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The World Health Organization is trying to ease concerns about spreading Zika as a result of this summer's Olympics in Rio de Janiero.
"Based on current assessment, cancelling or changing the location of the 2016 Olympics will not significantly alter the international spread of Zika virus," a statement released Saturday reads.
This comes a day after more than 150 scientists released an open letter to the head of WHO calling for the games to be moved or postponed, citing new research. "We make this call despite the widespread fatalism that the Rio 2016 Games are inevitable or 'too big to fail,'" the letter says.
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World Health Organization Spurns Calls to Cancel or Move the Olympics Due to Zika
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"I don't have to take this abuse from you -- I've got hundreds of
people waiting to abuse me."
-- Bill Murray, "Ghostbusters"
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 30 2016, @09:25AM
(Score: 3, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Monday May 30 2016, @09:34AM
Actually, the profitability of zika has already been taken into account. Not only will the health industry and the pharmaceuticals make a lot of money off of zika, but Microsoft stands to gain a lot if the world population of pinheads increases dramatically.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 30 2016, @02:16PM
If I'm understanding correctly this is a virus that causes minor to no symptoms*, (and in fact has zero symptoms specific to it) except for a statistically significant correlation with birth defects. Also, it wasn't usual to check for this virus until a year ago, so I don't see how they are claiming a pandemic. This could be a normal seasonal thing that has always been going on:
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2016/03/23/science.aaf5036.full [sciencemag.org]
IE there is no evidence available that this virus is something to be concerned about.
*http://www.promedmail.org/direct.php?id=3370768
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday May 30 2016, @03:09PM
it's genetically engineered, to do exactly what it appears to be doing. The next generation is to be a bunch of pinheads, reliant on the nanny state. In fact, the state may hunt down and execute anyoen with an IQ over 70.
Sounds like the material for the next Soylent-Green-like science fiction movie.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Tuesday May 31 2016, @03:48PM
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World comes to mind. Somebody has to be happy to take out the garbage, sweep the streets, and input data into the database. Now take your soma and stop making a fuss--you're upsetting the nanny state.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 30 2016, @03:21PM
This actually isn't possible:
http://www.paho.org/hq/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_view&Itemid=270&gid=32405&lang=en [paho.org]
So about 2.5% of people are defined to have microencephaly? This brings up the question of what percent of the microencephaly cases are actually disease states rather than just people happening to be low on the curve? I had assumed microencaphly was a serious problem before, now I am not sure that is always the case. Also do these means and sds take into account cultural and racial differences? Can immigration cause a pandemic of microencephaly using this definition?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 30 2016, @04:12PM
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/uog.7556/full [wiley.com]
Not a blinded study, but I'm surprised to see the majority of people diagnosed with this "disease" are apparently fine. It is more like if you devised a disease called hypo-pigmentation which included albinos that sometimes have associated problems but also includes those with less than 2 sds away from the average skin pigmentation.
...Even those emotional differences weren't very large (table 3). This is really starting to look shady.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 30 2016, @05:22PM
To answer my question, yes this link may be due to ethnic differences, and demographic changes can alter microcephaly incidence in the absence of any disease at all:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7189556 [nih.gov]
(Score: 2, Disagree) by zocalo on Monday May 30 2016, @01:25PM
Can you see common sense prevailing, amongst hundreds of thousands of over-excited spectators and athletes, many of whom will no doubt be partying a little bit too hard on multiple occassions? Even in the majority of cases? What about enough cases to make all the difference? No, neither can I.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Monday May 30 2016, @03:16PM
The risk to the people going is fairly small, especially since many pregnant women won't really want to make such a trip. The concern is if they take it back home with them.
(Score: 2) by zocalo on Monday May 30 2016, @04:06PM
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by sjames on Monday May 30 2016, @05:58PM
For the WHO to be correct in their assertion it relies on people who are the most at risk should they contract Zika (e.g. women who are, or considering becoming, pregnant) choosing not to go to the games in person, or taking extra steps to reduce their exposure while there.
It relies on every single person who travels there to take extra precautions regardless of their personal risk or lack thereof. Anybody can contract it and take it back home, especially if they are in the majority who are asymptomatic or have non-specific symptoms.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday May 31 2016, @12:23PM
(the air in Rio will probably reek of DEET)
Probably if you give Brazil the money to build a sewage treatment plant, they'll build it so the athletes won't have to do the water events while swimming in a river of human shit.
Oh wait, its Brazil. So no treatment plants. I think some of the Zika reaction is just people not wanting to compete or visit the 3rd world. I can't blame them.
Likewise I'm sure Brazil will be given money to make the air reek of DEET and I'm equally sure the air will be full of mosquitoes and someone's bank account will be full of money.
I'm not a huge Ayn Rand fan anymore but there was a plotline in one of her books along the lines of a dying ineffective culture can signal and LARP whatever they want, but mother nature cannot be fooled and horror shows will inevitably result. So here we are, living out a book storyline in reality.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 31 2016, @02:01AM
I've known some olympic athletes. According to them, once your event is over the rest of the games becomes a giant fuck-fest.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday May 31 2016, @04:33PM
Couldn't blame people for unwinding, with the healthiest people on the planet, after years of hard training for the event.
Some want to celebrate, others want to forget, and I'm pretty sure the genetic pool improves if they breed.
I'm not sure why there isn't an official Athlete's genetic material market yet. If you can get 6 figures for a racehorse "donation", there's gotta be billions in Advanced Baby Breeding...