PHOTO: Sentinel chickens in the Macquarie Marshes are the ‘canary in the coalmine’ for mosquito-borne viruses.
In 1917 George V was King, someone threw an egg at Prime Minister Billy Hughes, and across most of south east Australia it rained and rained, and then rained a little bit more.
The waterbirds liked it. So too the mosquitoes. Especially the mosquitoes, who bit the waterbirds, made new homes, started new families, the most virile found themselves in the prime real estate of marshes.
It’s a mystery exactly how little infections agents get a start, but roughly in about 1917 a new virus was discovered – Murray Valley encephalitis virus (MVEV)…