South Florida bars packed after Gov. gives OK for Phase 3 reopening

In Florida on Fort Lauderdale Beach, those with months of quarantine-driven bar withdrawal showed up, showed off and toasted each other back to some semblance of normal life. In an unexpected and surprising announcement, Governor Ron DeSantis lifted all restrictions on restaurants and other businesses in Florida in a move to reopen the state’s economy despite the spread of covid. With that green light, bars and clubs were allowed to reopen.

It also did away with any fines related to covid. Florida reported 2,795 new cases of covid, along with 14,022 resident deaths and 168 non-resident deaths from covid. Miami’s Mayor Francis Suarez has more than a few concerns. One of the things that concerns Suarez the most is the mask mandate. Suarez is concerned that the cases are going to continue to spike and then Florida may have to go back to a situation that it is working so hard to avoid.

Suarez added that DeSantis’ order is confusing and risky. DeSantis’ order is not very clear as to what can and can not be done. Suarez’s counterpart in Fort Lauderdale Mayor Dean Trantalis also weighed in. The governor’s order was so open ended that business owners really had no direction as to what to do. Broward County issued a new executive order five hours after DeSantis, which states that bars still must comply with distancing requirements and capacity limitations.

The order allows bars, pubs, nightclubs, adult entertainment establishments, banquet halls, breweries, cigar bars, and any other establishment that is licensed by the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulations to sell food and/or alcohol to operate, provided they are in compliance with Attachment 2 of the county’s Emergency Order.

Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber called the move by DeSantis political and unsafe in South Florida, which has had the highest concentration of the state’s covid cases. DeSantis just wants to follow Trump’s lead as much as possible. It does no one any good to not continue to respect the safety protocols. In August 2020, a plan to release over 750 million genetically modified mosquitoes into the Florida Keys in 2021 and 2022 received final approval from local authorities, against the objection of many local residents and a coalition of environmental advocacy groups.

The proposal had already won state and federal approval. Now the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District (FKMCD) has given the final permission needed. Approved by the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) in May 2020, the pilot project is designed to test if a genetically modified pest is a viable alternative to spraying insecticides to control the Aedes aegypti.

It is a species of mosquito that carries several deadly diseases, such as Zika, dengue, chikungunya, and yellow fever. The genetically modified pest, named OX5034, has been altered to produce female offspring that die in the larval stage, well before hatching and growing large enough to bite and spread diseases. Only the female mosquito bites for blood, which she needs to mature her eggs.

Males feed only on nectar, and are thus not a carrier for disease.

The pest also won federal approval to be released into Harris County, Texas, beginning in 2021, according to Oxitec, the American-owned, British-based company that developed the genetically modified organism (GMO). The EPA granted Oxitec’s request after years of investigating the impact of the GMO mosquito on human and environmental health. This is an exciting development because it represents the ground-breaking work of hundreds of passionate people over more than a decade in multiple countries, all of whom want to protect communities from dengue, Zika, yellow fever, and other vector-borne diseases.

However, state and local approval for the Texas release has not been granted. There is no agreement in place or plans to move forward with the project at this time. Texas’ focus is on efforts with the covid pandemic. In June 2020, the state of Florida issued an Experimental Use Permit after seven state agencies unanimously approved the project. But it has taken over a decade to obtain that approval.

In 2009 and 2010, local outbreaks of dengue fever, which is spread by the Aedes aegypti, left the FKMCD desperate for new options. Despite an avalanche of effort, local control efforts to contain the Aedes aegypti with larvicide and pesticide had been largely ineffective. And costly, too. Even though Aedes aegypti is only 1% of its mosquito population, FKMCD typically budgets more than $1 million a year, a full tenth of its total funding, to fighting it.

In 2012, Florida Keys reached out to Oxitec for help.

Oxitec had developed a male mosquito named OX513A, programmed to die before adulthood unless it was grown in water that contained the antibiotic tetracycline. Batches of the sterile OX513A would be allowed to live and mate with females, however, their male and female offspring would inherit the “kill” programming and die, thus limiting population growth. OX513A had been field tested in the Cayman Islands, Panama, and Brazil, with Oxitec reporting a large success rate with each release.

For example, a trial in an urban area of Brazil reduced the Aedes aegypti by 95%. But when word spread in the Florida Keys that the GMO mosquito was on the way, public backlash was swift. More than 100,000 people signed a petition against the proposal. That number has grown to more than 242,000 today. Public relations campaigns reminding Floridians that the GMO pest does not bite because he is male did not completely solve the problem.

Media reports quoted angry residents refusing to be treated as “guinea pigs” for the “superbug” or “Robo-Frankenstein” pest. The EPA spent years investigating the GMO pest’s impact on both human health and the environment, allowing time for public input. But in the midst of the evaluation, Oxitec developed a second-generation “Friendly Mosquito” technology and withdrew the application for the first.

The new male mosquito, OX5034, is programmed to kill only the females, with males surviving for multiple generations and passing along the modified genes to subsequent male offspring.

The EPA permit requires Oxitec to notify state officials 72 hours before releasing the GMO mosquitoes and conduct ongoing tests for at least 10 weeks to ensure none of the female pests reach adulthood. However, environmental groups worry that the spread of the genetically modified male genes into the wild population could potentially harm threatened and endangered species of birds, insects, and mammals that feed on the GMO pests. The release of GMO pests will needlessly put Floridians, the environment, and endangered species at risk in the midst of a pandemic.