> Why not just get rid of mosquitos?
Because its harder than it sounds: LOTS of effort goes into eradication, whether by large-scale environmentally destructive methods (literally draining the wetlands where they reproduce), toxic methods (spraying poison over areas they reproduce near human populations, which also means over humans and water used by humans), or trickier methods lkke releasing masses of sterile male mosquitos to mate unproductively with females to reduce the number of productive matings.
But these efforts are usually less than complete successes at the best of times, and have gotten worse over time as—as the article here notes!—“Efforts to prevent the spread of the disease have been complicated by existing malaria interventions becoming less effective due to mosquitoes developing biological and behavioural resistance to insecticides and barrier-based controls.”
> It seems that elimination is actually easier.
It sounds like someone has never tried elimination.
A huge focus of gene drive manipulation of mosquitos is to force their populations to extinction.
The male is created with an X chromosome that will destroy any other X with which it is paired, leaving only other male progeny with the hostile X.
This goes on for a few hundred generations, driving the female population to zero.
There are grave moral questions in this, but eventually the technology will reach those who decide to deploy it, perhaps against the general will. It is only a matter of time.
Ask Africans if they would be against eradicating mosquito born diseases. It is very easy to speak from your comfortable home. I have strict opinions about this one issue; we need to forget about ethics, morality and take calculated risk and wipe out disease carrying mosquitos.
Yes, I agree that this is obvious. When it is accessible in these regions, it will be used.