TikTok's modified mosquitoes

When I saw a news report from France 24 about people on TikTok and Twitter freaking out about a so-called genetically modified mosquito I wanted to find out more about it, so I searched for it a little bit. And I got answers to my questions. With that being said let’s discuss that matter in the video.

Tiktok mosquito genetically modified mosquito bill gates mosquitos are TikTok video about mosquitoes robotic mosquitoes vaccinating mosquito Florida mosquito project Oxitec.

https://twitter.com/notrahal

First, this is not real.
Let’s see why.
People said that this insect is genetically modified because there is a two-digit number on its back. But is it really a two-digit number? Ok. Let’s leave it for now.
Also, this TikTok people called it a mosquito. Is it really a mosquito?
It isn’t,... according to France24’s Entomologists.

So what is it? It is an aphid. Specifically a Silver Birch Aphid.

How to identify, you might ask, A mosquito only has one pair of wings. But the insect in this video has two pairs of wings.

But to be 100% certain these Entomologists will have to check this exact insect under a microscope. But the certainty is almost there.

So this is an aphid, not a mosquito.

Then back to the number thing. This number can be identified as 36 or 38. But this patch is normal to these aphids. Not sure.? A quick search can help.
So this insect in this video is not a mosquito but an aphid. And there are no human written numbers on it. It is all-natural.
So the point of this TikTok video and many others from twitter are not true.
And do you think that researchers in a research lab worth millions of dollars will just print a serial number on their secret product for normal people to find out about their secrets?
No, But sometimes could be. Not this time.

However, let’s see what Mr. Gates has to do with these.
Mr.Gates has a lot of interest in mosquitoes. And mostly lowering child deaths that happen due to malaria, dengue, and other diseases that mosquitoes carry. That looks like goodwill.

He started an annual mosquito week on his gates notes blog and expanded it to his youtube channel. And he released a swarm of mosquitoes to the audience at a TED talk event. Those mosquitoes weren’t infected though.

And his foundation is funding one of the biggest mosquito gene tech companies named Oxitec. And they released like 700m of their genetically modified mosquitoes to the state of Florida.
They were mostly sure that this is not going to create another pandemic. But many others raised questions like, will these genes get into our bodies? will these things break nature? and many other things?
It was in 2020. And what about the results? Those are positive according to them. But needs to be tested more widely. And now everything in Florida was messed up with IAN.

So that’s why people attache Mr.Gates with this incident.

So, I got the answers to my questions.

And don’t straight up believe everything on the internet. Including this video. Do your own research!