Ahora que viene el calor y vuelven los mosquitos quiero que recuerden que tenemos la tecnología para erradicarlos hace más de 20 años pero 🦇 burocracia 🦇

Saloni

@salonium

Sep 29

There is no good reason for mosquitoes to exist in wealthy countries today. New technologies can get rid of the mosquito species that cause diseases like dengue, yellow fever, and malaria; and others can prevent them from carrying those diseases. worksinprogress.co/issue/mos… So why do mosquitoes still exist? In a new article for Works in Progress, Maya Rosen explains how state incapacity and risk aversion led to over a decade of delays and billions of unnecessary bites in the United States. Oxitec, for example, engineered an Aedes aegypti mosquito in such a way that its female offspring would die before adulthood. Through sustained releases, they showed they could reduce local mosquito populations by 80% or more, in field trials. They sought approval from the USDA in 2010, which then passed it to the FDA, which passed it to the EPA. In 2020, the EPA allowed them to conduct limited field trials in the Florida Keys. Two years ago, their experimental permit expired, and they still need another review before it can be used routinely. Their proposed field trial in California was withdrawn after public opposition. Another company, MosquitoMate, developed a technique involving Wolbachia, which also suppresses local mosquitoes. They then spent over fifteen years working through the system before finally receiving commercial registration nationwide in 2024. It seems that, sometimes, the barrier to getting rid of diseases isn’t technology at all. It’s policy and political will. New products shouldn’t get stuck in regulatory review for so long, especially if the delays are about basic questions like which agency has oversight over the product, rather than testing for safety. Though some of those uncertainties were being addressed, the broader changes haven’t materialized. After Biden’s 2022 executive order, the agencies planned to update how their coordinated framework was implemented. But Trump rescinded the order last year. Meanwhile, the EPA unit that reviews new mosquito control products is still a small office backlogged in reviewing a wide range of products. Mosquitoes are a policy choice. We can get rid of them. Will we choose to? worksinprogress.co/issue/mos…

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Gon Huertas · Aug 12, 2026 · 2:40 PM UTC

jajandio retweeted

Gon Huertas

@GonHuertas

Aug 12

If you're confused about what kind of writing gets flagged as "AI generated" by Pangram, this example may help. Below is some human written text (to which I have deliberately added some typos). If you put this through Pangram, it'll be labeled 100% human. "By and large, monetary authorities rely on a ssingle policy instrument: the reference nominal interest rate. The use of one instrument makes it imposible to target both inflation and output simultaneously, and creates an inherent tradeoff. The central bank's position on this tradeoff --how forcefully it is willing to pursue an inflation mandate in spite of the implications for economic activity-- defines the character of its monetary policy approach. We refer to central banks that react strongly to inflation, and that place a relatively small weight on output considerations, as being ``hawkish''. How hawkish, then, are Latin American central banks? This section answers the question by estimating the monetary reaction functions, or ``policy rules'', of five of the region's largest economies for the 2003-2024 period. We find that they are hawkish indeed, responding to a ris in inflation with an aggressive increase in real rates, and prioritizing price stability to such an extent that output plays almost no role in their decision making. This finding is consistent with explanations provided by central bankers in the literature, where it has been argued that central banks adopted a hawkish stance on inflation as a way to build monetary credibility, against the backdrop of the region's historical struggles with very high inflation. Details on the sources of the data used in the analysis are provided in the appendix. We rely on monthly and quarterly time series from each country's central bank and national statistics office." (cc @paulnovosad, @itaisher)

Itai Sher @itaisher

Aug 12

Replying to @GonHuertas @paulnovosad

I often run my writing by AI and the usual result is that it will offer some minor improvements to wording. Sometimes I take the suggestion, sometimes not. Try it with something you wrote.

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