This is, of course, the counterargument to eradication, which is what leads me to muse on it

As I've read it, it's always regarding the food chain. I've never seen a paper that said mosquitos were completely inconsequential, just that if they were completely removed, the food chain wouldn't be damaged.

Somewhat tangentially, a mosquito eradication effort increased the rates of Dengue hemorrhagic fever - the opposite of what was intended.

With Dengue, if the body is exposed to multiple strains within a short time period, there's no severe reaction.

However, if there's a delay, and the body gets to prepare, and then sees a slightly different Dengue virus, the shit hits the fan.

So the decreased number of mosquitos left a greater mean time between cross-strain exposure, which in turn increased the number of severe reactions.

That's not a argument against mosquito eradication, though; that's a argument against not finishing a mosquito eradication.

No, it's an argument against partial mosquito eradication - which is an intermediate step for complete eradication.

Is this what you're trying to cite?

If so.... the resurgence in populations is what caused the increase.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3516305/

I'm not sure, but my recollection of the article in question is quite specific - that when there was a delay between exposures across strains, the hemorrhagic fever did not result.

This article (The Autoimmune Mechanism in Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29686179/ is probably more relevant.

Why cross-strain exposure would prevent that auto-immune reaction, I have no idea - probably something to do with tiny little puzzle pieces that almost fit.

(And no real need for the condescension.)