美国国家公共电台 NPR Forbidding Forecast For Lyme Disease In The Northeast

 

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

We have an early warning in Your Health this morning. Ecologists are expecting a really bad season for Lyme disease.

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Their warning applies to parts of the Northeast this spring and summer. NPR's Michaeleen Doucleff reports on the really gross reason the ecologists expect a bad season.

MICHAELEEN DOUCLEFF, BYLINE¹: When Felicia Keesing returned home from a trip last summer, she found her home in upstate New York had been subject to an invasion.

FELICIA KEESING: There was evidence of mice everywhere. They had just completely taken it over.

DOUCLEFF: It was a plague of mice, an infestation². And it landed right in Keesing's kitchen. Her husband, Rick Ostfeld, says there weren't just signs the mice had been there. There were actual bodies.

RICK OSTFELD: Dead mice on the floor.

KEESING: You cannot start this story this way.

DOUCLEFF: (Laughter).

KEESING: This is disgusting. I still have nightmares about the mouse plague.

OSTFELD: Yeah. That was bad.

DOUCLEFF: The whole Hudson River Valley was experiencing a mass infestation last summer. The critters were everywhere. For most people, it was just a nuisance. But for Keesing and Ostfeld, it signaled something foreboding. You see, they're both ecologists who've studied Lyme disease for 20 years at Bard³ College in the Cary Institute. Lyme is transmitted by ticks. And they've discovered that a mouse plague in the summer means a Lyme plague the following year because ticks love mice.

OSTFELD: An individual mouse might have 50, 60, a hundred ticks covering its ears and the rest of its face.

DOUCLEFF: So seeing all these mice means that there's going to be a lot of Lyme disease cases?

OSTFELD: Yeah. I'm sorry to say, that's the scenario⁴ we're expecting.

DOUCLEFF: While Keesing and Ostfeld were noticing the mouse invasion, across the country in Colorado, two other scientists were noticing another worrying trend. They work at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. One of them is Kiersten Kugeler. She says a few decades ago, Lyme disease wasn't that common.

KIERSTEN KUGELER: Back in the early '90s, about 10,000 cases of Lyme disease were reported each year in the U.S.

DOUCLEFF: Today, it's much, much worse.

KUGELER: We think that the true burden of Lyme disease in the U.S. is about 300,000 cases each year.

DOUCLEFF: Wow. That's a lot, isn't it?

KUGELER: It is a lot. Lyme disease is quite a big public health problem.

DOUCLEFF: Here's how Lyme disease happens. Mice and some other small creatures carry around this little bacteria shaped like a fusilli pasta. The mouse passes the bacteria onto a tick, which then passes the bacteria onto a person when it bites. Lyme causes a fever, headache, arthritis⁵ and sometimes a red rash. In bad cases, it can damage the heart.

Back in the '80s, Lyme cases were confined to two small areas - southern New England and western Wisconsin. Rebecca Eisen, also at the CDC, says now cases are spreading in all directions.

REBECCA EISEN: They've spread to the North, the Southeast and the West. The only place that they haven't spread is into the Great Lakes and the Atlantic.

DOUCLEFF: Today, Lyme is common in a big swath of the country. It starts up in Maine, swoops⁶ down the East Coast into Virginia, hops⁷ to the Midwest into Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota. And then there are pockets on the West Coast.

EISEN: A lot of people are seeing ticks in places where they didn't see them 20 years ago.

DOUCLEFF: So why is Lyme spreading like this? That question is simple, but the answer is complicated. Scientists say climate change might be part of it, as well as the explosion of deer, which carry ticks and spread them around. But Ostfeld has found another reason, something that happened 200 years ago. He takes me into the forest near his lab in upstate New York to show me what he means.

OSTFELD: It's a bit of a walk. It's not very far.

DOUCLEFF: OK. We're going to hike in. We're in the heart of the Hudson River Valley. And it's gorgeous. The hills are covered with oaks. And the valley is a patchwork⁸ of hayfields. But Ostfeld says this area didn't always look like this. When the Europeans came here hundreds of years ago, they cut down nearly all of the forest to plant their crops, feed their animals.

OSTFELD: They also cut down trees for various kinds of commerce, making masts for ships, for building, for firewood.

DOUCLEFF: Since then, a lot of the forest has come back. But it's not the same. It's not one big forest. It's broken up into little pieces, fragmented with roads, farms and housing developments. For mice, this has been great news.

OSTFELD: They tend to thrive in these degraded, fragmented landscapes.

DOUCLEFF: Because their predators⁹, like foxes, hawks¹⁰ and owls¹¹, which eat the mice, need big forests to survive. And without them...

OSTFELD: That's a holiday for the mice.

DOUCLEFF: They crank out babies like nobody's business. And we end up with these forests packed with mice, mice that are chronically¹² infected with Lyme and covered in ticks.

OSTFELD: So the mice reach very high abundance in little one-acre wood lots in the middle of suburbia. And as go the mice, so go the infected ticks.

DOUCLEFF: And so goes the Lyme disease.

OSTFELD: Exactly.

DOUCLEFF: So all these little patches of forest dotting the Northeast have turned into Lyme factories. And people come along, Keesing says, and build their dream homes right next door.

KEESING: Humans are putting themselves in these areas where they're, in a sense, most at risk. And then they're modifying the environment to make it - that - it even riskier¹³.

DOUCLEFF: That means people aren't just at risk when they're camping or hiking. The CDC's Kiersten Kugeler says most people catch Lyme disease just hanging out around their homes.

KUGELER: People out gardening, people playing in their backyard, mowing¹⁴ the lawn. People may be putting themselves at risk every single day without even knowing it.

DOUCLEFF: So what can you do to keep from getting infected? Kugeler says a good thing to do is to add a tick check to your daily routine. Now, these animals are tiny, about the size of a poppy seed. So when you're in the shower, check your body for tiny ticks, especially the places they like to hide.

KUGELER: That's the scalp, behind the ears, the armpits and in the groin area.

DOUCLEFF: If you do find a tick, get it off as quickly as possible. The longer the tick stays on your skin, the higher the chance it will inject the Lyme bacteria into your blood. Next, be on the lookout¹⁵ for symptoms like a rash or a fever. If anything crops up, go see a doctor immediately. Don't wait. The earlier you get treated, the better chance you have for a full recovery. Michaeleen Doucleff, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF BEASTIE BOYS' "B FOR MY NAME")

1 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

2 infestation   

n.侵扰，蔓延

参考例句：

• The premises were treated for cockroach infestation.因蟑螂成灾，这些房屋集中进行了灭蟑活动。
• Parts of California are suffering from an infestation of oriental fruit flies.加利福尼亚的部分地区正遭受东方果蝇的大肆侵袭。

3 bard   

n.吟游诗人

参考例句：

• I'll use my bard song to help you concentrate!我会用我的吟游诗人歌曲帮你集中精神！
• I find him,the wandering grey bard.我发现了正在徘徊的衰老游唱诗人。

4 scenario   

n.剧本，脚本；概要

参考例句：

• But the birth scenario is not completely accurate.然而分娩脚本并非完全准确的。
• This is a totally different scenario.这是完全不同的剧本。

5 arthritis   

n.关节炎

参考例句：

• Rheumatoid arthritis has also been linked with the virus.风湿性关节炎也与这种病毒有关。
• He spent three months in the hospital with acute rheumatic arthritis.他患急性风湿性关节炎，在医院住了三个月。

6 swoops   

猛扑，突然下降( swoop的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• He fixes his eyes on the greyish spine of the old wolf as he swoops down. 他两眼死死盯住老狼灰黑的脊背。 来自汉英文学 - 现代散文
• An owl swoops from the ridge top, noiseless but as flame. 蓦地，山脊上一只夜枭飞扑直下，悄无声响而赫然如一道火光。

7 hops   

跳上[下]( hop的第三人称单数 )； 单足蹦跳； 齐足（或双足）跳行； 摘葎草花

参考例句：

• The sparrow crossed the lawn in a series of hops. 那麻雀一蹦一跳地穿过草坪。
• It is brewed from malt and hops. 它用麦精和蛇麻草酿成。

8 patchwork   

n.混杂物；拼缝物

参考例句：

• That proposal is nothing else other than a patchwork.那个建议只是一个大杂烩而已。
• She patched new cloth to the old coat,so It'seemed mere patchwork. 她把新布初到那件旧上衣上，所以那件衣服看上去就象拼凑起来的东西。

9 predators   

n.食肉动物( predator的名词复数 )；奴役他人者（尤指在财务或性关系方面）

参考例句：

• birds and their earthbound predators 鸟和地面上捕食它们的动物
• The eyes of predators are highly sensitive to the slightest movement. 捕食性动物的眼睛能感觉到最细小的动静。 来自《简明英汉词典》

10 hawks   

鹰( hawk的名词复数 )； 鹰派人物，主战派人物

参考例句：

• Two hawks were hover ing overhead. 两只鹰在头顶盘旋。
• Both hawks and doves have expanded their conditions for ending the war. 鹰派和鸽派都充分阐明了各自的停战条件。

11 owls   

n.猫头鹰( owl的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• 'Clumsy fellows,'said I; 'they must still be drunk as owls.' “这些笨蛋，”我说，“他们大概还醉得像死猪一样。” 来自英汉文学 - 金银岛
• The great majority of barn owls are reared in captivity. 大多数仓鸮都是笼养的。 来自辞典例句

12 chronically   

ad.长期地

参考例句：

• Similarly, any pigment nevus that is chronically irritated should be excised. 同样，凡是经常受慢性刺激的各种色素痣切勿予以切除。
• People chronically exposed to chlorine develop some degree of tolerance. 人长期接触氯气可以产生某种程度的耐受性。

13 riskier   

冒险的，危险的( risky的比较级 )

参考例句：

• Now they are starting to demand higher returns on riskier assets. 而今他们开始在风险更高的资产上要求更高的回报。
• The problem with that: RIM's business is getting riskier every quarter. 不过问题也随之而来：RIM面临的业务风险正逐季增大。

14 mowing   

n.割草，一次收割量，牧草地v.刈，割( mow的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• The lawn needs mowing. 这草坪的草该割了。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• "Do you use it for mowing?" “你是用它割草么？” 来自汉英文学 - 中国现代小说

15 lookout   

n.注意，前途，瞭望台

参考例句：

• You can see everything around from the lookout.从了望台上你可以看清周围的一切。
• It's a bad lookout for the company if interest rates don't come down.如果利率降不下来，公司的前景可就不妙了。