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[...] Florida Department of Health confirmed this morning that there's a "high likelihood" that local transmission of Zika has occurred in the United States for the first time
[...] The four cases appear to have been infected in early July just north of downtown Miami in an area of about 2.5 square kilometers, the Florida health department reported after doing intensive investigations to rule out the possibility that the patients were infected by traveling to affected countries or via sex with infected people.
[...] Scientists had predicted that Zika would gain a foothold in Florida this year, based on the heavy volume of travel from Latin America and the presence of A aegypti mosquitoes that can transmit the virus. There have already been nearly 400 cases of travel-related, or "imported" Zika in Florida, which increased the odds that a mosquito would bite an infected person and transmit it to others.
[...] Other viral diseases spread by the same mosquitoes—including dengue and chikungunya—that have caused massive epidemics south of the U.S. border have triggered only small outbreaks in the United States. Scientists cite a variety of factors for the marked difference, including lower mosquito densities and the fact that people spend more time inside.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 31 2016, @10:08PM
Zika causes brain damage. It's spreading in Florida. How is that a problem?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday July 31 2016, @10:59PM
Can't break what's already broken...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Sunday July 31 2016, @11:12PM
I don't understand why they keep tip-toeing around this. Perhaps it is a propaganda and control issue.
They have tried to spin it in the media that everything except mosquitos have spread Zika in Florida. It's like they don't want to admit that the USA cannot control the pathogen and that there is no cure. And that a mecca for 20 something sex is going to have one of the worst parasites known, spreading via... everything AND mosquitos.
The Everglades may as well just be one big mosquito farm! Maybe that is why they are so reluctant to admit there is a problem and the zombie apocalypse is going to start in 9 months or so for a lot of people.
They need to change their narrative and the government has to agree to fund research without tying some stupid unrelated pork onto this directive, like what happened last time. They didn't even come up with new funding for the research; they took the money from the funds earmarked for Ebola research and unspent healthcare funds.
Of course both sides fought about the provisions and it got blocked, and then congress went on summer recess.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 01 2016, @12:49AM
Milwaukee will become the new Panama City Beach. I hope so, anyway. We've got the beer already...
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday August 01 2016, @01:51AM
Miami is a big place for not only Jews but Latinos, and for the time being, it's only the latter of which we're interested here.
Miami is full of Cubans and Puerto Ricans. Latinos are well-known for their drug use and reckless breeding habits, and Miami happens to be the first stop in America where the East Coast's illegal drugs are shipped before being driven up the 95 highway and thence up into the snouts of bankers, models, and college students.
By the way, Zika doesn't affect Jews because the males refuse to mate with the females due to overbearing mommy issues, so the females have developed an evolutionary adaptation to reproduce through fast-growing teratomas. All you have to do is pour water on a Jewish woman and she will shed her offspring immediately -- just don't let her eat after midnight, or bad things will happen.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday August 01 2016, @01:31PM
Kinda disappointed in that one, I was hoping for something along the lines of given the shot up gay nightclub a month ago, there's not as much pregnant women/fetus to worry about in FL. If 10% of the population, or 20% or whatever it is in FL is gay, then at least 10% of the population doesn't have to worry too much about birth defects. I hate to say "better off infecting FL than UT" because its a lot of pointless suffering either way, but honestly its true, they'll be less damaged kids and less total suffering if FL is infected than UT or the midwest in general or whatever.
There is some demographic truth in that if the average successful white woman in Minnesota has like 1.1 kids (which is a problem in itself) than 1 of her kids getting brain turned to mush is a huge problem demographically WRT outright societal collapse, whereas the average monolingual Spanish speaking Latina in Florida having like 9 kids does at least mean that when 1 of her kids gets brain turned to mush at least that won't be an automatic demographic collapse. I mean it sucks for the kid and sucks for the mom either way, but consider that the damaged kid in MN only has 0.1 siblings to continue to lead western civilization and pay all the bills of both the 1.1 kids in MN and 9 kids in FL, so 0.1 kids leading and paying all the bills of 10.1 kids good luck with that, but the damaged FL kid has 8 siblings to help care for the damaged FL kid, and being from FL its not like they were going to lead or finance western civilization anyway, healthy or not, so not as much difficulty there. Less leadership and money from the demographic in MN I guess will have some impact in FL. MN can survive without FL pretty well, but FL can't survive without MN running the world and bankrolling all the programs.
I live like 2 miles from open water in an almost entirely white nordic-ish neighborhood (homes are highly segregated here, although do have tokens) and even west nile virus being present wouldn't get the local assholes to eliminate the mosquito factories in their backyards, so we have clouds of mosquitos as if we're in a GD swamp, err, I guess we call those wetlands now. The old bastards see it as a way of cutting back on screaming little kids playing in their yards interrupting their bridge games or WTF old people do all day, plus they get to complain about "kids these days never go outside, oh wait ha ha thats because I'm a jackass and intentionally grow mosquitoes in my backyard LOL". So if the demographic where I live can't control mosquitoes, FL may as well give up hope, they're doomed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 01 2016, @06:32AM
Maybe that is why they are so reluctant to admit
No, they just don't jump to conclusions without evidence. Scientists are cautious about making claims.
As for the whole zombie apocalypse, dengue and other non-zika flaviviruses do not spread readily in the US due to cultural and economic differences that reduce mosquito bites.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday August 01 2016, @01:40PM
It's like they don't want to admit that the USA cannot control the pathogen
Maybe the bucket chemists will save us.
One cool effect of knowing enough chemistry to be dangerous is its fascinating watching the bucket chemists in the unlicensed pharmaceuticals industry do ever more elaborate organic chemistry synthesis as more and more precursors get banned. Eventually we're gonna have drug labs where water, air, electricity and charcoal get pumped in one door and fun stuff comes out the other but I digress.
Anyway we know how to control mosquitoes with some pretty brutal sprays that unfortunately kill birds and fish and sometimes people and F only knows what else (bees?). And we regulate the hell out of those chemicals which are in demand. So it seems inevitable that the guys who are currently synthesizing all manner of fun times chemicals will eventually find a market to synthesize totally illegal yet somewhat effective DDT and friends.
I mean, given the choice of totally Fing useless aromatherapy oils from the corporate walmart world that do jack to kill mosquitoes, I have an outlaw biker neighbor (who knows not to shit where he sleeps, so I like having him around) and he probably knows a guy who could get me a couple liters of ready to spray DDT... Real good stuff man.
Now when neighborhoods see the local unlicensed chemist as the only thing keeping them alive rather than a nuisance, that'll have an interesting long term effect on meth enforcement. Also all the songbirds will be dead, but we are better off with all the songbirds being dead than all the kids. So illegal environmental modification will be a "thing" soon enough. And what happens to civilian cooperation when the EPA moves from preventing dumping of contaminated plating solutions into the local swimming hole toward something more like trying to kill the guy dumping DDT into the local wetland which is the only reason the townfolk's kids are still alive... As always, gonna be an interesting time to be alive.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 01 2016, @04:16AM
I'm not hearing the problem that people will even notice. If you have good public health measures, then climate change isn't even a blip on the radar for disease. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Monday August 01 2016, @05:25PM
Zika causes brain damage. It's spreading in Florida. How is that a problem?
Because Florida is still a swing-state?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 03 2016, @12:52AM
On January 10, 1861, Florida withdrew from the Union. Is it too late for the Union to recognize the Ordinance of Secession [museumoffloridahistory.com]?
Ordinance of Secession.
We, the People of the State of Florida in Convention assembled, do solemnly ordain, publish and declare: That the State of Florida hereby withdraws herself from the Confederacy of States existing under the name of the United States of America, and from the existing Government of said States; and that all political connection between her and the Government of said States ought to be and the same is hereby totally annulled, and said union of States dissolved; and the State of Florida is hereby declared a Sovereign and Independent Nation; and that all ordinances heretofore adopted in so far as they create or recognize said Union are rescinded; and all laws or parts of laws in force in this State, in so far as they recognize or assent to said Union be and they are hereby repealed.
Done in open Convention, January 10th, A.D. 1861