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Brazil Cautions Women To Avoid Pregnancy Over Zika Virus Outbreak (discovermagazine.com)

Posted by Soulskill on from the earth-is-trying-to-kill-us-again dept.

iONiUM writes: According to an article at Discover, "Authorities in Brazil have recently issued an unusual and unprecedented announcement to women: don't get pregnant, at least not just yet. Amidst an intractable outbreak of the mosquito-borne Zika virus, public health authorities in Brazil are highly suspicious of an unusual surge of cases of microcephaly among newborn children." There were over 3,000 cases in 2015.

It's believed this virus is linked to shrinking newborns brain, and it is spreading. "Zika virus is transmitted by mosquitoes, and it was first detected in Uganda in the 1940s. After spreading through Africa and parts of Asia, it has made its way to Latin America. There is no known vaccine to prevent or medicine to treat the disease caused by the virus. Since May 2015, the Brazilian government estimates that some 1.5 million people have been infected with the virus." The CDC has published an article about it, and travel warnings are now being issued for pregnant women.

50 of 102 comments (clear)

  1. And the zombie apocalypse begins! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Eu preciso de cérebros

    1. Re:And the zombie apocalypse begins! by cayenne8 · · Score: 2
      Hmm...I haven't ever known about a virus, but over my many years, my mantra to girlfriends and hookups has ALWAYS been: "Don't get pregnant....!!

      :)

      I'm guessing most guys for most of their lives have been also recommending this to their women...hehehe

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    2. Re:And the zombie apocalypse begins! by penguinoid · · Score: 1

      Amidst an intractable outbreak of the mosquito-borne Zika virus, public health authorities in Brazil are highly suspicious of an unusual surge of cases of microcephaly among newborn children

      I've always suspected stupidity was a communicable disease. As a precaution, I recommend that all politicians be tested for Zika virus (if they have nothing to hide, they have nothing to fear).

      --
      Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
  2. Brazil has aggressive Mosquito control by Crashmarik · · Score: 3, Informative

    That they rolled out to combat Dengue Fever. http://www.iflscience.com/heal...

    Wonder if that has just been ineffective against illnesses with a Mosquito vector or just not this particular virus.

    1. Re: Brazil has aggressive Mosquito control by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You should maybe ask the Texans and Floridians. They may have a different point of view. Southern Brazil is cooler than those said US states.

    2. Re: Brazil has aggressive Mosquito control by Volanin · · Score: 3, Informative

      I'm from Brazil. The same mosquito (Aedis Aegypti) is responsible for three diseases. Originally it was just Dengue Fever that was the problem, but recently there's been an outbreak of Chikungunya and Zika as well. These diseases have similar symptoms, but the latest one, Zika, is being deemed responsible for a huge increase of Microcephaly in newborns lately that is all over the news. There is indeed an aggressive mosquito control front and Government initiatives to inform the population, but keep in mind that it's Summer here in the Southern Hemisphere, and the higher temperatures are causing these mosquitoes to reproduce like a plague, making it much harder to solve the problem.

      --
      If I clone myself, can I call it a thread?
      If a girl winks to us, can I call it a race condition?
    3. Re: Brazil has aggressive Mosquito control by avandesande · · Score: 2

      I don't think microcephaly will have much impact there....

      --
      love is just extroverted narcissism
    4. Re: Brazil has aggressive Mosquito control by Diakoneo · · Score: 1

      Thanks for the response Volanin!

      How does your country feel about DDT? I have mixed feelings on using it. I understand it's been instrumental in curbing malaria in many parts of the world, but there are environmental consequences to using it.

      --
      "Just as there is nothing so unreal as reality TV, there is nothing as unsocial as social media." - Alistair Dabbs
    5. Re: Brazil has aggressive Mosquito control by laie_techie · · Score: 1

      You should maybe ask the Texans and Floridians. They may have a different point of view. Southern Brazil is cooler than those said US states.

      Southern Brazil (like Rio Grande do Sul) actually gets snow in July! Even parts of Sao Paulo state get down to the 30s and 20s.

    6. Re: Brazil has aggressive Mosquito control by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1

      Someone needs to use CRISPR to genetically-engineer a female mosquito that does not drink blood

      Plant nectar does not provide as much protein for egg laying. If there was no evolutionary advantage to blood sucking, it would not have evolved. So a no-blood-sucking gene would likely be out-competed in the wild.

      A more fruitful approach may be to use CRISPR (or some other technique) to create Aedes mosquitoes that do not host the zika virus. The virus provides no known benefit to the mosquito, and other types of mosquitoes do not transmit the virus. So that should not be too difficult, and the modified genome should not be eliminated by natural selection.

    7. Re: Brazil has aggressive Mosquito control by tnk1 · · Score: 1

      You're right about competition, but in combination with aggressive attacks on blood suckers, you could aid the non-bloodsuckers in filling in the niche. Much the same way that they try and kill bad gut flora and replace it with good (or harmless) gut flora to fill the niche where the bad gut flora would otherwise crowd out the good flora due to being established.

      You don't want to end mosquitoes or something like them, because they're a big prey species up the food chain, but their particular blood sucking traits are very bad news for the spread of disease. If we could support the good breeds in crowding out the pest breeds, it would help the good breeds effectively compete, despite their natural disadvantage.

    8. Re: Brazil has aggressive Mosquito control by Immerman · · Score: 1

      I see two problems:
      1) How do you selectively target only blood-sucking mosquitos?
      2) How likely is it that you could realistically introduce a serious competitor that doesn't unleash potentially horrible unintended ecological consequences? After all mosquitos are hardly the only nectar-feeders around.

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
    9. Re: Brazil has aggressive Mosquito control by HiThere · · Score: 1

      Unfortunately, in many parts of the world mosquitoes have adapted to be relatively immune to DDT. I don't know that this is true of Brazil, but I wouldn't be surprised. (Of course, often the adaptation is to smell the stuff and find it so distasteful they go somewhere else, but that's been a fairly effective strategy.)

      IIUC, the only way of using DDT that's still really effective (outside of bed nets) is to spread it over stagnant pools of water. But if you have lots of slowly flowing streams that doesn't work. Considering that the RainForest is in Brazil, I don't think it would be effective.

      And yes, DDT is tremendously ecologically destructive, but people don't tend to worry about things like that when faced with multiple repulsively dangerous diseases.

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
    10. Re: Brazil has aggressive Mosquito control by Mashiki · · Score: 1

      Vegetable oil works very well for small to medium bodies of water it only takes a little bit. It's what we use in Canada for mosquito control along with Bti(Bacillus thuringiensis israeliensis) and Methoprene, we also use pesticide foggers for adulticide when the weather is very humid in the summer. Most of Canada has large flowing bodies of water as well, so usually before any program comes into use there's 3-8 years of ecological impact studies to determine what other problems may crop up because of it.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    11. Re: Brazil has aggressive Mosquito control by rtb61 · · Score: 2

      The virus takes up space in the digestive system of the affected mosquito and as it does not aid the mosquito, it must logically hamper the mosquito, an identical mosquito that resist the infection will have a minor advantage. Also the genome resistance should also be dominant, so it a pairing between a resistant and non resistanct variant the resistance would be passed on.

      Also in a plus for conspiracy theorists the development of the spread of the infection and it's sporadic localised spread. It would be interesting to find out whether it is the original virus in all instances or whether changes in it's makeup and affect have changed over time. Did it always result in microcephaly and brain damage in the unborn children or is that just a recent development of the current variant.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
    12. Re: Brazil has aggressive Mosquito control by silentcoder · · Score: 1

      We don't even know that it is causing microcephaly now. There is absolutely no causal evidence linking the condition to the virus. What we have is a virus outbreak and a sudden, surprisingly high, incidence of a rare condition. That's correlation, not causation.

      Now since we have no actual explanation for the high incidence, the Brazilian government felt it best to advise people to avoid getting pregnant until after mosquito season but that's a purely speculative preventative measure - they were very honest about there being no actual medical proof that the virus causes the condition. In fact, we don't even have evidence that it can cross the placenta (only a small number of diseases can).

      The disease is fairly harmless to children and adults so it wasn't given much priority before. Now if, indeed, it is a risk for pregnancy then further testing will bear that out. There are many potential causes of birth defects - and clusters like this could *even* be entirely coincidental. We don't like to think that way but not all clusters of rare events share an unusual cause - random events sometimes form clusters of distribution - if they didn't they wouldn't be random.
      The odds of the lottery numbers next saturday being 1 1 1 1 1 1 is exactly the same as any other combination of numbers - but I bet if it happened there would be no jackpot winner because we all instinctively think that clusters like that should be unlikely.

      --
      Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
    13. Re: Brazil has aggressive Mosquito control by Immerman · · Score: 1

      Actually I'd think you'd want such a gene to be recessive, so that only "pureblood" resistant mosquitos would have the advantage and would eventually outcompete the others. Otherwise the population would end up being mostly halfbreeds who are themselves resistant, but about 25% of their offspring be carriers (assuming simple two-gene inheretence). If one in four mosquitos is still a vector then you haven't really solved the problem.

      Of course eiter way, that depends on resistance offering enough of an advantage to overwhelm other factors, which seems unlikely. After all the virus is only going to be a tiny percentage of the total volume of the stomach contents.

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
    14. Re: Brazil has aggressive Mosquito control by rtb61 · · Score: 1

      Simply not fast enough, you need an accelerated process otherwise you are claiming, meh so what if million brain damaged children occur in the interim. So the faster the better and you need to do many things at once. Population control around high human populations with concentrated releases just outside that zone. Searching for a cure. Evaluating methods of mitigating symptoms. So you do everything you can at the same time because the risks are so high. You simply can not wait for a few hundred thousands generations to occur.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
  3. Re:Cow Guy by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 1

    He's been depressed since the SpaceX first stage soft landing.

  4. Re:Cow Guy by Coisiche · · Score: 1

    Really? You can infer mood and state of mind from:

    Moooooooooooooooo! You are all [insert word that appears in summary or is tenuously related] cows! Moooooooooooooooooooooo!

  5. Re:Cow Guy by juanfgs · · Score: 1

    You forgot the "X is for Cows" part

  6. Re:Why are these Brazilians even having children?! by cant_get_a_good_nick · · Score: 1

    Brazil is already sub replacement rate. It's population will dwindle. I don't know what the hell you're talking about.

    Life is unfair. You can basically say most of what you were trolling about about most places in the world. You can do pretty much two things: give up and nobody have kids, or you can try to be a part of the solution. Evidently your reaction to most problems would be "just give up"

  7. Re:Why are these Brazilians even having children?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Dear ignorant Coward.

    Brazil is also known [by whom looks at it closely] for its beautiful mid-sized cities [where favelas are virtually unknown], where you live better than in US. Its wonderful beaches, and its growing middle class, that makes up more than 50% of the population. It is also known as middle income country that's getting rid of poverty faster than any other nation. Also, we are the ones researching the cure for the exact same diseases TFA mentions. We will win in the end, and if you think this is China's century, you'd better think again.

    Now you can get you desperately ignorant words written down to a piece of paper and shove it up your ass.

    Yeah, Brazilian here.

  8. We can't, the Pope won't let us use birth control! by NotDrWho · · Score: 1

    The populace responded.

    --
    SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
  9. Re:We can't, the Pope won't let us use birth contr by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Fertlity rates [1,9] are bellow the US's [2,1]. That make us look more like a 1st world country. We NEED people.

    Yeah, Brazilian here.

  10. Re:Cow Guy by sexconker · · Score: 1

    Why do you think there's only one person posting the flavor of the month trolls?
    Someone writes up a troll and spams it on a few "articles". Other people see it and, if they like it, do the same.

    Someone's trying to make the "all women are wookies" one the next thing, but it's not gonna catch on. (Especially since he misspelled wookiees.)

    The cow troll is great, but people got bored of it and don't post it anymore. I posted it (and variations of it) myself because I enjoyed it, but I never posted it as AC.

  11. Re:Why are these Brazilians even having children?! by sexconker · · Score: 1

    Yeah, Brazilian here.

    HUE HUE HUE HUE

  12. Re:It's just nature's way... by jbeaupre · · Score: 1

    Nature doesn't have feelings. Doesn't care about you, me, or anything. Doesn't care if the planet is destroyed or we are. Nature doesn't have any thoughts on any subject at all. No more than mathematics or physics or chemistry has thoughts, feelings, motivations, or desires.

    Please stop anthropomorphizing.

    --
    The world is made by those who show up for the job.
  13. Re:Why are these Brazilians even having children?! by epyT-R · · Score: 1

    Yeah, Brazilian here.

    Good to know there's no bias in your post then.

  14. Isn't that a Catholic country? by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 1

    Isn't entire South America heavily Catholic? Don't they take very strong stance against birth control? Or the Catholics being against birth control something unique to USA?

    --
    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
    1. Re:Isn't that a Catholic country? by OrangeTide · · Score: 1

      The Roman Catholic church is pretty clear on the topic. The Vatican's policy impacts societies in South America, Africa, North America, and Western Europe.

      Latin America is deeply committed to Catholicism, where North America (Anglo America?) has more protestants and a greater variety of Christian denominations and a long history of excluding Catholics from politics in regions (yeah, that's not so great, but I'd argue that it's reality).

      This is going to come down to Pope Francis either taking a public position that solves the immediate threat in South America. Or for politicians there to take a great career risk and loosen their adherence to the directions given by the Vatican. (you won't see abortion being legal there, but they may relax restrictions on contraception)

      That said, there are still 1.4m abortions per year in Brazil. Despite it being quite illegal there. There is a lot of "Do as I say, not as I do" in the government there, which I suppose makes them like every other government.

      --
      “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
    2. Re:Isn't that a Catholic country? by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 1

      Most of SA is indeed catholic, but that's changing fast [citation needed] and birth control methods such as condoms and pills are distributed for free by the Ministry of Health

      Tax payer funds for birth control? OMG, wait till the Republicans hear about this. They are gonna freak out. What? oh? They already know? All that noise they make is just for entertainment? OK, that figures. Does their base know?

      --
      sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
    3. Re:Isn't that a Catholic country? by OrangeTide · · Score: 1

      1) not shrinking among elected officials in Brazil. (based on age demographic, which is not totally accurate, but that data does seem to fit complains from the younger generation)

      --
      “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
    4. Re:Isn't that a Catholic country? by tehcyder · · Score: 1

      Catholicism is shrinking very fast. I'd say about half Brazilians are Catholic by now. The other half is evangelical

      That is not an improvement.

      Catholicism has its obvious blind spots concerning women's reproductive rights, but at least they otherwise believe in science and reason. Evangelical Christians are not much better than Scientologists.

      --
      To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
  15. Re:Why are these Brazilians even having children?! by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

    Evidently your reaction to most problems would be "just give up"

    Suicide rates are up all over the planet. Maybe we're actually past that "carrying capacity" thing we always talk about. When you overpopulate any kind of animal, they start to go wrong. The only country with unpopulated hospitable land is the USA; a small percentage of the land now controlled by the BLM is pretty nice. But it's not like they're going to start handing it out. This is not about to turn into a defense of some dipshits currently starving themselves in a federal building or anything, but the BLM is shit. The federal government is in the process of snatching more land right now, which actually is privately owned and inhabited, around Washington and Oregon. Three guesses as to how badly they will mismanage it after they finish stealing it.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  16. Diversity Is Our Greatest Strength! by Baldrson · · Score: 1

    Diversity Über Alles!

    (an unreleased Dead Kennedy's single)

    --
    Seastead this.
  17. Not just Brazil by Espectr0 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Now in Venezuela as well. We had chikunguya last year and now Zika as well. The aedes family of mosquitoes are extremely dangerous, now causing 4 common diseases (dengue and yellow fever as well)

    --
    Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
  18. Re:Cow Guy by Coren22 · · Score: 1

    Hmm, I'd date a wookiee...

    --
    APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
  19. Re:Why are these Brazilians even having children?! by Coren22 · · Score: 1

    Plus the women are smoking hot, so I can see how it is hard to say no to them when they throw themselves at you.

    --
    APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
  20. Re:It's just nature's way... by Coren22 · · Score: 1

    Please stop anthropomorphizing.

    They hate it when you do that.

    --
    APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
  21. Re:Cow Guy by tnk1 · · Score: 2

    Perhaps he's just moo-ved on?

  22. Re:It's just nature's way... by Immerman · · Score: 1

    Seems to me you're making a pretty big assumption yourself. Consider: from a sufficiently "zoomed in" perspective your brain is nothing more than a large clonal colony of specialized single-cell organisms supported by an even larger and more varied colony in symbiosis with far, far more non-related microbes, with no evidence to be seen of this "mind" thing you claim exists.

    Similarly, simply because we see no direct evidence of a mind in the ecological superorganism does not mean it doesn't exist, it may simply operate from a reference point that we cannot relate to.

    --
    --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
  23. Re:It's actually a national, male conspiracy. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    You cracked the code. microencephaly ==> "give me a little head"

  24. Re:Cow Guy by silentcoder · · Score: 1

    >"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind, and won't change the subject." -- Winston Churchill

    Some would say that a definition which does not cover "A person who happily starved over a million children" isn't a very good definition. But Churchill wouldn't agree as that would mean he would have to include himself.

    --
    Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
  25. Re:Why are these Brazilians even having children?! by silentcoder · · Score: 1

    My first wife was Brazilian so I got to spend a lot of time in the country and can attest that this is just as accurate a description he left out (especially the midsize-cities, I spent a lot of time in Suzano and Fortaleza). It's a fantastic country by every measure. And I would add to what you said:

    1) FAR Better healthcare than the US (I speak as somebody who has gotten ill on occasion in both countries) - nowhere else I've been in the world did a doctor tried a common flue with such care. Instead of the usual 2 weeks - Brazil's care had me back on my feet in 3 days. The focus on preventative care is amazing and the focus on getting people healthy and back to work as soon as possible is brilliant. And even as a foreign tourist (this was before the marriage) it didn't cost me anything.

    2) Free public university (with strict entrance exams so they get the best of the best and ensure those people are educated even if they were poor), and private universities for everybody else (a good compromise I think - not as great as Denmark but better than USA). And cleverly the private universities are all night-schools so it's normal to have a job while you study and this means more people can afford to do so.

    3) Motel's... American's have no idea what they are missing when they've never gotten to take their SO's for a night in a motel where you can order vibrators and sexy-cosplay's from roomservice... ;) Of course America also has things *called* motels, but they are nothing alike.

    --
    Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
  26. Re:Why are these Brazilians even having children?! by tehcyder · · Score: 1

    You can also shove your shitty Ph.D up your lower middle class anus. Because I have one too, and I don't give a fuck about it. And I'm really rich [and arguably smarter than you, since I don't go around bragging about my fucking USP Ph.D], traitor asshole.

    Pretty good going for a thirteen year old.

    --
    To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
  27. Re:Why are these Brazilians even having children?! by tehcyder · · Score: 1

    Plus the women are smoking hot, so I can see how it is hard to say no to them when they throw themselves at you.

    You're just being cruel now.

    I have a vision of a thousand nerds rushing to buy plane tickets to Rio de Janeiro.

    --
    To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
  28. Re:It's just nature's way... by tehcyder · · Score: 1

    Seems to me you're making a pretty big assumption yourself. Consider: from a sufficiently "zoomed in" perspective your brain is nothing more than a large clonal colony of specialized single-cell organisms supported by an even larger and more varied colony in symbiosis with far, far more non-related microbes, with no evidence to be seen of this "mind" thing you claim exists.

    Similarly, simply because we see no direct evidence of a mind in the ecological superorganism does not mean it doesn't exist, it may simply operate from a reference point that we cannot relate to.

    Gaia's getting pissed off with AGW and has decided to post on slashdot.

    --
    To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
  29. Re:Why are these Brazilians even having children?! by Coren22 · · Score: 1

    That is quite the image...thank you.

    --
    APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
  30. Re:Why are these Brazilians even having children?! by strikethree · · Score: 1

    Now you can get you(sic) desperately ignorant words written down to a piece of paper and shove it up your ass.

    Yeah, Brazilian here.

    I am not who you are replying to but perhaps you should address this issue and the wording in the article if you wish to change people's perception of Brazil.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/maga...

    Kind regards,
    Dave

    --
    "Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen