Zika has been getting a lot of press lately; this is the best overview I’ve seen.
Scary as hell, has been found in SE Asia already. Coming to a Taiwan near you sooner or later. Very bad situation in Brazil feel for them. We need to get a vaccine sorted against this virus ASAP.
It already reached Taiwan.
Yeah, all over SE Asia, too. Thank god we had our kid already last year though it is very likely the virus was already around. Fortunately, we were very vigilant about mosquitoes because of dengue.
AFAIK the vaccine may take around 2 years to be developed. Some south-american countries, including Brazil, even suggested that the women should avoid the get pregnant until a vaccine is available.
However, I don’t think there’s much risk in Taiwan, as Zika virus is spread mainly through mosquitoes not common in the island (The Aedes species, the same one that transmits dengue).
I also found another great overview done by Vox: vox.com/2016/1/20/10795562/z … th-defects
I saw this brief introduction of Zika virus on the latest TIME magazine.
This is a more detailed article from Uptodate.
uptodate.com/contents/zika-v … lated_link
[quote=“Ricarte”]AFAIK the vaccine may take around 2 years to be developed. Some south-american countries, including Brazil, even suggested that the women should avoid the get pregnant until a vaccine is available.
However, I don’t think there’s much risk in Taiwan, as Zika virus is spread mainly through mosquitoes not common in the island (The Aedes species, the same one that transmits dengue).
I also found another great overview done by Vox: vox.com/2016/1/20/10795562/z … th-defects[/quote]
Eh, we did have a very bad plague of dengue in Taiwan this past summer. And it will get worse. Very easy to get to Taiwan, enough Aedes Aegypti here already. South will be hit first.
Heavier rains, more air travel, very easy for those infected people to go unnoticed. In Latin America, the situation is dire as such an epidemic is a threat towards tourism, and profit focused economies leave health issues aside. Hence, the growing Zika threat.
You should see the agricultural plagues creating an ecological disaster all over Latin America, Central America for example.
[quote=“Ricarte”]AFAIK the vaccine may take around 2 years to be developed. Some south-american countries, including Brazil, even suggested that the women should avoid the get pregnant until a vaccine is available.
However, I don’t think there’s much risk in Taiwan, as Zika virus is spread mainly through mosquitoes not common in the island (The Aedes species, the same one that transmits dengue).
I also found another great overview done by Vox: vox.com/2016/1/20/10795562/z … th-defects[/quote]
You do know about the big epidemics down south just a few months ago right? Taiwan CDC gotta start working on a plan right now, fortunately there are great resources in Taiwan if fully applied to the problem.
Possibly sexually transmitted as well.
Time to break out the DDT! 
You are right, guys, my bad. I totally forgot about the dengue epidemic from last year. My memory probably got frozen with the recently weather… 
Still, I think Dengue is more dangerous that Zika, as the former doesn’t chooses sex or age. 80 percent of people don’t even develop any Zika symptoms and for those that do, the symptoms are usually not severe and then go away within a week. Hospitalization is uncommon, and death is rare. Dengue is much more aggressive, and the cases in Taiwan reached almost 43k with over 200 deaths last year only.
I’m not trying to deny that we should be aware of Zika’s outbreak, but its risks are higher for pregnant women and their fetuses (and the link is still to be confirmed). And I don’t think that will help Taiwan’s already low birth rate…
[quote=“Ricarte”]Still, I think Dengue is more dangerous that Zika, as the former doesn’t chooses sex or age. 80 percent of people don’t even develop any Zika symptoms and for those that do, the symptoms are usually not severe and then go away within a week. Hospitalization is uncommon, and death is rare. Dengue is much more aggressive, and the cases in Taiwan reached almost 43k with over 200 deaths last year only.[/quote]How many kids do you have? 
Time to rock out some DDT along with some serious martial law on mosquito breeding grounds.
[quote="Okami"¸…Time to rock out some DDT along…[/quote]
Probably ineffective as Aedes mosquitoes long ago evolved resistance in areas with heavy DDT use (eg, Taiwan).
Not to mention that DDT was banned for being a horrible environmental poison.
This is a fascinating dilemma. The epidemic affecting newborns is getting the “ban on pregnancy” as solution… since most our countries do not allow abortions. Interesting bit is most restrict access to contraceptives, too.
These conversations are muted, banned and censored in our countries, but are coming out nevertheless, even though the people most affected do not have access to Internet and hence, social media. But their relatives in the States do -and their money. However, the States is also in a conservative crunch and hence access to legal abortions, prenatal care and testing plus contraceptives, is also at question.
A few articles on the issue -from outsiders, but something is being said at least:
[url=http://www.vocativ.com/news/275592/el-salvador-pregnancy-ban/]When A Country Without Abortion Tells Women To Not Get Pregnant
In response to Zika virus, officials are promoting a two-year ban on pregnancy in El Salvador—where abortions are illegal and birth control is hard to come by[/url]
Notice this is a “woman’s issue” and that, due to neo business oriented ideas, there is also a failing social security network or medical care available for the victims. Those kids, as per the elite, cannot be born, better die early. State and Church force you to have babies, but won’t foot the bill.
[quote]Of the countries that have called on women to avoid pregnancy, only Colombia allows for abortion in cases of fetal anomaly, and the vast majority of nations in the region don’t permit abortion in such cases. Even in Colombia, 99 percent of abortions are clandestine, because so many women are turned away by doctors who won’t perform the procedure. In Brazil, a 2012 Supreme Court case created an abortion exception only in the limited instances of anencephaly, a severe fetal brain deformity that causes stillbirth. And of the Latin American countries with active cases, only four offer abortions “on request” or without justification…
But pregnancy is not a choice for many people in the region because of strict government policies restricting abortion and limiting access to contraception. Fifty-eight percent of pregnancies in Latin America and the Caribbean are unintended, compared with 48 percent in the United States and 42 percent in Western Europe.
Each year, 1.6 million women are raped in the region, according to Avila-Guillen. “Latin America has one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy and also of sexual violence. What is the government going to do about the women who get raped, if not provide them services and options?”
Adolescent women account for one-fifth of all births in the region each year. Of the young people in Latin America and the Caribbean getting pregnant unintentionally, 83 percent were not using contraception.
And then there are the strict laws banning abortion. El Salvador’s anti-abortion laws have become particularly notorious after a 2013 case in which the country’s highest court rejected the request of a woman and her doctors that her pregnancy be ended in order to save her life. The woman survived but the baby died following a C-section. Women in El Salvador are regularly prosecuted and imprisoned for abortion and even for miscarriages and stillbirths.
[/quote]
How the Zika Epidemic Could Change Latin America’s Relationship with Abortion
Yes, abortion, like human trafficking and drugs and clandestine health clinics for transplants or implants, are big business, soften owned by elite members, who happen to also be government officials…
Now that you mention the DDT, our countries also have a dark past suffering the effects of banned chemicals used in banana plantations, We already have that precedent -sever malformations in newborns, shortened lifespans, cancers, sterility, etc. as a result… and the blank in terms of justice. So, any mention of DDT or other palliative actions will be faced with a very interesting reaction…
It’s an interesting dilemma which those societies are being confronted with, of course I feel for the women and families who are facing these difficult choices.The Catholic Church should get out of the way and let women figure things out for themselves. Where I’m from is also one of the few western countries to ban abortions except in exceptional circumstances, does not stop 1000s going across the water to do it anyway. Can’t believe contraception is still hard to come by in some of those countries. Wonder how long this Zika virus has been spreading
In Brazil before detection?
Interestingly I read a few years ago to expect more ‘rare tropical’ viruses to go global. HIV was also circulating for centuries or decades before it went global.
[quote=“headhonchoII”]It’s an interesting dilemma which those societies are being confronted with, of course I feel for the women and families who are facing these difficult choices.The Catholic Church should get out of the way and let women figure things out for themselves. Where I’m from is also one of the few western countries to ban abortions except in exceptional circumstances, does not stop 1000s going across the water to do it anyway. Can’t believe contraception is still hard to come by in some of those countries. Wonder how long this Zika virus has been spreading
In Brazil before detection?
Interestingly I read a few years ago to expect more ‘rare tropical’ viruses to go global. HIV was also circulating for centuries or decades before it went global.[/quote]
The Catholic church, though apparently weak, is still a force in terms of political and cultural influence. Their brain wash methods are the base for the reaping the evangelicals and other radical groups are doing now in Latin America -may their jets and satellites and TV channels be cursed to eternity! In a place of such poverty, instead of charity and compassion, they are preaching hate and reinforcing class divisions and the degradation of women, not to mention cheating hard working folk off their hard earned money. Christ was right about the merchants at the temple… looking at the activists here, the religious groups in Taiwan do so much good by comparison, unless they are the really bad ones. But even the bad ones can barely compare.
People of means do not dare to buy contraceptives, doctors cannot prescribe or if they do, they can be assured their careers will be affected, not to mention death threats a la abortion clinics in the US. Poor people do not have the means and knowledge, and in most client states, they will just look at the State in supplication to help them with their disabled kid. But in this economy, the help will not be there, most probably.
As said, mosquito transmittable diseases were considered the “poor people’s blight”. Their number in life. Hence, no action was really taken -publicly, en force, not much has been done- because no city folk were yet affected. As they say in the ol country, a rich guy’s kid has to die in order for someone to pay attention.
Anything short of a systematic multi-faceted approach to committing to the eradication of the disease is just another term for losing. Having mentally deficient offspring incapable of maintaining their ancestors previous heights much less themselves is not an option.
With it possibly being sexually transmitted as well, we have another worry worse than GRIDS.
Talking about DDT and similar poisons: a new theory proposes it is a larvicide the one responsible for the microencephalic babies: theecologist.org/News/news_a … phaly.html
Now that would be ironic… But not totally unexpected. As said, Latin America has a long, dark history with these insecticides. And in developing countries, anything goes.