Travel medicine expert David O. Freedman, MD, used precautions to avoid getting sick with dengue despite repeated exposure to dengue season while running the Gorgas tropical medicine course in Lima, Peru for 20 years.
Freedman himself luckily dodged dengue all those years by following the same, time-honored precautions we still advise today. Despite “the hottest jungle climate you can imagine with maximum humidity,” he always wore long sleeves and pants, applied lots of repellent containing DEET or picaridin, and never ate lunch or dinner outdoors.
Taking precautions is a better bet than not doing so.