‘roids. The Bells would have to take them too, if they wanted to compete. Years later, Mark—who went by “Mad Dog” when he wrestled for World Wresting Entertainment, the WWE, and “Smelly” Mike – who can bench press 700 pounds– are still using the stuff.
Chris, the middle brother, tried steroids for a few months, stopped and decided to make a movie about them instead. His documentary film, “Bigger, Stronger, Faster: The Side Effects of Being American,” is a hilarious, poignant and thought-provoking look at the hypocritical culture of competition.
“I was brought up to believe that cheaters never prosper,” he narrates, over footage of President George W. Bush speaking against steroid use — though his Texas Rangers used them. “But in America, they always prosper.”
With the Olympics beginning Friday and millions of kids primed to watch their U.S. heroes compete with the world, Bell sadly reflected on what he learned about the clandestine doping that goes on beyond the noble striving for national glory. Bell, 35, spent three years working on the film, which incorporates dozens of interviews and other footage.
“I used to think the Olympics had the best drug testing, but it’s a big façade,” he said in a phone interview. The Balco scandal — in which a San Francisco steroid producer provided hundreds of baseball players with hard-to-trace steroid shots — revealed some of the tricks that trainers use to evade testing. Olympic committees have done little to keep pace with the cheaters, Bell said. “You can skirt the rules on hormones. There’s no test for human-growth hormone. There’s an improved test for Epo [which increases oxygen in the blood], but it won’t be ready for the Olympics.”
“I don’t want to be one of those conspiracy-theory guys, but there are a lot of people juicing,” he said. “You’re never going to have a 100-percent clean Olympics. It’s sad. Kids look up to these people.”
News accounts indicate a certain vigilance against doping Olympic athletes. But the history of such scandals, Bell suggests, is that only the unlucky get caught. During the 1988 games, Jamaican sprinter Ben Johnson lost his gold medal in the 100 meters for steroid use. Carl Lewis, to whom the gold was awarded, had also tested for banned substances in his blood during training. Rather than disqualify him, according to Bell’s well-documented account, the U.S. Olympic Committee changed the rules.
Anabolic steroids became controlled substances in 1990, and are banned by most professional sports associations, but it’s an open secret that you can’t be the best bodybuilder, weight lifter or home run hitter (or swimmer?) without them. And so, people cheat.
Bell’s film, which incorporates his own interviews, news footage and cartoons in a hilarious gallop through the issue, makes two main points about steroid use. The first is that steroids, as bodybuilder Gregg Valentino puts it during the film, “are as American as apple pie” — that the American drive to win trumps the American sense of fairness every time. This, Bell is saying, is what really bothers Congress, which held more hearings about steroids in 2006 than it did on the war in Iraq. Steroids aren’t nearly as dangerous as tobacco, alcohol or dozens of other legal substances, but their use reveals something ugly about America, and not just its athletics industry.
“There’s this assumption that steroids kill, but no one can find the bodies,” Bell said. Valentino has biceps that look like a python swallowing a pig. But Bell shrugs. “Some people just want big arms. If people want to look like freaks, why can’t they? Is it any worse than piercing strange parts of yourself?”
Or as Valentino himself puts it, “I wanted to be big. I couldn’t get taller, so I got wider.”
Bell may be underplaying the potential side effects of steroid use. While it’s true that the scientific evidence of liver damage and hyper-aggressive “roid rage” is mixed, longterm steroid use definitely raises your bloodpressure and unhealthy cholesterol levels, shrinks your testicles and gives you “bitch tits,” in the ineffable phrase of the Bell brothers. It probably also stunts the growth of teenagers. Bell, to be sure, isn’t exactly promoting steroid use. “I know people who’ve been abused by steroids. If you think one minute my brothers are fine and not screwed up in the heads from fact they rely on steroids … when you rely on a drug to do anything, you’re looking for trouble.”
Too, juicing goes against the American sense of fair play. But if Tiger Woods can get laser eye surgery, and students can take legal speed to ace tests, why shouldn’t athletes improve their torque with chemistry? Bell manages to make even Barry Bonds look sympathetic, as the slugger tells the press, “All of you have lied. How would you like it if there were asterisks by your names?”
“Bigger, Stronger, Faster” united Chris Bell’s two obsessions: movies and body-building. A music video he made at community college got him from Poughkeepsie to film school at the University of Southern California. While studying there, he worked as a bouncer, lifted at the famous Gold’s Gym in Venice Beach,and later wrote for the WWE. A short film about tobacco addiction got the attention of the producers of “Farenheit 911″ and “Bowling for Columbine.”
The film achieves something unusual — it manages to convey respect and affection toward subjects whose foibles are hilarious. The narration makes it happen. Bell is schlubby in a Michael Moore kind of way, but unlike Moore, he’s sincere, because the pain is personal. A regular guy in gym clothes and a backwards baseball cap, he depicts America’s identity confusion through his own family’s struggle with obesity, drug use and obfuscation.
In a section about how the wildly under-regulated dietary-supplements industry uses juiced lifters to deceptively sell its products, Bell hires some Mexican guys to make a supplement in his kitchen. “It was all perfectly legal — except for the illegal aliens.”
His brothers are symbolic stand-ins for the conflict. “Smelly’’ is emotionally stable, a loving father who coaches high school football. “Mad Dog” is bipolar, has tried to kill himself, hates his job, drinks too much and takes drugs. They’re both lifetime steroid users.
Ultimately, in this film, we see steroids as just another substance that Americans use to fill emptiness. Bell’s mother is shocked to hear how dependent on them her boys are. “Why did our boys feel like they were not good enough?” she asks. “Mad Dog” responds that he can’t handle a life in which he’s just OK. “I need to attain greatness,” he says. “I know there’s something in here that the rest of the world needs to know about.”
“In my experience, bodybuilders are like little kids in a gorilla suit,” Bell told me. “They pack on armor so nobody can hurt them. When I was lifting weights, I thought I’d be the coolest kids in school if I could bench press the most. It felt good.
“But I found out from the film,” Bell said, “that I’m a much better filmmaker than I am power lifter.”
