There's a strange censorship now at LP.
I'll have to create a new thread so as to post a clarification about a question about Malaria.
First of all, the malaria cases reported in Portugal or elsewhere in Europe are not gotten in Portugal. These people were infected in tropical countries by people who alfterwards came to Portugal. The same cases happens everywhere if a temperate country has many direct flights to tropical countries.
Malaria is given by a parasite of a mosquito that does not exist in Portugal. That mosquito only exists in humid tropical (or subtropical) areas in the world. This is not entirely about being "developed" or "developing", although the lack of resources, knowledge and will also help to let it happen.
Southern China f.ex. has tropical climate, Portugal or Greece, or Spain, or Malta, or Italy, or Cyprus do NOT have tropical climate. Southern Europe is a mediterranean climate region. This kind of climate has a dry summer (it's also known as dry summer climate), not really prone to tropical infections due to the lack of humidity, despite the heat.
As you're American, your nearest example or mediterranean (or dry summer) climate lie in California. I assume, unless you're an obsessive hypocontriac person, that you wouldn't take malaria pills for visiting San Francisco or Sacramento, would you? But you would probably do it if you decided to go to the Mississipi delta or to Florida in the summer (humid subtropical climate regions).
Mainland Portugal lie between the paralels 37 and 42 north.
Having said this I am going to give some comparisons with the US
- a) 37º and 42º are the latitudes of the state of Utah.
- b) It's equivalent to the central and northern parts of California. Paralel 42 is also the northern border of California with Oregon.
- c) Lisbon lie at paralel 38, 70..., roughly the same latitude of Washington D.C., slightly northwards than San Francisco, CA.
- d) Oporto, Portugal's second city, lie at paralel 41, roughly the same latitude of New York city.
These latitudes are too northward to have tropical infections, unless climate change will change the climate patterns in the future. Hence the fear of starting to have these sorts of desease in the future, but up until now, yes, it's too northward for tropical desease to spread.
Andreas: Fear, or risk is not the same as "it exists". You haven't answered any question.
Regarding Madeira Islands, it's a slightly different story. Madeira lie 1000 kms far from Lisbon between the paralels 32 and 33. It's latitude as well as climate is comparable to that of San Diego, CA. The climate is also mediterranean with a dry summer period, however it's at the southern boundary of the mediterranean climate area, so it has a subclassification of "mediterranean subtropical". It's not in the tropics, but it's close. Last summer an outbreak of dengue made its first appearance in the island. It had never happened before.
I was told that during this winter there were no new cases of dengue because apparently the tropical mosquito that carries the dengue did not like the winter "too cool" of Madeira. You may laugh at this, but yes the mild winter of Madeira is too cool in comparison with REAL tropical countries such as Senegal, Gâmbia, Cuba, Caribbean Islands, Central America, etc.
It's actually more likely to happen in the Canary Islands than in Madeira, because the Canary Islands are farther south.
Dengue is also endemic in the subtropical "south" of the US (Florida, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia) or in Australia.
Now, I see that Americans do not have a clue about Europe. They tend to compare the warm southern regions of Europe with their subtropical south. It's not the same. Europe in general is northwards than the USA, so Southern Europe is at the same paralels of central, even northern USA. Besides, Europe is the western part of the great Euro-Asian contiment, which give for much of the continent a "west coast" climate type similar to that of western USA and Western Canada.
Saying that Rome, Italy, or Portugal has a humid summer is simply non-sense. Humid hot summers happen in New York, in China, in Japan, in Buenos Aires, not in West Eurasia Europe.
Got it?
