The news cycle instills fear in the anxious. The zombie apocalypse might be just around the corner, right? Since the global pandemic of COVID-19, the public consciousness of viruses has gravitated toward panic. From Monkey Pox to West Nile Virus, every “outbreak” traps some people inside their homes, afraid to leave. With risk assessment, this doesn’t need to be the case. There are tools you can use to determine whether it’s safe to travel to different parts of the United States or what precautions you need to take, if any. One tool is the Centers for Disease Control (CDC)’s ArboNet.

Let’s take the 2024 Eastern Equine Encephalitis outbreak as an example. Every Department of Public Health in the United States reports summary information provided by hospitals in a region. The CDC compiles this information into ArboNet – a tool that maps and tracks insect-borne viral infections. When a disease, such as Eastern Equine Encephalitis, infects people, most are asymptomatic. Asymptomatic infection is a successful strategy for a virus because replication ceases if the host organism dies. However, because the CDC only enters data into ArboNet related to hospitalizations, which are vulnerable members of the population, reporting cannot relay this. The CDC collects other data, such as age group and immunocompromising condition status, and combines this with the hospitalization numbers. This method determines who makes up the vulnerable population for each virus.

The recent outbreak of Eastern Equine Encephalitis only affected ten people across six states. By comparison, the current Dengue Fever outbreak has hospitalized 3,085 people in Florida, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands with locally acquired infections. Powassan Virus, another encephalitis-causing virus, reports forty-two cases in nine states, primarily focused in the Northeast and Great Lakes regions.

Tools like ArboNet can aid in appropriate risk assessment and usage of DEET-containing insect repellents for those trying to minimize their exposure. The data facilitates risk assessment when traveling around the United States or venturing outside your home. If you see information on the news about a scary outbreak of an insect-borne virus, be sure to check it out and decide how frightened you should be.

Editor: Lucy Cafiero