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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: 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.