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FRANKEN-Squito-Zika

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March 27, 2024, 12:55:24 pm Mark says: Shocked Shocked Shocked Shocked  When Hamas spokesman Abu Ubaida began a speech marking the 100th day of the war in Gaza, one confounding yet eye-opening proclamation escaped the headlines. Listing the motives for the Palestinian militant group's Oct. 7 massacre in Israel, he accused Jews of "bringing red cows" to the Holy Land.
December 31, 2022, 10:08:58 am NilsFor1611 says: blessings
August 08, 2018, 02:38:10 am suzytr says: Hello, any good churches in the Sacto, CA area, also looking in Reno NV, thanks in advance and God Bless you Smiley
January 29, 2018, 01:21:57 am Christian40 says: It will be interesting to see what happens this year Israel being 70 years as a modern nation may 14 2018
October 17, 2017, 01:25:20 am Christian40 says: It is good to type Mark is here again!  Smiley
October 16, 2017, 03:28:18 am Christian40 says: anyone else thinking that time is accelerating now? it seems im doing days in shorter time now is time being affected in some way?
September 24, 2017, 10:45:16 pm Psalm 51:17 says: The specific rule pertaining to the national anthem is found on pages A62-63 of the league rulebook. It states: “The National Anthem must be played prior to every NFL game, and all players must be on the sideline for the National Anthem. “During the National Anthem, players on the field and bench area should stand at attention, face the flag, hold helmets in their left hand, and refrain from talking. The home team should ensure that the American flag is in good condition. It should be pointed out to players and coaches that we continue to be judged by the public in this area of respect for the flag and our country. Failure to be on the field by the start of the National Anthem may result in discipline, such as fines, suspensions, and/or the forfeiture of draft choice(s) for violations of the above, including first offenses.”
September 20, 2017, 04:32:32 am Christian40 says: "The most popular Hepatitis B vaccine is nothing short of a witch’s brew including aluminum, formaldehyde, yeast, amino acids, and soy. Aluminum is a known neurotoxin that destroys cellular metabolism and function. Hundreds of studies link to the ravaging effects of aluminum. The other proteins and formaldehyde serve to activate the immune system and open up the blood-brain barrier. This is NOT a good thing."
http://www.naturalnews.com/2017-08-11-new-fda-approved-hepatitis-b-vaccine-found-to-increase-heart-attack-risk-by-700.html
September 19, 2017, 03:59:21 am Christian40 says: bbc international did a video about there street preaching they are good witnesses
September 14, 2017, 08:06:04 am Psalm 51:17 says: bro Mark Hunter on YT has some good, edifying stuff too.
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Author Topic: FRANKEN-Squito-Zika  (Read 8805 times)
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« Reply #30 on: May 27, 2016, 10:56:02 pm »

Zika crisis: WHO rejects 'move Rio Olympics' call

The World Health Organization (WHO) has rejected a call to move or postpone this summer's Rio Olympic Games over the Zika outbreak.

It said this would "not significantly alter" the spread of the virus, which is linked to serious birth defects.

In an open letter to the WHO, more than 100 leading scientists had said new findings about Zika made it "unethical" for the Games to go ahead.

They also said the global health body should revisit its Zika guidance.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has said it sees no reason to delay or move the Games because of the mosquito-borne disease.

The outbreak began in Brazil a year ago, but now more than 60 countries and territories have continuing transmission.

While Zika's symptoms are mild, in the letter the experts say it causes babies to be born with abnormally small heads and may also cause a rare and sometimes fatal neurological syndrome in adults.

The letter is signed by 150 international scientists, doctors and medical ethicists from such institutions as Oxford University and Harvard and Yale universities in the United States.

They cite the failure of a mosquito-eradication programme in Brazil, and the country's "weakened" health system as reasons to postpone or move the Olympics in "the name of public health".

REST: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-36401150
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« Reply #31 on: May 28, 2016, 10:28:30 pm »

Zika expert warns Britons to 'think twice' about trips to Disney World because the virus is set to reach the US 

Virus can leave babies with under-developed brains if mothers are infected
No evidence that mosquitoes on the US mainland infected with Zika virus
But London professor believes the situation could change during summer
Warning comes after scientists said the Rio Olympics should be moved 


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3614551/Zika-expert-warns-Britons-think-twice-trips-Disney-World-virus-set-reach-US.html#ixzz4A0nekXJo
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« Reply #32 on: May 31, 2016, 07:26:00 pm »

First baby born with Zika-linked microcephaly in New York tri-state area

Doctors at Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey confirmed Tuesday the birth of a child suffering from Zika-linked microcephaly, a condition wherein the child's brain and head are partially developed.

The mother, who is 31 but whose name was not disclosed, contracted the Zika virus while in Honduras and was admitted to the emergency room at Hackensack on Friday while vacationing in the United States. Tuesday, doctors delivered her baby girl, who was born also with intestinal and visual issues. Reports indicate she is the first child born with Zika-linked complications in the New York tri-state area.

The child’s mother, who developed a rash for two days in Honduras but had no other symptoms until arriving in the U.S., was under the care of a surgical team led by Dr. Abdulla Al-Khan and Dr. Manny Alvarez, senior managing health editor at FoxNews.com and chief of obstetrics and gynecology at Hackensack. A neonatologist and pediatric infectious disease specialist, as well as nursing personnel, were on hand for the birth.

Doctors in Honduras suspected intracranial complications with the child in utero, but it was not until she was admitted to the high-risk unit at Hackensack University Medical Center that doctors confirmed the microcephaly diagnosis. The patient’s aunt told FoxNews.com the mother is not doing well emotionally after the birth of her child.

While this is the first birth of a child with Zika-linked complications at Hackensack, it is not the first such case in the U.S. In February, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed that a woman delivered a baby who suffered from severe microcephaly as a result of Zika infection.

Microcephaly is a birth defect wherein a baby’s head is smaller than expected compared with other babies of the same sex and age. According to the CDC, babies with the condition typically have smaller brains that might not have developed properly. Microcephaly can also cause seizures, developmental delays, intellectual disability, hearing loss, vision problems, feeding issues, and problems with movement and balance. In April, researchers at the CDC concluded that after a careful review of evidence, the Zika virus is a cause of microcephaly and other severe fetal brain defects.

The CDC has advised pregnant women to avoid traveling to areas where Zika is spreading, and to talk to a health care provider to prevent sexual transmission of the virus. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), women planning to become pregnant should wait at least eight weeks before trying to conceive if they or their partner live in or are returning from Zika virus hotspots.

While there is no vaccine to prevent Zika virus, health officials recommend wearing long-sleeved shirts and pants, as well as practicing mosquito control to prevent infection where Zika is being transmitted. According to the CDC, 591 cases of Zika have been diagnosed in the U.S., and all have been travel related. Infected patients typically do not present symptoms, but those who do may complain of fever, rash, joint pain or red eyes.

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2016/05/31/first-baby-born-with-zika-linked-microcephaly-in-new-york-tri-state-area.html
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« Reply #33 on: June 03, 2016, 01:30:02 pm »

Zika May Be Transmitted by Oral Sex, Scientists Find

Scientists raised the possibility that the Zika virus can be transmitted by oral sex — perhaps even by kissing — on Friday in a letter to The New England Journal of Medicine describing one such case in France.

A single incident may seem trivial. But until early this year, there was only one known instance of sexual transmission of the Zika virus — a 2008 case in which a mosquito researcher just back from Africa infected his wife in Colorado.

Now scientists believe that sexual transmission is an important driver of the Zika epidemic in the Americas. Cases have been reported in 10 countries where no mosquitoes carry the virus, including France, Germany, Italy, Portugal and New Zealand.

In the French case, a 46-year-old man returned to Paris from Rio de Janeiro on Feb. 10, shortly after experiencing Zika symptoms in Brazil — fever, headache and a rash — that had just ended when he reached France.

He and a 24-year-old partner had sex seven times between Feb. 11 and Feb. 20, each involving vaginal sex without ejaculation and oral sex with ejaculation.

The woman fell ill on Feb. 20. Both were tested for Zika infection on Feb. 23. The man had high levels of the virus in his semen and urine, but none in his blood or saliva. The woman had the virus in her urine and saliva, and antibodies to the virus in her blood. But a vaginal swab was negative for the infection.

The two were using oral sex as a form of birth control, said Dr. Yazdan Yazdanpanah, an infectious disease specialist at the National Institute of Health and Medical Research in Paris and one of the report’s authors.

“I don’t think this changes anything, but it shows you how elaborate the number of avenues of possible transmission can be,” said Dr. William Schaffner, head of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical School.

He agreed that the most likely transmission route was oral sex, although he said it was possible that the woman was infected by pre-ejaculate during vaginal sex, or that the couple’s recollections of each sex act were imperfect.

“It could be that it’s a moment of passion, it’s late at night and everyone’s had a few liqueurs,” he said.

Dr. Yazdanpanah said the two were interviewed separately and their descriptions matched.

Dr. John T. Brooks, an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studying sexual transmission of the Zika virus, said he was “not particularly surprised” to see transmission that was probably by oral sex.

Transmission through kissing is unlikely, Dr. Brooks said.

“Casual kissing has got to be safe because, if it weren’t, don’t you think we’d see a lot more Zika? Every mom who kissed her baby would pass it on,” he said. “To be sure, we’d have to look for deep kissing in the absence of sexual contact, and that’s hard to find.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/03/health/zika-oral-sex-kissing-transmission.html?_r=0
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« Reply #34 on: June 03, 2016, 01:32:01 pm »

Some NBC staffers refuse to go to Brazil Olympics over Zika fears

 This could quickly go from a simple itch to something far worse.

Some NBC employees are refusing to travel to Rio de Janeiro to work on the network’s Olympic broadcast this summer, fearing that they could become infected with the dreaded mosquito-borne Zika virus.

“It’s very simple,” an NBC staffer told The Daily News. “I have a family. I have small children and for me, at least, the trip seems too risky. I might want to get pregnant soon.”

The staffer is one of a “handful” of NBC staffers who are opting not to travel to Brazil, network sources confirmed — declining to provide specific numbers.

Zika virus worries won’t halt 2016 Olympics in Rio: IOC

The network is sending more than 2,000 staffers to the South American country to cover the Olympics, including high-profile talent like “Today” hosts Matt Lauer, Meredith Viera and Savannah Guthrie.

Other reporting is expected from Winter Games’ stars like Johnny Weir and Tara Lipinski.

Brazil has been at the epicenter of a frightening outbreak of Zika, the mosquito-borne virus linked to severe birth defects and possible neurological problems in adults.

rest: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/zika-virus-athletes-nbc-staffers-skip-olympics-article-1.2659244
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« Reply #35 on: June 17, 2016, 05:56:28 pm »

Zika linked to birth defects in six US cases

The Zika virus has been linked to birth defects in the foetuses and babies of six women in the United States who were infected while pregnant, US health officials said Thursday.

Three of the women gave birth to infants with congenital defects such as microcephaly -- an abnormally small head -- and brain damage that are linked to Zika, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said, citing figures as of June 9.

Of the other three women, one had a miscarriage, one terminated her pregnancy, and the third gave birth to an infant that was stillborn. All three cases showed instances of Zika-related birth defects.

The six women mentioned Thursday were all infected while traveling in countries where the virus is circulating.

The CDC said it will publish weekly results of women who are pregnant and infected with Zika.

A total of 234 pregnant women in the United States had tested positive for Zika as of June 9, the CDC said.

US scientists believe that a woman infected with Zika during the first trimester of her pregnancy has a one to 13 percent chance that the fetus develops microcephaly.

The mosquito-borne Zika has spread rapidly across Latin America and the Caribbean in the past months, and experts warn that the continental United States will likely see an increase in cases as summer begins in the northern hemisphere.

There is also growing evidence that Zika can be transmitted sexually.

There is no vaccine for Zika.

The virus, which usually causes only mild, flu-like symptoms, can also trigger adult-onset neurological problems such as Guillain-Barre Syndrome, which can cause paralysis and death.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/zika-linked-birth-defects-six-us-cases-104853040.html?ref=gs
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« Reply #36 on: June 26, 2016, 02:00:56 pm »

List of Possible Zika Birth Defects Grows Longer

The full scope of Zika-related birth defects may extend far beyond abnormally small heads and brain damage. Research to be presented next week at a teratology conference in San Antonio, Texas, suggests that serious joint problems, seizures, vision impairment, trouble feeding and persistent crying can be added to the list of risks from Zika exposure in the womb.

The new findings confirm doctors’ concerns that even when Zika-exposed babies are born without microcephaly and appear largely normal at birth they can go on to have health issues including seizures and developmental delays that only become apparent in the weeks and months after birth. The new work also reinforces recent findings that suggest the type of outcomes the babies experience also varies by what trimester their mothers were in when they were exposed to Zika—with few cases of microcephaly when mothers were exposed during the third trimester.

The research underscores the steep learning curve that scientists and officials face with this virus, which is transmitted through mosquito bites and sexual contact. Earlier studies chronicling apparent Zika-related damage had also hinted that doctors had much to learn about viral-driven birth defects. In March researchers published findings in the New England Journal of Medicine suggesting that 29 percent of pregnant women who tested positive for Zika had fetuses with abnormalities already apparent via ultrasound. The finding was particularly alarming because doctors knew many more central nervous system issues would likely only be recognizable months or even years after the child’s birth.

Today it remains unclear exactly how many babies born to women infected with Zika during pregnancy will develop birth defects. But the new findings from Brazil do give a better sense of the breadth of obstacles Zika-affected families may face within the first year of their newborns’ lives.

Brazilian researchers followed 83 infants born since August 2015 to mothers believed to have been infected with Zika. The study included families from eight states, mostly in Brazil’s northeast, where birth defects have soared. Because solid testing for Zika was not yet in place last fall, however, only 10 of the 83 mothers were confirmed as Zika-exposed through laboratory testing—a major caveat that applies to most current Zika-outcome studies. That reality leaves open the possibility that the birth defects could be due to other environmental or genetic factors. Still, about 70 percent of the mothers in this study remember experiencing a rash—a known Zika symptom—during their pregnancies, and the researchers eliminated other leading causes of the birth defects including certain toxic exposures and viral infections from cytomegalovirus.

The Brazilian team found that about 10 percent of the 83 babies had knee or elbow joint limitations so severe that the infants cannot fully extend their arms or legs. Another 43 percent of the babies had less-pronounced joint problems that impeded finger or toe motion, or the babies had other limb abnormalities like clubfeet. And half of the babies had seizures and abnormal eye exams.

This study reflects the situation of a relatively small study group—and only included babies with abnormalities. But it does provide some insights, including that birth defects may vary depending on what trimester the mother became infected with the virus. “These findings are in line with our findings about babies exposed to Zika in utero,” says Karin Nielsen-Saines, a pediatric infectious diseases specialist and senior author of the March NEJM research. Still, she cautioned that because this new study only includes babies with abnormalities it does not give a good snapshot of how common birth defects might really be among the Zika-exposed. “You might be missing children who are normal so you may skew your data toward abnormalities,” she says.

  Zika has ushered in a number of unwelcome surprises. It is the first insect-borne disease with a proven link to serious birth defects (vision problems have been linked to West Nile Virus but not yet causally verified). Yet infection with several other viruses during pregnancy—in particular toxoplasmosis, rubella or cytomegalovirus—can also lead to microcephaly, vision problems or hearing loss that may not be immediately apparent at birth, so viral-driven birth defects are not unprecedented. CVM and toxoplasmosis can also, rarely, lead to joint issues, says Dee Quinn, director of the Arizona branch of the nonprofit MotherToBaby and a senior genetic counselor on staff at the Colleges of Medicine and Pharmacy at the University of Arizona.

The new Brazil findings on Zika also echo certain patterns related to those other viral infections. Notably, mothers infected with Zika late in their pregnancies tended to have babies with relatively less-serious side effects: The children more often had developmental delays including trouble sitting up, as well as seizures instead of microcephaly and significant brain calcifications, says Lavinia Schuler-Faccini, the president of the Brazilian Society of Medical Genetics and the scientist presenting the findings next week. Still, that does not mean fetuses exposed during the third trimester are better off. Nielsen-Saines says that in her published work and in ongoing analysis she is seeing that such late exposure is more likely to lead to stillbirths.

Pinning down more concrete answers about how common birth defects may be among pregnant women remains an arduous task, and scientists still do not know if other factors including genetics, exposure to other viruses or how women contracted the virus—via sex or mosquito bite—may play a role. Further complicating efforts to get a handle on the issue: according to the World Health Organization, more pregnant women infected with Zika are now aborting their fetuses.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/list-of-possible-zika-birth-defects-grows-longer/
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« Reply #37 on: July 08, 2016, 01:19:34 pm »

CDC monitoring 320 U.S. pregnant women with Zika

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday that it is monitoring 320 U.S. pregnant women with laboratory evidence of Zika virus infection, up from 287 women a week earlier. However, the number of babies born in the United States with birth defects linked to Zika..., or lost pregnancies...remained unchanged from last week's report at 7 and 5, respectively...   



https://www.yahoo.com/news/cdc-monitoring-320-u-pregnant-women-zika-164016925--business.html
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« Reply #38 on: July 09, 2016, 04:43:55 am »

First Zika-related death in continental U.S. reported in Utah

U.S. health officials confirmed Friday that a Utah resident's death late last month was the first Zika-related death in the continental United States.

The Salt Lake County health department said the elderly person had an underlying health condition. The individual, who had traveled to a Zika-affected region this year, tested positive for the virus, the department said in a statement. The exact cause of death has not been determined, however.

"We know [Zika] contributed to the death, but we don't know if it was the sole cause," medical officer Dagmar Vitek said in a news conference.

Gary Edwards, the department's executive director, said officials learned of the case while reviewing death certificates. Laboratory tests conducted in Utah were positive for Zika, but the results "did not come back until the individual had died," he said.

Citing health privacy concerns, the local officials provided no other details.

[First Zika-virus-related death reported in U.S. in Puerto Rico]

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday that it had been notified of the death. In April, the CDC reported the first U.S. death from Zika in a patient in Puerto Rico. That man, who was in his 70s, died from internal bleeding after developing severe thrombocytopenia -- a rare immune reaction to his infection that cause low levels of platelets that help blood clot.

Zika is spread primarily through the bite of an infected Aedes aegypti or Aedes albopictus mosquito. Salt Lake County officials said neither species is present in their area. The virus can also spread through sex. About 80 percent of people who get infected have no symptoms, while the rest tend to only have mild symptoms that last for several days to a week.

In rare cases, though, the virus has been linked to a nervous system disorder that can cause muscle weakness and sometimes paralysis. It poses its biggest danger during pregnancy, when infection can cause a range of severe fetal abnormalities.

[CDC: At least 6 Zika-infected pregnancies have resulted in birth defects]

As of July 7, no cases of locally transmitted, mosquito-borne Zika have been reported in the continental United States. As of July 6, a total of 1,132 cases of travel-associated Zika have been reported in the 50 states and District of Columbia. Federal, state and local officials are preparing for the possibility of local spread of Zika.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2016/07/08/first-zika-related-death-in-continental-u-s-reported-in-utah/
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« Reply #39 on: July 13, 2016, 05:11:29 pm »

Health experts: Zika threat is serious – and getting bigger

Top health officials warned Wednesday that the Zika virus threatens much of the Western Hemisphere, with Florida, Puerto Rico and Brazil in the crosshairs.

At a Senate hearing convened by Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, three senior U.S. government experts urged Congress to pass a $1.1 billion Zika-prevention bill that has been stalled by partisan politics.

“We have made difficult decisions and redirected resources from other important public health activities to support our most critical needs,” Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told senators on a Senate Foreign Affairs subcommittee focused on the Western Hemisphere.

“These redirected funds, however, are not enough to support a comprehensive Zika response, and they divert funding from other critically important public health activities,” Frieden said.

The CDC chief criticized partisan congressional squabbling that has held up the emergency Zika funds.

“This is no way to fight epidemics,” he said.

Rubio, a Miami Republican, described the harm already wrought by Zika in his state and in Puerto Rico.

Florida, he said, reported 13 new infections Monday. With those, the state had a total 282 known cases – 129 of them in South Florida – more than any other state except New York.

Both states have about 1 million Puerto Rican residents, many of whom travel frequently to the commonwealth or host visitors from there.

Zika, carried mainly by the Aedes mosquito species but also transmitted sexually among humans, has ravaged Puerto Rico, where almost 2,500 people have been infected.

“The growing threat of the Zika virus as a full-blown public health crisis in the United States is a clear call to action,” Rubio said.

Republicans, who hold majorities in both the House and Senate, have blocked a $1.9 billion emergency Zika-prevention package President Barack Obama sent to Congress in February.

The Senate overwhelmingly approved a compromise $1.1 billion bill in May, but when it was returned to the chamber last month, House Republicans in a conference committee had inserted provisions unrelated to Zika that Democrats have long opposed.

Among the provisions are limits on Obamacare, restrictions on abortions, funding cuts for birth control and the lifting of key environmental controls.

Branding those provisions “poisons pills,” Senate Democrats last month voted down the altered Zika measure, leaving it at an impasse. Rubio and Sen. Bill Nelson, an Orlando Democrat, want a new vote on a clean bill limited to the Zika response.

At the hearing Wednesday, Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, the senior Democrat on the subcommittee, criticized another clause that would override a law that bans displaying the Confederate flag at cemeteries for veterans.

“Few issues pose as immediate threat to the health of Americans as the Zika virus,” Boxer said. “There’s no room for politics in this.”

Pregnant women are most at risk because Zika can cause birth defects such as microcephaly, a congenital condition marked by abnormally small heads and stunted brain development in infants.

There have been 599 cases of Zika among pregnant women in the United States and its territories, Frieden said Wednesday. Seven infants have been born with Zika-related birth defects, he said.

“We are hopeful that Congress will work quickly to fund critical-response efforts to protect pregnant women against Zika,” Frieden said.

In response to a question from Rubio, Frieden said the CDC is recommending that pregnant women not travel to Brazil for the 2016 Summer Olympics next month.

Brazil has registered more than 100,000 cases of Zika, with at least 5,000 newborns afflicted with microcephaly.

American athletes and spectators can go to Brazil for the Olympics if they observe safeguards, Frieden said.

Sen. Johnny Isakson, a Georgia Republican, praised efforts to combat Zika by the CDC, which is based in Atlanta.

“This is a crisis of major proportions, and time is of the essence,” he said.

Judith Garber, acting assistant secretary of state for scientific affairs, told the Senate panel that 40 countries and territories in the Western Hemisphere “are currently experiencing active, mosquito-born transmission of the Zika virus.”

Garber added: “It is only a matter of time before we experience local transmission in the continental United States and Hawaii as well.”

The vast majority of the almost 1,200 Zika cases in the continental United States and Hawaii have come through contact among people who have traveled in Puerto Rico, Brazil or other heavily infected places.

With Brazil, Colombia and Haiti already reporting thousands of cases of Zika, Rubio said all of the United States, Canada, Mexico, the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean face a potential epidemic.

“It’s only growing by the day,” Rubio said. “And the links between our nations make this a hemispheric public health crisis.”

Without mentioning his party, Rubio criticized the Republicans who’ve blocked funding for Zika research, vaccine development and other forms of prevention.

“The problem is only going to accelerate,” he said.

In a tense exchange Tuesday on the Senate floor, Nelson upbraided Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, for failing to bring to a vote a clean Zika funding bill without the extraneous provisions that Democrats oppose.

“This is an emergency (of the sort) that is always dealt with in the history of this Senate as a bipartisan response to meet the situation of the emergency,” Nelson said. “And now this has been used ideologically as a political message in a partisan-driven bill.”

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/congress/article89422077.html#storylink=cpy

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« Reply #40 on: July 18, 2016, 05:41:11 pm »

In medical mystery, caregiver of Zika patient gets virus

A person who cared for a Zika-infected relative in Utah also got the virus, but exactly how it was transmitted is a medical mystery, health officials announced Monday.

The tropical mosquito that mainly spreads Zika isn't found in the high-altitude area with cold winters where the two lived, Salt Lake County Health Department officials said. They didn't have sexual contact, which is how the virus is typically spread between adults when there's no mosquito bite or mother-to-child transmission.

"The new case in Utah is a surprise, showing that we still have more to learn about Zika," Centers for Disease Control and Prevention medical epidemiologist Erin Staples said.

The caregiver has fully recovered, but authorities did not give further details. The person cared for an elderly man who contracted the disease overseas where mosquitoes are known to spread Zika and who became the first Zika-infected person to die in the continental U.S.

The caregiver did not travel to an affected area, but it's possible that a mosquito came back with the relative, perhaps in a suitcase, CDC Director Tom Frieden said.

The man who died in late June had an unusually high level of the virus in his blood, more than 100,000 times higher than other samples of infected people. Health workers are testing others who had contact with him, and officials are trapping mosquitoes in Utah to test them.

The new case was discovered after a doctor noticed the caregiver's Zika-like symptoms, which include rash, fever and pink eye, officials said. The relative had cared for the elderly man both at home and in the hospital.

It was unclear exactly how the older man died because of his age and another health condition he suffered, according to the CDC. The agency did not immediately revise its advice to health care workers or caregivers after the new case emerged.

"Based on what we know so far about this case, there is no evidence that there is any risk of Zika virus transmission among the general public in Utah," said Dr. Angela Dunn, deputy state epidemiologist at the Utah Department of Health.

Signs of Zika have been found in blood, urine, semen and saliva. There's no evidence yet that the Zika infection in this case is an unusual mutation, but researchers are exploring that possibility through genomic analysis.

The virus causes only a mild illness in most people. But during recent outbreaks in Latin America, scientists discovered that infection during pregnancy has led to severe brain-related birth defects.

No cases of mosquito-spread Zika have been reported in the continental United States, according to the CDC. Health experts think mosquito transmission probably will occur in the U.S., but the expectation is that it will be in low-elevation, sweltering places where the insect has been a steady problem — such as southern Florida or southern Texas.

More than 1,300 Zika illnesses have been reported in the 50 states and the District of Columbia, including eight in Utah, according to health officials. Almost all were people who had traveled to Zika outbreak countries and caught the virus there.

But 14 were people who had not traveled to Zika zones but had sex with someone who had.

The CDC has also been tracking pregnant women infected with Zika, and says they have five reports of pregnancy losses because of miscarriage, stillbirth or abortion.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/caregiver-gets-zika-man-died-medical-mystery-161727555.html
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« Reply #41 on: July 25, 2016, 02:40:17 pm »

Tens of thousands of babies 'may be born with Zika disorders'

Tens of thousands of babies may be born with debilitating Zika-related disorders in the course of the outbreak sweeping through Latin America and the Caribbean, researchers said Monday.

Mathematical projections suggest about 93.4 million people may catch the virus -- including some 1.65 million pregnant women -- before the epidemic fizzles out, a team reported in the journal Nature Microbiology.

Eighty percent of people will develop mild symptoms or never even be aware they have the virus.

But for babies in the womb Zika can be devastating -- linked to a brain-damaging disorder called microcephaly that can lead to stillbirth or severely disabling birth defects.

Among women in a high-risk early term of pregnancy, anything between one and 13 percent have foetuses develop microcephaly or other Zika-related complications, said the multidisciplinary research team from the United States, Britain and Sweden.

This meant "somewhere on the order of tens of thousands across the whole of Latin America and the Caribbean who could realistically end up developing microcephaly or a related condition," said study co-author Alex Perkins of the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, and specified this referred to "live births."

The projection was "a worst-case scenario" he told AFP, "but a realistic one".

It did not account for women who may be postponing conception or having abortions as a result of the outbreak.

"I know that does not provide a very precise number, but I think it's valuable in that at least it gives an order of magnitude guess, which is better than having no idea whatsoever."

The team used data on the usual number of pregnancies, the prevalence of the mosquito species spreading the virus, weather conditions and socio-economic conditions that make people more vulnerable, and disease spread dynamics.

- Conservative estimate? -

Mathematical models of disease progression are notoriously prone to inaccuracies, as estimates can be skewed by such factors as the infectiousness of the virus, the adaptative response of the immune system and social and economic factors that help it to spread.

Experts not involved in the study said the new estimate may be conservative.

Derek Gatherer of Lancaster University noted recent research which found that as many as 29 percent of babies of Zika-infected mothers develop problems.

If so, "over half a million" children may ultimately be affected, he said.

Whatever the final number, a support system for affected babies and their families "needs to be put in place as soon as possible," said Jimmy Whitworth of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

"Over 1,700 affected babies have been born in Brazil so far, and the numbers are going to continue to increase in the months ahead," he said in comments via the Science Media Centre.

The research team predicted Olympics host Brazil will suffer more than double the impact of any other country, with about 580,000 pregnant women out of 37.4 million total infections.

Other affected countries include Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, Cuba, Haiti, Argentina and the Dominican Republic.

Another recent study had put the annual number of pregnancies in the Zika-affected region at about 5.4 million.

But many of those, the new paper said, would not be affected by Zika, due to the effects of "herd immunity".

This is a natural process whereby people become immune to a virus after their first exposure, eventually reaching the point where mosquitoes cannot find enough susceptible people to keep the epidemic going, and it dies out without infecting everyone.

Earlier this month, a study in the American journal Science predicted the outbreak should be over within three years.

The virus, first discovered in Uganda in 1947, took the world by surprise when it emerged, and with such virulence, in Latin America last year.

There is no cure or vaccine.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/tens-thousands-babies-may-born-zika-disorders-152034038.html
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« Reply #42 on: August 05, 2016, 05:26:35 pm »

The FDA just greenlit releasing mutant Zika-killing mosquitoes in Florida

THIS IS WHAT STARTED THE WHOLE THING!!

Our sci-fi future just got a whole lot closer to becoming a reality, after the Food and Drug Administration gave the okay to a field trial that would release genetically modified Zika-killing mosquitoes in the Florida Keys.

On Friday, the FDA released a final environmental assessment of the trial, finding that it “will not have significant impacts on the environment.” The project, led by Oxitec, a biotech company that focuses on insect control, calls for the release of thousands of genetically engineered male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. The lab insects are bred so that over time they could kill off much of the local mosquito population by passing on a gene fatal to any offspring they have with wild females.

This is not the last hurdle Oxitec faces in turning its dream of disease-obliterating mosquitoes into reality. The company will have to win the approval of the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District, which plans to vote on the proposal after issuing a survey testing local sentiment of Keys residents this fall. While past surveys have shown the project to have a majority of support, it has also had vocal naysayers. Some fear the environmental impacts that removing the Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, a non-native species, might have. Others have more imaginative objections, such as conspiracy theories about the project.

Oxitec’s mosquitoes are engineered to include two copies of the baby-mosquito killing genes, overriding natural selection to make it almost certain that their offspring receive the killer gene from dad. Oxitec claims that trials in Brazil, Panama and the Cayman Islands have reduced mosquito populations by 90%, calling the success “an unprecedented level” of human control over nature. (The World Health Organization, which has also studied using such tactics against disease, has stated that while the technology “has demonstrated the ability to reduce the [mosquito] populations in small-scale field trials” there is still “an absence of data on epidemiological impact.”)

The FDA’s okay is a major step forward toward a U.S. implementation of the technology at a time of much concern over the spread of Zika in the U.S. after cases in Florida. Derric Nimmo, the senior scientist for Oxitec’s Keys project, told me that in the coming months much of his time will be spent going door-to-door in Key Haven, the area of the Keys where he hopes to do the release. Nimmo’s job now is to convince residents that his project is the best chance at stopping the spread of Zika in the U.S.

“Everywhere else where we’ve done this there’s been 90% or better control of the population,” he said. “If we can show that it’s the same in the Key Haven, it has a really good chance of being able to prevent Zika in Miami or wherever in the U.S.”

Oxitec’s mosquitoes, he said, is a solution that Keys residents don’t realize they need.

Luke Alphey, a co-founder of Oxitec and developer of the technology who no longer works with the company, said he hopes Keys residents find the FDA’s findings reassuring.

“They have looked carefully at the method and specifically at this trial, and determined it is safe,” he said. “I hope people who don’t have the time and the information to learn everything about this will take comfort in the fact that the FDA has had the time and the information, and this is their conclusion.”

The Florida Keys Mosquito Control District spends $1 million a year fighting the Aedes aegypti, only succeeding in controlling 30 to 60 percent of the population with insecticide. While it’s true that scientists can’t be certain about the environmental impacts the trial will have, the methods currently being tested are unlikely to halt Zika’s spread.

http://fusion.net/story/333793/oxitec-zika-fighting-mosquitoes/
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« Reply #43 on: August 09, 2016, 11:37:19 am »

Harris County infant dies in first Zika-related death in Texas

Texas has confirmed that an infant who recently died in Harris County had microcephaly linked to the Zika virus. The baby passed away shortly after birth and is the first Zika-related death reported in Texas.

During her pregnancy, the mother was in Latin America, where she was infected, and the baby acquired the infection in the womb. Recent test results confirmed the baby's condition and link to Zika. The mother and baby are classified as travel-related cases, and there is no additional associated risk in Texas.

Last month Texas reported the state's first case of microcephaly linked to Zika, also a Harris County infant.

"Zika's impact on unborn babies can be tragic, and our hearts are with this family," said Dr. John Hellerstedt, Texas Department of State Health Services commissioner. "Our central mission from the beginning has been to do everything we can to protect unborn babies from the devastating effects of Zika."

DSHS is coordinating with Harris County Public Health and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to follow the cases.

Texas has reported 97 cases of Zika virus disease, including the two infants with microcephaly from Harris County. All Texas cases are related to travel abroad to areas with active Zika transmission. There have been no reported cases of Zika virus disease transmitted by mosquitoes in Texas, but Texas is on alert for the possibility local transmission.

With its link to microcephaly, Zika poses a serious threat to unborn children. DSHS is tracking the number of pregnant women with Zika in the state, working with providers and reporting weekly data to the national Zika pregnancy registry. DSHS is studying past microcephaly data to understand the prevalence and patterns of this condition in Texas.

DSHS has been emphasizing precautions, specifically for travelers and pregnant women, through an ongoing public education campaign and via www.TexasZika.org.

Common symptoms of the Zika virus include fever, rash, joint pain and conjunctivitis, according to the CDC. Approximately one in five people infected with the virus show symptoms. Severe complications from the virus that require hospitalization are rare, according to the CDC.

rest: http://abc13.com/health/harris-county-infant-dies-in-first-zika-related-death-in-texas/1462611/
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« Reply #44 on: August 19, 2016, 07:01:34 pm »

Zika virus could have Alzheimer's-like effect in adults

Further work must be done to establish how lasting the damage might be, scientists have cautioned

Zika can “wreak havoc” on the brains of adults and cause major, lasting damage, according to a new study. The research could overthrow the assumption that the virus is only of major worry to pregnant women.

Until now, the mosquito-borne infection has been primarily linked to microcephaly, a serious defect where babies are born with small heads and brain damage. That has mean that pregnant women were warned to avoid coming into contact with the infection – but others have shown no obvious symptoms.

But a major new study on mice indicates that the impact of the Zika infection in other adults could be far more serious and sinister than had previously been thought.

Experiments on adult mice engineered to mimic human Zika infection show that the virus seems to attack immature cells in the adult brain. Those same cells are vital to learning and memory – and so losing them could have disastrous effects, comparable to those experienced by people with Alzheimer’s.

Over time, the gradual attack on those cells could lead to shrinkage of the brain and major impairment of cognitive processes, the scientist behind the study said.

Professor Sujan Shresta, a member of the team from the La Jolla Institute of Allergy and Immunology in California, USA, said: "Zika can clearly enter the brain of adults and can wreak havoc. But it's a complex disease - it's catastrophic for early brain development, yet the majority of adults who are infected with Zika rarely show detectable symptoms.

"Its effect on the adult brain may be more subtle, and now we know what to look for."

Rest: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/zika-alzheimers-effect-adults-symptoms-causes-what-happens-latest-study-a7198876.html
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« Reply #45 on: August 19, 2016, 11:07:22 pm »

PUERTO RICO REPORTS 1ST DEATH FROM PARALYSIS LINKED TO ZIKA

Puerto Rico on Friday reported its first death from a paralysis condition that developed from a Zika infection as the U.S. territory fights an epidemic of the mosquito-borne virus.

The victim was a man between 35 and 45 years old from the San Juan metro area who died from Guillain-Barre, according to state epidemiologist Brenda Rivera. The condition can cause temporary paralysis and in rare instances, death.

Rivera noted that it's unusual for the victim to be so young.

"What does this tell us? That all of us are susceptible," Rivera said as she urged Puerto Ricans to protect themselves from the mosquito-borne virus.

The man, who died last month, was obese but did not have any other health conditions, she said. No further details about the victim were provided.

The U.S. territory has a total of 13,186 confirmed Zika cases, with a total of 102 hospitalizations and 34 cases of Guillain-Barre. The number of Zika cases is believed to be much higher because eight of 10 people have no symptoms and many do not go to the doctor. Those infected include 1,106 pregnant women, which is a concern because Zika has been linked to severe birth defects.

"We are not going to see the effects of Zika today," Rivera said. "We are going to see them in the next couple of months, in the next several years."

Puerto Rico reported the first Zika-related microcephaly case acquired on U.S. soil in May, involving a dead fetus that a woman turned over to health authorities. Since then no microcephaly cases have been reported, but federal officials say it is only a matter of time. A study published Friday in JAMA Pediatrics estimates that up to 10,300 pregnant women in Puerto Rico could be infected with Zika and that between 100 to 270 babies could be born with microcephaly through mid-2017.

In addition, some babies infected with Zika may present other type of problems such as eye abnormalities, hearing loss and inflexible joints, said Dr. Peggy Honein, chief of the birth defects branch at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"We are very concerned about these often devastating outcomes," she said in a phone interview.

Honein, who was involved in the study, said that one of the major challenges of the Zika outbreak is the time delay in babies being born with severe defects.

"It doesn't mean that it's not happening because we don't see the effects yet," she warned.

The U.S. government last week declared a public health emergency in Puerto Rico because of Zika, and federal officials have warned that up to 25 percent of Puerto Rico's nearly 3.5 million people could become infected.

The CDC recently urged Puerto Rico fight Zika with the insecticide naled through aerial spraying, but the governor rejected that proposal and instead authorized the use of Bti, an organic larvicide.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/CB_PUERTO_RICO_ZIKA_DEATH?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2016-08-19-16-27-44
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« Reply #46 on: August 24, 2016, 05:31:07 pm »

Zika Images Show 'Worst Brain Infections That Doctors Will Ever See'

"The images show the worst brain infections that doctors will ever see," says Dr. Deborah Levine, at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, who contributed to the study. "Zika is such a severe infection [in fetuses]. Most doctors will have never seen brains like this before." 

http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/08/23/491097361/zika-images-show-worst-brain-infections-that-doctors-will-ever-see


Zika virus: Florida announces five new cases

Florida's governor has announced five new cases of Zika, including one in the Tampa Bay area, 265 miles (425 km) north of Miami. Four other cases of the virus, which is often spread by mosquitoes, were found in Wynwood in Miami, where officials have sprayed pesticides. The Tampa case involves a woman in Pinellas County without a travel history, suggesting local transmission. 

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-37168171


Zika cases jump to 170 in California, sparking travel warnings

alifornia health officials on Friday urged travelers returning home from the Olympics as well as countries where Zika is spreading to continue to wear insect repellent and to practice safe sex for several more weeks, to help prevent the spread of the virus in the Golden State.

While Zika is spread primarily through the bite of the black-and-white-striped Aedes mosquito, the virus also can be passed through sex, health officials said.

They are mostly concerned with people returning home from the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, because Brazil has been hit hard by the virus.

http://www.dailynews.com/health/20160819/zika-cases-jump-to-170-in-california-sparking-travel-warnings
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« Reply #47 on: September 02, 2016, 06:27:50 pm »

Millions of bees die after South Carolina and Florida spray for Zika mosquitoes

Millions of bees dead after Florida and South Carolina spray for Zika mosquitoes.

A horror story is emerging from the southwest of the United States where bee keepers are waking up to find their bee farms wiped out after aerial spraying with a substance called Naled, a common insecticide that kills mosquitoes… as well as millions of bees and other insects.

Stressed insects tried to flee their nests, only to surrender in little clumps at hive entrances. The dead worker bees littering the farms suggested that colony collapse disorder was not the culprit — in that odd phenomenon, workers vanish as though raptured, leaving a living queen and young bees behind.

Instead, the dead heaps signaled the killer was less mysterious, but no less devastating. The pattern matched acute pesticide poisoning. By one estimate, at a single apiary — Flowertown Bee Farm and Supply, in Summerville — 46 hives died on the spot, totaling about 2.5 million bees. LIKE VISITING A CEMETERY, PURE SADNESS.

The Washington Post reports:

On Sunday morning, the South Carolina honey bees began to die in massive numbers.

Death came suddenly to Dorchester County, S.C. Stressed insects tried to flee their nests, only to surrender in little clumps at hive entrances. The dead worker bees littering the farms suggested that colony collapse disorder was not the culprit — in that odd phenomenon, workers vanish as though raptured, leaving a living queen and young bees behind.

Instead, the dead heaps signaled the killer was less mysterious, but no less devastating. The pattern matched acute pesticide poisoning. By one estimate, at a single apiary — Flowertown Bee Farm and Supply, in Summerville — 46 hives died on the spot, totaling about 2.5 million bees.

Walking through the farm, one Summerville woman wrote on Facebook, was “like visiting a cemetery, pure sadness.”

A Clemson University scientist collected soil samples from Flowertown on Tuesday, according to WCBD-TV, to further investigate the cause of death. But to the bee farmers, the reason is already clear. Their bees had been poisoned by Dorchester’s own insecticide efforts, casualties in the war on disease-carrying mosquitoes.

On Sunday morning, parts of Dorchester County were sprayed with Naled, a common insecticide that kills mosquitoes on contact. The United States began using Naled in 1959, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, which notes that the chemical dissipates so quickly it is not a hazard to people. That said, human exposure to Naled during spraying “should not occur.”

In parts of South Carolina, trucks trailing pesticide clouds are not an unusual sight, thanks to a mosquito-control program that also includes destroying larvae. Given the current concerns of West Nile virus and Zika — there are several dozen cases of travel-related Zika in South Carolina, though the state health department reports no one has yet acquired the disease from a local mosquito bite — Dorchester decided to try something different Sunday.

It marked a departure from Dorchester County’s usual ground-based efforts. For the first time, an airplane dispensed Naled in a fine mist, raining insect death from above between 6:30 a.m. and 8:30 a.m. Sunday. The county says it provided plenty of warning, spreading word about the pesticide plane via a newspaper announcement Friday and a Facebook post Saturday.

Local beekeepers felt differently.

rest: http://strangesounds.org/2016/09/millions-of-bees-die-after-south-carolina-and-florida-spray-for-zika-mosquitoes.html
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« Reply #48 on: September 06, 2016, 08:34:32 pm »

Aerial Spraying for Zika Stirs Controversy in Miami Beach

Miami Beach city leaders are at odds with a scheduled aerial spraying of the insecticide Naled over a 1.5-square-mile infection zone.

In a statement Tuesday, Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez said the flights recommended by Florida health officials and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will begin Thursday and continue for a month.

Gimenez said the number of Miami Beach mosquitoes found with Zika increased over the weekend.

The Florida Health Department announced Tuesday six new non-travel related cases of the Zika virus in Miami Beach.

Not everyone is happy about the planned aerial spraying in Miami Beach, including the city's mayor Philip Levine.

"I am not comfortable with it, but I think it's important that we listen to the proper scientific and medical authorities and what they recommend," said Levine.

Miami Beach City Commissioner Mike Grieco is very upset over the announcement and has called for a special meeting Wednesday to cancel the scheduled aerial spraying.

Grieco said the aerial assault on mosquitoes could be a threat to everyone.

"It's a neurotoxin. We don't know the risks. It's been outlawed in Europe since 2012. It's something that has not been used in Miami, historically," said Grieco.

According to a spokesperson for Mayor Gimenez, Naled, which is EPA approved, has been used in Miami-Dade County since the 1970's.

On Tuesday, county workers started spraying the streets of Miami Beach with a chemical called BTI.

It's a natural bacteria which kills mosquito larvae to stop them from developing into adult mosquitoes. The street spraying will continue three times a week for the next month.

The Florida Health Department is conducting free Zika testing at the Miami Beach Police Department Tuesday for anyone who lives within the mile and a half Zika zone.

http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/392482351.html
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« Reply #49 on: September 07, 2016, 07:29:12 pm »

WHO strengthens Zika safe sex guidance

Men and women returning from any area where the Zika virus is circulating should practise safe sex for at least six months to avoid the risk of spreading the disease, says the World Health Organization.

The advice applies even if a person has no symptoms.

It comes a few weeks after doctors discovered the virus in the sperm of an Italian man six months after he first had Zika symptoms.

Zika is spread in bodily fluids.

The main risk of catching the disease is from infected mosquitoes via bites.

Previously, WHO had said men without symptoms only needed to use condoms or abstain from sex for eight weeks as a precaution against spreading Zika.

Zika outbreak: What you need to know

According to experts, once a person has been infected, he or she is likely to be protected from future infections.

any people infected with Zika won't have symptoms or will only have mild ones - a fever, rash and muscle/joint aches.

Zika in pregnancy is the major concern because the virus can damage the unborn child.

Brazil has been the hardest-hit country in terms of Zika infections and there were some concerns about hosting the Olympics there for this reason.

There have been no reports of confirmed cases of Zika virus among people who attended the Games, both during and since their return.

According to the WHO, 11 countries have reported cases of sexually-transmitted Zika.

More than 60 countries and territories have continuing Zika transmission from local mosquitoes.

Public Health England said it was reviewing the WHO's new advice and would change its own guidance if necessary. It said the risk to people in the UK remained very low.

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-37290700
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« Reply #50 on: September 07, 2016, 07:30:25 pm »

you really have to ask how this has spread so fast? hmmmm


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« Reply #51 on: November 13, 2016, 03:44:32 pm »

How many times can they make the same mistake?

Florida Keys split on using genetically engineered mosquitoes to fight Zika...

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/florida-keys-voters-split-on-genetically-modified-mosquito-trial/
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« Reply #52 on: November 28, 2016, 05:57:56 pm »

Zika Virus Arrives in South Texas

 Texas reported its first home-grown case of Zika virus infection Monday — making it the second U.S. state with mosquitoes spreading the virus.

It's a long-feared development but not a surprising one. Like Florida, South Texas is home to the Aedes aegypti mosquitoes that spread Zika and also hosts many travelers to and from countries where the virus has been spreading.

"The patient is a Cameron County resident who is not pregnant and who was confirmed last week by lab test to have been infected. She reported no recent travel to Mexico or anywhere else with ongoing Zika virus transmission and no other risk factors," the Texas Department of State Health Services said in a statement.

"Laboratory testing found genetic material from the Zika virus in the patient's urine, but a blood test was negative, indicating that the virus can no longer be spread from her by a mosquito. There are no other cases of suspected local transmission at this time, but health officials continue to conduct disease surveillance activities as part of the state's ongoing Zika response."

 Zika has spread far and wide across Central and South America and the Caribbean. Florida has reported more than 200 locally acquired cases.

It causes a mild infection in most people but can cause severe birth defects if a pregnant woman gets it.

"We knew it was only a matter of time before we saw a Zika case spread by a mosquito in Texas," Texas State Health Commissioner Dr. John Hellerstedt said in a statement.

"We still don't believe the virus will become widespread in Texas, but there could be more cases, so people need to protect themselves from mosquito bites, especially in parts of the state that stay relatively warm in the fall and winter."

rest: http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/zika-virus-outbreak/zika-virus-arrives-south-texas-n689226
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« Reply #53 on: April 06, 2017, 05:27:35 pm »

CDC Issues New Warning On Potential Impact Of Zika Virus

The Centers for Disease Control released new information Tuesday showing the impact of the Zika virus last year — offering advice on what to do before the insects start biting this year. The new report summarizes the number of Zika related infections last year in all U.S. states and territories with the exception of Puerto Rico, which has a separate registry due to its large number of cases.

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2017/04/04/cdc-issues-new-warning-on-potential-impact-of-zika-virus/
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« Reply #54 on: May 28, 2017, 07:33:44 pm »

WHO SAYS 3 ZIKA CASES DETECTED IN INDIA FOR 1ST TIME

 India has reported three cases of the Zika virus for the first time, including two pregnant women who delivered healthy babies.

Health Ministry officials said Sunday that the three patients in western Gujarat state had recovered.

"There is no need to panic," Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, a top health ministry official, told reporters.

The World Health Organization said in a statement released Friday that the three cases that India reported to the WHO on May 15 were detected through routine blood surveillance in a hospital in Ahmadabad, Gujarat's capital. Two cases were detected in February and November last year, while a third case was detected in January this year.

Swaminathan, who heads the Indian Council of Medical Research, said the three patients had not traveled overseas and had acquired the infection locally.

The virus is spread by the daytime-active Aedes mosquito.

Although Zika was first identified in 1947, the virus wasn't considered a major health threat until a major outbreak in Brazil in 2015 revealed that Zika can lead to severe birth defects when pregnant women are infected.

The WHO says although Zika symptoms are mild and no deaths have been reported globally, it sometimes causes complications including microcephaly and Guillain-Barre syndrome.

Babies born to Zika-infected mothers have been found to have microcephaly, or a birth defect where the head is abnormally small and brains might not have developed properly. Guillain-Barre syndrome is a disorder in which the body's immune system attacks part of the peripheral nervous system.

The WHO said the three were the first cases of Zika virus infections from India and provided evidence on the presence of the virus in the country.

"These findings suggest low level transmission of Zika virus and new cases may occur in the future," it said.

WHO said there was significant risk of the further spread of the virus and recommended that governments push ahead with efforts to control of mosquitoes.

However, the agency did not recommend any curbs on travel to India.

Last year, WHO declared the spread of Zika a global public health emergency.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AS_INDIA_ZIKA_VIRUS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2017-05-28-03-49-40
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« Reply #55 on: February 09, 2018, 09:24:04 pm »

Fighting Mosquitoes With Mosquitoes

be scared, be very scared

Thousands of male mosquitoes were released in South Miami’s Brewer Park Thursday.

They have been rendered sterile in a Kentucky lab by a company called MosquitoMate.

The mosquitoes were left incapable of impregnating females, after being infused with a Wolbachia bacteria.

The plan is over six months to release six million of the bugs that don’t bite, but have a healthy sex drive, and will mate with females whose eggs won’t hatch.

“We would expect to see the mosquito population decline,” said Dr. William Petrie, Miami’s director of mosquito control.  “If it works really successfully, the population will crash.”

The sterile mosquito release is aimed at preventing another Zika virus epidemic like one that two summers ago saw the air filled with planes spraying potentially toxic pesticide over wide areas.  MosquitoMate, that developed the sterile mosquitoes, says previous trials have seen big results in knocking out those that carry Zika.

“Last year in the Florida Keys, we saw an 80 percent reduction in the female, adult aedes aegypti population,” said MosquitoMate’s Dr. Patrick Kelly.

In the limited Keys trial, the mosquitoes made sterile with bacteria were used after protests blocked the release of mosquitoes that had been genetically modified to be sterile.

The bacteria in the mosquitoes being released now can’t be spread to humans or other animals.

South Miami’s mayor, Phillip Stoddard, a biologist and zealous environmentalist, says the mosquitoes, that will be released in batches of 20,000 at a time through July 31st, pose no danger.

“This is the only technology that has zero downside to it,” Stoddard said.

Zika can cause microcephaly – abnormally small heads and brain damage – in children whose mothers have or have had the virus.

Carlyle Concern held her three-month-old newborn as she watched the anti-Zika mosquitoes taking to the air Thursday, and said the program is a welcomed development.

She was pregnant with her eldest child during the height of the previous Zika epidemic.

“I had to stay mostly indoors and be covered, so it wasn’t really an enjoyable pregnancy,” Concern said.

If test runs in Miami-Dade and other cities produce good results, the release of sterile mosquitos on a broad scale could get government approval next year, according to MosquitoMate.

More positive buzz for the anti-Zika trial is that it’s not costing Miami-Dade County anything.

The $4.1 million program is being funded by the Florida Department of Health with a grant from the Centers for Disease Control.

http://miami.cbslocal.com/2018/02/08/zika-fighting-mosquitoes-with-mosquitoes/
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« Reply #56 on: May 02, 2018, 03:59:02 am »

Tick and Mosquito Infections Spreading Rapidly, C.D.C. Finds

The number of people who get diseases transmitted by mosquito, tick and flea bites has more than tripled in the United States in recent years, federal health officials reported on Tuesday. Since 2004, at least nine such diseases have been newly discovered or introduced into the United States.

Warmer weather is an important cause of the surge in cases reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to the lead author of a study in the agency’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

But the author, Dr. Lyle R. Petersen, the agency’s director of vector-borne diseases, repeatedly declined to connect the increase to the politically fraught issue of climate change, and the report does not mention either climate change or global warming.

Many other factors are at work, he emphasized, while noting that “the numbers on some of these diseases have gone to astronomical levels.”

C.D.C. officials called for more support for state and local health departments. Local agencies “are our first line of defense,” said Dr. Robert Redfield, the C.D.C.’s new director. “We must enhance our investment in their ability to fight these diseases.”

Although state and local health departments get brief infusions of cash during scares like the 2016 Zika epidemic, they are chronically underfunded. A recent survey of mosquito control agencies found that 84 percent needed help with basics like surveillance and pesticide-resistance testing, Dr. Petersen said.

While the C.D.C. did not suggest that Americans drop plans for playing outdoors or lying in hammocks this summer, Dr. Redfield emphasized that everyone — especially children — needed to protect themselves against tick and mosquito bites.

Between 2004 and 2016, about 643,000 cases of 16 insect-borne illnesses were reported to the C.D.C. — 27,000 a year in 2004, rising to 96,000 by 2016. (The year 2004 was chosen as a baseline because the agency began requiring more detailed reporting then.)

The real case numbers were undoubtedly far larger, Dr. Petersen said. For example, the C.D.C. estimates that about 300,000 Americans get Lyme disease each year, but only about 35,000 diagnoses are reported.

The study did not delve into the reasons for the increase, but Dr. Petersen said it was probably caused by many factors, including two related to weather: Ticks thriving in regions previously too cold for them, and hot spells triggering outbreaks of mosquito-borne diseases.

Other factors, he said, include expanded human travel, suburban reforestation and a dearth of new vaccines to stop outbreaks.

In an interview, Dr. Petersen said he was “not under any pressure to say anything or not say anything” about climate change and that he had not been asked to keep mentions of it out of the study.

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More jet travel from the tropics means that previously obscure viruses like dengue and Zika are moving long distances rapidly in human blood. (By contrast, malaria and yellow fever are thought to have reached the Americas on slave ships three centuries ago.)

A good example, Dr. Petersen said, was chikungunya, which causes joint pain so severe that it is called “bending-up disease.”

In late 2013, a Southeast Asian strain arrived on the Dutch Caribbean island of St. Maarten, its first appearance in this hemisphere. Within one year, local transmission had occurred everywhere in the Americas except Canada, Chile, Peru and Bolivia.

Tickborne diseases, the report found, are rising steadily in the Northeast, the Upper Midwest and California. Ticks spread Lyme disease, anaplasmosis, babesiosis, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, rabbit fever, Powassan virus and other ills, some of them only recently discovered.

Ticks need deer or rodents as their main blood hosts, and those have increased as forests in suburbs have gotten thicker, deer hunting has waned, and rodent predators like foxes have disappeared.

(A century ago, the Northeast had fewer trees than it now does; forests made a comeback as farming shifted west and firewood for heating was replaced by coal, oil and gas.)

Most disease outbreaks related to mosquitoes since 2004 have been in Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and American Samoa. But West Nile virus, which arrived in 1999, now appears unpredictably across the country; Dallas, for example, saw a big outbreak in 2012.

For most of these diseases, there are no vaccines and no treatment, so the only way to stop outbreaks is through mosquito control, which is expensive and rarely stops outbreaks. Miami, for instance, was the only city in the Western Hemisphere to halt a Zika outbreak with pesticides.

The only flea-borne disease in the report is plague, the bacterium responsible for the medieval Black Death. It remains rare but persistent: Between two and 17 cases were reported from 2004 to 2016, mostly in the Southwest. The infection can be cured with antibiotics.

Dr. Nicholas Watts, a global health specialist at University College London and co-author of a major 2017 report on climate change and health, said warmer weather is spreading disease in many wealthy countries, not just the United States.

In Britain, he said, tick diseases are expanding as summers lengthen, and malaria is becoming more common in the northern reaches of Australia.

But Paul Reiter, a medical entomologist at the Pasteur Institute, has argued that some environmentalists exaggerate the disease threats posed by climate change.

The 2003-2014 period fell during what he described as “a pause” in global warming, although the notion of a long trend having pauses is disputed.

Also, disease-transmission dynamics are complicated, and driven by more than temperature. For example, transmission of West Nile virus requires that certain birds be present, too.

In the Dust Bowl years of the 1930s, St. Louis encephalitis, a related virus, surged, “and it looked like climate issues were involved,” Dr. Reiter said. But the surge turned out to depend more on varying hot-cold and wet-dry spells and the interplay of two different mosquito species. St. Louis encephalitis virtually disappeared, weather notwithstanding.

“It’s a complicated, multidimensional system,” he said.

A. Marm Kilpatrick, a disease ecologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said many factors beside hot weather were at work, including “a hump-shaped relationship between temperature and transmission potential.”

Warm weather helps mosquitoes and ticks breed and transmit disease faster, he explained. But after a certain point, the hotter and drier it gets, the more quickly the pests die. So disease transmission to humans peaks somewhere between mildly warm and hellishly hot weather.

Experts also pointed out that the increase in reports of spreading disease may have resulted partially from more testing.

Lyme disease made family doctors begin to suspect tick bites in patients with fevers. Laboratories began looking for different pathogens, especially in patients who did not have Lyme. That led to the discovery of previously unknown diseases.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/tick-and-mosquito-infections-spreading-rapidly-cdc-finds/ar-AAwATag
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« Reply #57 on: September 17, 2019, 10:44:02 am »

Genetically-modified mosquito apocalypse plan BACKFIRES spectacularly in Brazil

British biotech company Oxitec conducted a 27-month long experiment in 2013 Jacobina, Brazil, aimed at reducing the local mosquito population by 90 percent while preserving the genetic integrity of the local insect population

An experimental trial to reduce the mosquito population in Brazil through the deliberate release of 450,000 genetically modified mosquitoes has failed miserably and may have even created a genetic hybrid super species.

British biotech company Oxitec conducted a 27-month long experiment in 2013 Jacobina, Brazil, aimed at reducing the local mosquito population by 90 percent while preserving the genetic integrity of the local insect population.

The overall goal was to curb the spread of mosquito-borne diseases, such as yellow fever, dengue, chikungunya, and Zika, by releasing half a million OX513A mosquitoes. The insects are a genetically-modified version of the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which combined a breed from Mexico with a breed from Cuba.

The mosquitoes were supposed to contain a dominant lethal gene that would render the first generation of future offspring infertile (while also marking them with a fluorescent green protein gene). Well, as it often does, life found a way.

“The claim was that genes from the release strain would not get into the general population because offspring would die,”said ecologist and evolutionary biologist Jeffrey Powell who conducted a recent study into the efficacy and success of the GM mosquito trial. “That obviously was not what happened.”

The original Oxitec research suggested that just three to four percent of the “infertile” offspring would survive into adulthood and would be too weak to reproduce anyway. These predictions were wrong. Very wrong.

Anywhere from 10 to 60 percent of the mosquitoes analyzed by Powell and his team featured genomes tainted by OX513A. While the scheme apparently worked initially, with a dramatic reduction in the population, it would later completely backfire around the 18-month mark, returning the number of mosquitoes in the area to pre-release levels.

The female population, it turns out, opted not to mate with the weaker, genetically-modified mosquitoes anyway, in a phenomenon known as “mating discrimination,” according to Powell and his team.

Some genetically-modified mosquitoes even showed signs of “hybrid vigor” in which the artificially-introduced genetic diversity actually made the mosquitoes stronger and more resilient, with the possibility of increased resistance to insecticides, Powell and his co-authors warned.

However, an Oxitec spokesperson claims the research contains “numerous false, speculative and unsubstantiated claims and statements about Oxitec’s mosquito technology” claiming instead, in a three-page document, that the paper did not identify any “negative, deleterious or unanticipated effect to people or the environment from the release of OX513A mosquitoes.”

Oxitec also disputes the claim about “mating discrimination” saying it has never occurred in any release of an estimated total of one billion Oxitec male mosquitoes released worldwide.

https://www.infowars.com/genetically-modified-mosquito-apocalypse-plan-backfires-spectacularly-in-brazil/
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« Reply #58 on: September 19, 2019, 06:18:13 am »

Mosquito-borne virus victim went from healthy to brain dead in 9 days

A Michigan man went from healthy to brain dead in just nine days after contracting Eastern equine encephalitis…Gregg McChesney, 64, was a “perfectly healthy, happy human being” less than two weeks before his…death from the rare mosquito-borne virus… “…Within a matter of nine days he went from perfectly healthy to brain dead,” Mark McChesney said.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/18/us/eee-cases-death-in-9-days/index.html
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« Reply #59 on: September 20, 2019, 06:15:18 am »

States Warn Residents About Mosquito-Borne Illness That Has Killed 5...

Man brain dead after bite...


https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/uptick-rare-mosquito-borne-virus-us-states-65704252

https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/He-was-perfectly-healthy-before-the-mosquito-14451872.php
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