Zika Virus

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Zika Virus

Postby Kurt » Mon Aug 01, 2016 7:21 pm

Kinda worried about this.

NYC is right on the cusp of the traditional infectious mosquito line. Washington DC and Baltimore were definitely malarial at one point.

Now Florida has 10 cases. A generation of pinheads is not something society is going to handle well. The old caring for the young and huge portion of the young unable to care for themselves. Many places that are really vulnerable to this already have an explosive birth rate. There would be no way a "rich" country could even consider helping on anything but a symbolic scale.

One thing to consider is that the USA, for all of it's "we saved your ass" type posturing when referring to WWII, did eradicate Malaria in Europe (mostly done by one of those quiet types, a fellow we never heard of named Lewis Hackett whose pre-war Italian institute was revived after the War and Malaria was finished in continental Europe by 1949) using DDT.

Those of you who remember how rare birds of prey were in the 1970s (we would stop the car to take a photograph of a red tailed hawk then) know how bad DDT could be to egg laying creatures, but I am sure there could be a controlled way of administering it to combat mosquito born disease and not have to apply it like napalm over everything.
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Re: Zika Virus

Postby goat balls » Mon Aug 01, 2016 9:46 pm

Get a flight down to Texas and get yourself a chicken fried steak the size of a trash can lid. It's really good for you too.

And the ny post is running pictures of melanias lesbian photo thing. So there's that. Just saying.
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Re: Zika Virus

Postby seektravelinfo » Tue Aug 02, 2016 2:08 am

If you're pregnant, or thinking of becoming pregnant, it certainly is worrisome. I hope the CDC steps up with freely available & reliable birth control as a public health measure. Can we expect to see birth rate decline a year from now? From what I've read the illness from the virus is not so bad and runs its course, unless you're a pregnant woman carrying a fetus that will be born with some serious deformities. Scary and very sad.

DDT, I'd forgotten about that. We used to get a charge out of watching the crop dusters spray the farms in the valley near our home by the Arkansas River. When you're 7 years old you're not thinking that it's dangerous. It just looked really cool and it seems they always did it late evening right before the gloaming. Made for a beautiful light.
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Re: Zika Virus

Postby ReptilianKittenEater » Tue Aug 02, 2016 2:26 am

"Wax and Wane" by the Cocteau Twins is good to llsten to when thinking of an impending epidemic. Its suitably gothic unlike their poppish later stuff.

Anyways I once heard that in Canada many workers on the Rideau Canal in the 19th century died of malaria. Its an odd fact as the mosquitos associated with malaria do not exist this far north. But if malaria was found this far north it definitely existed across the US.
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Re: Zika Virus

Postby Q » Tue Aug 02, 2016 4:05 am

DDT worked, and despite what the "party of Science" (always a laugh) says, it didn't hurt the environment to the extent they claimed.
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Re: Zika Virus

Postby MJK » Tue Aug 02, 2016 5:49 am

..and tobacco is just another vegetable. I'll fight reintroduction of DDT up to and including diverting everything I am currently donating through the Clinton Foundation to fight the scourge of boneless chicken farming. Any Idea what it costs to fit a chicken with a full body prostheses and then provide training and maintenance support? I'll spend whatever it takes to guarantee that one Spotting Owl will live to stain one more tree branch, even if it sets back the Six Million Dollar Chicken program ten years.

I was talking to a restaurant owner in Sakatchewan 7 or 8 years back and he was telling me about numerous cases of West Nile virus in his area. Seems the WNV deaths got reported but not the many cases of ranchers left too incapacitated to work. Can hardly wait until the new weather patterns bring Dengue to AK.
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Re: Zika Virus

Postby Kurt » Tue Aug 02, 2016 3:29 pm

West Nile is nasty.

How to tell if you are in a West Nile areas is the crows vanish. Crows have no immunity to West Nile. NYC used to have lots of crows. There used to be a whole flock of them around 1999 that would caw for food from people going to the 190th st. A train stop.

Then West Nile comes and *poof* no more crows.

I have seen three crows this summer, so that is an improvement.

Anyway, I know preggo women got to worry but the gist of the disease is it causes micocephalics to be born. So picture a whole region filled with pin head children, call by people more polite than me "Special Needs". Again I think about my old neighborhood of Washington Heights. Really high birthrate, really high illiteracy rate and having talked to people there many do not even believe in germ theory of disease transmission, they believe in the God and Satan theory of disease.

So you have a people who already are barely able to handle the world they are in, seeing posters they cannot read with pictures of mosquitoes and silhouettes of pregnant women. They are going to think that it is a another gringo movie or if they ask people what it means, which in that place is usually a self-anointed "preacher", and they will tell them that God is punishing the wicked.

Now picture these people and a whole generation of special needs kids that need to be cared for by them or state and county services forever.

Now picture all the dimwitted, fertile people you know in the region you all live suffering the same thing.
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Re: Zika Virus

Postby grawp » Wed Aug 03, 2016 3:26 pm

Friend KittenChomper wrote (in part):

But if malaria was found this far north it definitely existed across the US.


Mosquitoes are definitely the mascot of Pestilence, serving as that particular Horseman's "mule" for all sorts of nasty microorganisms.

St. Louis Encephalitis, for example.

http://www.cdc.gov/sle
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Re: Zika Virus

Postby flipflop » Wed Aug 03, 2016 7:21 pm

On the radio today some boffin was stating the alarm over the spread of the Zika virus is unnecessary. It apparently cannot be transferred human to human. A mozzie has to bite an infected person then bite others, once that mozzie pops his clogs it ceases to be a threat. Air con, sealed windaes, and lots of deet and you're good to go. Zika can't travel like other viruses to colder climates.

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Re: Zika Virus

Postby Kurt » Wed Aug 03, 2016 10:34 pm

flipflop wrote:On the radio today some boffin was stating the alarm over the spread of the Zika virus is unnecessary. It apparently cannot be transferred human to human. A mozzie has to bite an infected person then bite others, once that mozzie pops his clogs it ceases to be a threat. Air con, sealed windaes, and lots of deet and you're good to go. Zika can't travel like other viruses to colder climates.

Cheers


It can be passed human to human via sex.

Tropical people with a high birthrate are gonna feel it. Probably not me unless it can spread via other mosquitoes at some point.

But no one is gonna catch it because someone sneezed without covering their face.
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Re: Zika Virus

Postby grawp » Fri Aug 05, 2016 1:37 am

Friend Kurt wrote:
But no one is gonna catch it because someone sneezed without covering their face.


Doggone it.
We've got this bronchial cough/sneeze crud currently zooming around my particular neighborhood.
I've been waiting for the opportunity to paste the next local clodhopper who doesn't bother to cover up when he sneezes or coughs.
With all this Zika business, I figured I'd clock two, maybe three of these animated health hazards before getting arrested for assault & battery.
Then I could declare in my defense that due to my heightened state of health consciousness brought on by our over-excited media, I determined it was my patriotic duty to protect my neighbors from the New Pestilence.
Jury trial?
Bah.
They'd probably give me a medal.
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Re: Zika Virus

Postby Kurt » Fri Aug 05, 2016 2:13 am

Hey Grawp

I am just getting over a flu. It was a disgusting one. If mucus was oil I would have been Saudi Arabia.

The weirdest part was it started with a raised rash on my thigh. I thought for sure it had to something more than a cold or flu since a raised rash has gotta mean death or something close to it or herpes at least.

But nope, as soon as the fever broke the rash went away. The snot factory is still going on strong though.
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Re: Zika Virus

Postby Douchebag » Fri Aug 05, 2016 6:55 pm

It is being spread by immigrants!!!
DickPaw, I am convinced that you'd be the omega male of Mantown, you golden shower taking, meat-gazing dandified bitch-boy.
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Re: Zika Virus

Postby Jefe » Mon Aug 08, 2016 2:24 am

I got an AWESOME photo of two mosquitos talking to each other. One was a buffed up weightlifter mosquito saying:
"I landed on this Russian Athlete, and the next thing you know!..."

Take that mosquito. Give him the Zika virus and turn him loose in Rio where the steroid fed version of Zika (Russian Strain) turns the Olympics into the latest cheesy zombie movie/series. Add the "Russian Favela Strain" when the zombies get into eating coked up favela dwellers and you should have some excitement.

And it's Rio, so all the T&A is easily justifiable.
"Those who beat their swords into plowshares, inevitably wind up plowing for people with swords".

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