Zika could become explosive pandemic.

Discussion in 'Science' started by tidbit, Jan 28, 2016.

  1. tidbit

    tidbit New Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Jul 5, 2015
    Messages:
    3,752
    Likes Received:
    50
    Trophy Points:
    0
    US scientists have urged the World Health Organisation to take urgent action over the Zika virus, which they say has "explosive pandemic potential".

    Writing in a US medical journal, they called on the WHO to heed lessons from the Ebola outbreak and convene an emergency committee of disease experts.

    They said a vaccine might be ready for testing in two years but it could be a decade before it is publicly available.

    Zika, linked to shrunken brains in children, has caused panic in Brazil.

    Thousands of people have been infected there and it has spread to some 20 countries.



    ◾Would it be wrong to eradicate mosquitoes?

    The Brazilian President, Dilma Roussef, has urged Latin America to unite in combating the virus.

    She told a summit in Ecuador that sharing knowledge about the disease was the only way that it would be beaten. A meeting of regional health ministers has been called for next week.

    Writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Daniel R Lucey and Lawrence O Gostin say the WHO's failure to act early in the recent Ebola crisis probably cost thousands of lives.

    They warn that a similar catastrophe could unfold if swift action is not taken over the Zika virus.

    There is no cure for the virus and the hunt is on for a vaccine, led by scientists at the University of Texas Medical Branch.

    The researchers have visited Brazil to carry out research and collect samples and are now analysing them in a suite of high-security laboratories in Galveston, Texas.

    The Zika virus was discovered in monkeys in 1947 in Uganda's Zika Forest, with the first human case registered in Nigeria in 1954 but for decades it did not appear to pose much of a threat to people and was largely ignored by the scientific community.

    It was only with an outbreak on the Micronesian island of Yap in 2007 that some researchers began to take an interest.

    In the past year the virus "exploded" said Prof Weaver, sweeping through the Caribbean and Latin America "infecting probably a couple of million people".
    http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-35425731



    Another strange component of this disease is that it is transmissible from person to person via sexual intercourse or contaminated blood much like the Ebola virus, but more like the AIDs virus, because you can be infected and have no symptoms.
    There are confirmed Zika cases in Texas and in California.

    Because Zika causes microcephaly in fetuses, women in South America are being asked to postpone getting pregnant until 2018. The disease will likely spread across all of the Americas. If it spreads as quickly as it seems to be doing now, and as quickly as the AIDs virus spread, all women will want to think twice about getting pregnant. Zika might turn out to be mother nature's birth control.

    Brazil, which is set to host the Olympics, has been especially hit. Twenty-two thousand army personnel have been deployed to pass out flyers warning of the virus, and suggesting ways to limit its spread.

    The only way to fight the spread of the disease now is to empty all containers with standing water in them because these are breeding grounds for the mosquito that causes Zika; but because Rio's slums lack running water, many Brazilians have to carry their water in buckets. So this might be a challenge.
     
  2. robot

    robot Active Member

    Joined:
    Sep 18, 2010
    Messages:
    545
    Likes Received:
    38
    Trophy Points:
    28
    This is something serious. If it could be spread by ordinary mosquitoes then it could spread world-wide and it would cause major problems. Like is it reasonable to kill defective newborn babies? If not then they will need caring for their entire lives.
     
  3. One Mind

    One Mind Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Sep 26, 2014
    Messages:
    20,296
    Likes Received:
    7,744
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Sure, we have already devalued all human life with abortion for convenience, even when we have birth control, but people are too irresponsible to use birth control and instead just kill the baby they made. So, human life is not important, so why not just knock the babies born with small brains, with a baseball bat right after birth?

    Looks like to me that nature has seen that the large brains it gave man has not worked out very well. He is the only animal that is destroying the planet, and the planet being smarter than the big brained mammals. decided the brain needed to be shrunk up, so as not to destroy all of the other life on this world. Nature gave us big brains, that can figure out how to go to the moon, but WILL NOT figure out how to live on earth in peace, how to have a world where people do not starve to death, when there are enough resources for all to thrive instead of so many suffering in their miserable lives. So us, with our big brains blew it, and created a world of perpetual war for perpetual peace, where we fashion economic systems where there are a few extraordinary rich at the top who always are intent on getting as much of the income from the bottom 99 percent as possible, even if it starves that 99 percent in the process. Such a greedy brain in the sociopaths among us who end up being our rulers and our rich elites.

    Nature will probably keep coming up with things like viruses that will either cull the population down, or give us the Zika virus that reduces the size of our brains, making us more chimp like, but who at least lives in some harmony with that which manifested the species.

    Smaller brains ain't so bad, since we sure as hell didn't use our big brains for the good of humanity and the planet. These big brains regressed and brought back 1920s GOPher neoliberalism from the 1920s, which crashed our economy back then, gave us the great depression, and it took anti neoliberalism, which is the OLD progressivism, of FDR, to fix what these big brained idiots broke. Then those big brains developed amnesia and forgot the devastation that GOPher neoliberalism wrought upon America's people, and allowed Reagan and the Bush oligarchs to bring back what failed once, and failed because it ignores the power of sociopathic elite greed to prey upon a People like a damned blood sucking parasite, that inevitable makes it host sick, before it destroys it. This is what big brains created folks.

    So perhaps instead of murdering these small brained kids, perhaps they will have a brain that is actually intelligent in ways other than destroying the human friendly environment, intelligent enough not to wage perpetual war for perpetual peace, and will finally negate the sociopathic greed that insures humanity in great numbers suffer and die from the effects of starvation and a lack of essential resources, where there is plenty enough to go around.

    Perhaps our Golden Age comes from losing an incoherent big brain, and nature gives us a smaller one that is at least coherent, rational, logical, reasonable. So what would the big brained people want to do to the small brained people? Well, kill em of course!!! That is what the myopic big brained folks do. For like the unborn human who is killed in his mother's womb, for mere convenience due to an irresponsible indecent, uncaring, human being, for the sake of convenience we can kill these smaller brained humans as well. They might cramp our self centered, selfish, individualistic life style. And the big brains do not much like that. Right? Let's state the FACTUALITY here. Just be blunt and call it what it is.
     
  4. waltky

    waltky Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jan 26, 2009
    Messages:
    30,071
    Likes Received:
    1,204
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    UNICEF now has power of Google behind it in Zika virus fight...
    :thumbsup:
    Google Teams with UNICEF to Map Spread of Zika Virus
    March 03, 2016 - Tech giant Google said Thursday that it is working with the United Nations Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) to help "map and anticipate" the spread of the Zika virus, which is linked to birth defects in children.
    See also:

    WHO Director: Zika Menace Likely to Get Worse Before It's Stopped
    February 25, 2016 - Fear of the Zika virus is intense in Brazil because of its apparent link to a birth defect. After a fact-finding mission in Brazil, Dr. Margaret Chan, who heads the World Health Organization, said the situation "can get worse before it gets better."
     
  5. waltky

    waltky Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jan 26, 2009
    Messages:
    30,071
    Likes Received:
    1,204
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    Zika eats brain cells...
    :eekeyes:
    Zika caught 'killing' brain cells
    Fri, 04 Mar 2016 - Zika virus kills the type of tissue found in the developing brain, researchers have shown.
     
  6. waltky

    waltky Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jan 26, 2009
    Messages:
    30,071
    Likes Received:
    1,204
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    Zika and the blood supply...
    :confusion:
    Zika virus and safe blood supply
    Monday 7th March, 2016 - Can Zika virus be transmitted through donated blood?
    See also:

    Zika and sexual transmission
    Monday 7th March, 2016 - Can Zika be transmitted through sex?
     
  7. Deckel

    Deckel Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Nov 2, 2014
    Messages:
    17,608
    Likes Received:
    2,043
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Bring back DDT if you are that worried about it. Otherwise this just plays like a population control PR stunt.
     
  8. waltky

    waltky Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jan 26, 2009
    Messages:
    30,071
    Likes Received:
    1,204
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    Zika keeps gettin' scarier an' scarier...
    :eekeyes:
    With Each New Discovery, Zika Virus Becomes More Frightening
    March 10, 2016 - Scientists are making new discoveries about the Zika virus almost daily, and the more they learn, the more frightening the virus becomes.
    See also:

    CDC Chief: Puerto Rico Facing 'Hundreds of Thousands' of Zika Cases
    March 10, 2016 - The top U.S. disease prevention official said Thursday that there could be "hundreds of thousands" of Zika cases in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico in the coming months if precautions are not taken.
     
  9. waltky

    waltky Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jan 26, 2009
    Messages:
    30,071
    Likes Received:
    1,204
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    Panama reports Zika baby brain case...
    :omg:
    Zika: Panama has 'first microcephaly case outside Brazil'
    Sat, 19 Mar 2016 - A baby is born in Panama with a brain disorder thought to be linked to the Zika virus, in what may be the first such case outside Brazil in the current outbreak.
     
  10. waltky

    waltky Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jan 26, 2009
    Messages:
    30,071
    Likes Received:
    1,204
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    This summer more Than 30 States at 'High Risk' for Zika...
    :omg:
    CDC Chief: More Than 30 States at 'High Risk' for Zika Transmission
    March 24, 2016 | Zika is an emergency; infected mosquitos may arrive in the U.S. this summer; "and there's much that we still don't know about it," Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told Congress on Wednesday.
     
  11. waltky

    waltky Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jan 26, 2009
    Messages:
    30,071
    Likes Received:
    1,204
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    Mouse Model to Help Test Zika Vaccines, Drugs...
    :cool:
    US Scientists Develop Mouse Model to Test Zika Vaccines, Drugs
    March 28, 2016 — Early tests with infected mice show virus growing in testes, offering clues about how virus typically spread by mosquito bite can be transmitted sexually
     
  12. waltky

    waltky Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jan 26, 2009
    Messages:
    30,071
    Likes Received:
    1,204
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    Zika/microcephaly/Guillain-Barre syndrome link...
    :omg:
    Zika mystery deepens with evidence of nerve cell infections
    April 6, 2016 - Top Zika investigators now believe that the birth defect microcephaly and the paralyzing Guillain-Barre syndrome may be just the most obvious maladies caused by the mosquito-borne virus.
    See also:

    Doctors Urge Congress to Fund Zika Research, Preparation
    April 05, 2016 - The mosquito breeding season is getting underway in the U.S., and with it has come a growing concern about the mosquito-borne Zika virus.
     
  13. waltky

    waltky Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jan 26, 2009
    Messages:
    30,071
    Likes Received:
    1,204
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    US confirms Zika causes birth defects...
    :omg:
    US health experts confirm that Zika causes birth defects
    Wed, 13 Apr 2016 - The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirms that the Zika virus causes severe birth defects including microcephaly.
    See also:

    White House: House-Passed Zika Bill ‘Akin to Passing Out Umbrellas’ Before a Hurricane
    April 13, 2016 – White House spokesperson Josh Earnest said Wednesday that a bill allows the FDA to include Zika drug developers in its voucher program is an “insufficient” response to the Zika outbreak and “akin to passing out umbrellas in the advance of a potential hurricane. ”
     
  14. DarkDaimon

    DarkDaimon Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jun 2, 2010
    Messages:
    5,531
    Likes Received:
    1,563
    Trophy Points:
    113
    OMG ZIKA!!!! It's the end of the human race!

    Seriously everyone, get some mosquito repellent and quit freaking out.
     
  15. scarlet witch

    scarlet witch Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Feb 26, 2016
    Messages:
    11,951
    Likes Received:
    7,714
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Female
  16. Moi621

    Moi621 Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Jul 13, 2013
    Messages:
    19,291
    Likes Received:
    7,606
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male

    I Survived Swine Flu.

    I Survived SARS.

    I Survived West Nile Virus.

    And "they" want me to worry about Zika virus?



    Moi :oldman:
    What Me Worry?


    r > g



     
  17. DarkDaimon

    DarkDaimon Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jun 2, 2010
    Messages:
    5,531
    Likes Received:
    1,563
    Trophy Points:
    113
  18. milorafferty

    milorafferty Banned

    Joined:
    Jan 23, 2015
    Messages:
    4,147
    Likes Received:
    21
    Trophy Points:
    0
    It's all about the government funding. Typical game plan, announce that "something new" has come along. Make it sound like it "could" be a concern and that some precautions should be taken. Then after a short time, GO (*)(*)(*)(*)ING BESERK! Run and scream to everyone that the world is ending, everything is all (*)(*)(*)(*)ed up and (*)(*)(*)(*)-loads of money is needed to solve the issue.

    Result, the Messiah wants two billion dollars to give them.
     
  19. robot

    robot Active Member

    Joined:
    Sep 18, 2010
    Messages:
    545
    Likes Received:
    38
    Trophy Points:
    28
    It is going to be rough for the Olympics. Any females that might get pregnant just before or during the Olympics should not go there. So the number of people going could be significantly down. Either that or they take some temporary measures to not get pregnant.
     
  20. Herkdriver

    Herkdriver New Member

    Joined:
    Mar 6, 2007
    Messages:
    21,346
    Likes Received:
    297
    Trophy Points:
    0
    I advocated on another thread for the eradication of the disease carrying species of mosquito from the face of the Earth. Technology exists today to make this a reality provided a concerted effort is made. Primarily releasing genetically modified mosquitoes that pass along genetic instructions to render the females sterile.

    Mosquito borne diseases effecting humans and other animals include:
    malaria, dengue, filariasis, West Nile virus, chikungunya, yellow fever, Japanese encephalitis, Western equine encephalitis, Eastern equine encephalitis, Venezuelan equine encephalitis, La Crosse encephalitis and Zika fever.

    By far, mosquitoes are the most deadly living things known to humans on this planet, causing one million human deaths annually, primarily from malaria.

    Malaria alone kills about 1 million people annually and makes another 246 million people sick.

    A permanent mosquito eradication plan would prioritize and establish the species that need to be eliminated.

    Of the thousands of mosquito species about 200 carry and transmit pathogens to humans. Not all mosquitoes will need to be targeted. Its time the World organized to wipe them off of the planet by introducing genetically modified variants spreading self-limiting traits with the ultimate goal being eradication of a species.

    When we're done with mosquitoes we go after rats.
     
  21. Herkdriver

    Herkdriver New Member

    Joined:
    Mar 6, 2007
    Messages:
    21,346
    Likes Received:
    297
    Trophy Points:
    0
    The Zika virus will hit the United States.

    [​IMG]


    .Zika is typically transmitted through bites from the same kind of mosquitoes - Aedes aegypti - that can spread other tropical diseases, like dengue fever, chikungunya and yellow fever

    The area in blue is where this species is found.

    [​IMG]

    There is already historical precedence using genetics, not chemical toxins, to go after a specific species of insect...

    Case in point, in 1953, Edward Knipling used an Army X-ray machine to sterilize some flies and released them on Florida’s Sanibel Island. The experiment worked. Then it worked again, on the island of Curacao. Within a few months, Knipling had exterminated the island’s native screwworm population—a full-blown screwworm massacre. By 1959, the fly was gone from all Southeastern states. Not long after that, it had disappeared from the U.S. as a whole.

    Malaria outbreaks in the U.S. have been small and relatively isolated, but the potential risk for the disease to re-emerge is present.

    Many are dismissing the dangers of mosquito borne pathogens as the realm of 3rd World countries, but the risk in the U.S. for the Zika virus to spread here, particularly in the Southern half of the U.S. is not a question of will, it's a question of when.

    The consequences include birth defects.

    We can wait for a Zika virus vaccine, but we should also begin planning for the extermination of the Aedes aegypti species of mosquito, a known carrier of pathogens dangerous to humans...the sooner the better.
     
    waltky likes this.
  22. waltky

    waltky Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jan 26, 2009
    Messages:
    30,071
    Likes Received:
    1,204
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    First zika microcephaly baby born in NJ...
    :omg:
    Baby Born to Zika-infected Mom in NJ Has Microcephaly
    June 01, 2016 - Health officials in New Jersey said a baby girl born on Tuesday, to a mother who was infected with the Zika virus, has severe microcephaly.
     
  23. Taxonomy26

    Taxonomy26 Banned

    Joined:
    Jan 24, 2016
    Messages:
    1,611
    Likes Received:
    1,237
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Was listening to News and it said they expect One Quarter of Puerto Rico's population to have been exposed to Zika by the end of 2016.
    Of course, this population also travels heavily to the USA - Fl/NY/etc.
    And perhaps could start being spread by other main mosquito.
    And I expect we'll be having some domestically-gotten infections in Florida by the end of this month.
    Then the whole SE.
    The Feds refusing Florida Spraying money.
    +
     
  24. Deckel

    Deckel Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Nov 2, 2014
    Messages:
    17,608
    Likes Received:
    2,043
    Trophy Points:
    113
    We must stop this now before it is too late to have young nursing students to wipe baby boomer butts!!!!

    I have faith that next year there will be a new virus that will wipe us all out. Winters are good for that sort of cleansing.
     
  25. waltky

    waltky Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jan 26, 2009
    Messages:
    30,071
    Likes Received:
    1,204
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    Senate gets dire assessment on zika...
    :omg:
    US Senators Warned on Zika After Failing to Pass Funding
    June 29, 2016 — One day after Zika funding failed in the Senate, U.S. lawmakers heard a sobering assessment of the virus' potential to do harm and America's lack of preparedness to fight the mosquito that carries it.
     

Share This Page