What is the biggest existential threat to humankind?
Is it the dire effects of anthropogenic climate change? The threat to the biosphere posed by our rapidly deteriorating oceans? The eventual consequences of the ongoing, human-caused mass extinction?
None of the above.
No, the biggest threat to humankind, if you've been awake during the last month or so, is—
zika virus
And yet, the flu associated with this virus is so mild that might not even know you had it.
What the fuck is going on?
I'll quote the Nature news story The next steps on Zika (February 2, 2016).
The World Health Organization this week declared that clusters of birth defects suspected of being linked to an epidemic of Zika virus in the Americas constituted a “public health emergency of international concern”.
Beyond the practical imperative to better control the mosquitoes that spread Zika and other diseases, the most urgent priority on the ground is research to answer basic, but crucial, questions, including whether the birth defects are caused by the virus, and if so, how frequently.
Alarm among media and politicians that the Zika virus is poised to cause a pandemic of birth defects has reached fever pitch — with some headlines even screaming that it could be worse than Ebola in West Africa. But, as in the early stages of any epidemic of a new or re-emerging virus, there are challenges in dealing with the uncertainties that inevitably arise from huge gaps in our knowledge.
A calm and cautious approach to assessing the threat is advisable, and so is avoiding unhelpful hype and hysteria, or jumping to premature conclusions.
Health authorities must, of course, not wait until all the facts are in before taking action, and are right to recommend, out of an abundance of caution, measured precautions to protect pregnant women and their fetuses in the face of a perceived potential threat.
International public health emergency! Worse than Ebola!
Don't wait until the facts are in! Be hysterical now!
Why the hysteria? Because there is a suspected but unproven link between zika and microcephaly in babies born from mothers who have, or did have, the virus during pregnancy. That's why you now know more about the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which carries the virus, than you ever wanted or needed to know.
I'll quote the Nature news story Proving Zika link to birth defects poses huge challenge (February 9, 2016).
Public-health authorities are investigating whether the Zika virus has caused an apparent surge in the number of infants born with microcephaly, or abnormally small heads, in at least seven countries.
But conclusively determining whether the mosquito-borne virus is to blame could take months to years, researchers say...
Lots of research bucks there!
Making progress has been difficult because scientists know relatively little about Zika; there is no easy-to-use test to diagnose infections; and physicians disagree about how to define microcephaly, says Bruno Andrade, an immunologist at the Fiocruz research institute in Bahia, Brazil. “All of this started less than two months ago — that’s when everything stepped up,” he says. “We are in the middle of this nightmare here.”
We're in the middle of a nightmare here, for sure. Truer words were never spoken. But it's not the nightmare Bruno Andrade thinks it is.
So far, two lines of evidence support a link between the virus and microcephaly. Microcephaly cases in Brazil started to rise around 6 months after authorities confirmed Zika transmission there, hinting that the defect might have been caused by in utero exposure to the virus. And researchers in Brazil have found traces of the virus, or antibodies to it, in the amniotic fluid, brains or spinal fluid of 15 fetuses and babies diagnosed with microcephaly.
This is suggestive, but not conclusive. “Most of us believe it’s highly plausible that Zika is the cause of this epidemic of microcephaly, but we need additional evidence,” says Albert Ko, an infectious-disease physician and epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health in New Haven, Connecticut.
In the hope of producing more-definitive data, the Brazilian ministry of health is now setting up large studies...
Epidemiological studies are often complex because Zika causes a relatively mild illness in adults and there is no widely deployed test for the virus...
Right, you might not know if you had it or not. And there's this—
It’s plausible, for instance, that Zika crosses from mother to baby through the placenta, as do some related viruses, such as West Nile virus. But these other viruses don’t often cause infant brain damage, so it’s not clear why — or how — Zika might, says David Morens, a senior adviser to Fauci.
The virus may be toxic only while a fetus’s brain is still developing its major structures, in the first two months of pregnancy. Or it may persist in the body for a long period, which would explain why Zika is seen in stillborn babies with microcephaly. “If the insult happened early on, then why is the virus present at seven months when the miscarriage occurs?” Morens says. “There must be a combination of things going on.”
Another conundrum is what it is that makes these women and babies so vulnerable: the vast majority of women infected with Zika go on to have healthy babies...
Read that again—the vast majority of women infected with Zika go on to have healthy babies.
Before I make some general remarks here, I want to emphasize that microcephaly is tragic in all cases. I won't make light of that.
On the other hand, what we have here is a case of silly human threat assessment.
Concerns first arose in Brazil, which in November declared a national public-health emergency. As of 2 February, officials there had investigated 1,113 of 4,783 suspected cases of microcephaly reported since late last year, and confirmed that 404 of those could be linked to Zika.
Maybe 36% of recent microcephaly cases in Brazil were caused in part by zika virus, but maybe not. Figuring that out will take "months to years."
But of course widespread hysteria about zika virus is caused by the fact that we're talking about human babies here, even if it may be affecting only a relative handful, though nobody knows how yet ("there must be a combination of things going on")
You can't get humans worked up about climate change or plastic in the oceans or endangered species because you can't show them babies with small heads and say "Look! We're talking about a real threat here!"
My Google searches for "zika hysteria" turned up little of interest, so I thought I would chime in.
Jesus wept.
"What the fuck is going on?"
My favorite question...every damn day.
Found this yesterday, entirely by accident:
http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2987137/argentine_and_brazilian_doctors_suspect_mosquito_insecticide_as_cause_of_microcephaly.html
Seems the microcephaly may be caused by an insecticide introduced in 2014 to control mosquito infestation in northeast Brazil.
"Malformations detected in thousands of children from pregnant women living in areas where the Brazilian state added Pyriproxyfen to drinking water are not a coincidence, even though the Ministry of Health places a direct blame on the Zika virus for this damage."
PCST
Here's the link to the PCST report:
http://www.reduas.com.ar/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2016/02/Informe-Zika-de-Reduas_TRAD.pdf
I usually embrace irony but not this time.
Be Well
Posted by: Jacob Horner | 02/11/2016 at 12:52 PM