HOLY SHIT!!! ZIKA VIRUS!!!1!

On the plus side, there are going to be a lot of funny-looking people with small heads in the southern hemisphere.

(I'm so going to hell.)

It affects only people who want to have kids, whom I don't give a shit about. Population control. Good.

Although I will note from my own personal observations living there, that expecting Latin Americans to stop having unplanned babies is like asking bears to stop shitting in the woods.

Don't know about planned v unplanned, but birth rates in Latin America are the same as in the U.S.

My greatest concern is that gturner will decide it's the next ebola and go completely, well, go completely gturner. Gturner to the second power won't be a good thing.

Holy shit, never heard of it.

Just make sure you put on lots of bug repellent so mosquitoes won't transmit it to you.

You can also catch it via sexual intercourse, but I don't think that will be an issue.

The outbreak of West Nile virus in Sacramento County California was analyzed by the CDC

WNV disease in Sacramento County cost ≈$2.28 million for medical treatment and patients’ productivity loss for both West Nile fever and West Nile neuroinvasive disease. Vector control cost ≈$701,790, including spray procedures and overtime hours. The total economic impact of WNV was $2.98 million. A cost-benefit analysis indicated that only 15 cases of West Nile neuroinvasive disease would need to be prevented to make the emergency spray cost-effective.​

That comes to a cost per case of $14,000 for West Nile, with emergency spraying justified if there are 15 cases.

Assuming that microcephaly is probably similar in lifetime care to cerebral palsy, the cost would be $921,000 per case, which is 65 times more expensive than a case of WNV. This indicates that emergency spraying and mosquito control measures are economically justified to prevent even one case of Zika-caused microcephaly.

Where did you cut and paste all that from? 'Cause there's no way you wrote any of it.

Researched it myself a little while ago, looking to firm up a guess. County by county mosquito costs generally varied too much to provide a useful guideline, although many counties already spend a couple million a year. Florida would still be pretty sparsely populated if not for mosquito control, and in parts of the Everglades an exposed person could suffer 500 bites per minute. Counties down there get problem calls when the rate hits 1.3 bites per minute.

Yesterday I told my neighbor that the lifetime cost of probably 5 Zika babies would pay for enough insecticide to wipe mosquitoes out in an entire county. Well, at almost $5 million dollars, they would. Brazil has had about 4,000 such babies but their care is going to cost a lot less down there, but the hit to their tourism industry alone (especially with the Olympics) says they should spray everything and soak it twice.

One of the current mysteries is why some of the Pacific Islands where Zika has been for about a decade didn't have any linked birth defects. Did the virus mutate, are Polynesians not susceptible in the same way, or is there something else going on?

Mmmm hmmm.

This surprises nobody.

Yeah because it totally doesn't sound made up. Tell me, in 1980, how familiar were you with AIDS?

@Federal Farmer: nobody knew about AIDS in 1980. It wasn't classified as a distinct illness, nor was there awareness of the HIV virus until 1982. So the question you want to ask is whether I knew about it in 1982. As a matter of fact, I did, and have a clear memory of discussing it in my 7th grade science class, at home with my parents, and at my church's youth group. There is a difference between being surprised by ignorance and not being surprised by ignorance. You can expect me to know about most things in a timely manner.

Maybe we'll finally bring back DDT and take out bedbugs too.

A few too many news stories showing those babies and I think everybody would be up for it.

You can also make your own DDT if you can get some monoethyl-benzene, which they used to sell at the hardware stores as a solvent. DDT is a very old and simple chemical to make.

Zika is a Muslim invention. It started in Damascus as a project of the feared Burj Al-Zika mosque and was taken to Africa by Syrian invaders. It spread via their raping of da wimmins.

And up until the past day or two, how much of this virus has been in the public eye? How much news coverage was there prior to this newest outbreak? My guess is most people have heard very little of this virus until it became a news story. It's kind of how the news works, there's shit going on in a small section of the world, something big happens, it pops up on the Internet, the media picks it up, suddenly the rest of the country knows about it. It's a pretty common occurance.

You've only known about it longer because you've had to look in the mirror for the past 14 years. That doesn't apply to most people.

A couple of weeks ago I'd never heard of it.

That's what I'm talking about, but @gul just wants to pretend that it's a well known disease like AIDS or chicken pox just so he can insult me.

Not to feed the gturner, but there may be more to this than 'just' risk to pregnant women (also: you may want to drop the dismissive attitude about that, especially with global warming allowing the virus to keep spreading to more countries).
For one, it can be transmitted through sex, apparently. So yeah, another thing to make sex more fun. The other thing to worry about: there are suspicions that the Zika virus is linked to ... Guillain Barré Syndrome. Which anyone anywhere can get, and which I can assure you sucks balls, for yourself and for those around you. And that's from personal experience.

The thing is, it's been in the news just about every day since the moment Shoes heard about it. Where have you been? Also, you brought up AIDS, so that comparison is on you.

I don't have cable so I don't watch the news. I look up shit online, but I don't spend every waking hour looking up news stories.

Clearly, and probably not even very many minutes.

Which begs the question -- who's having sex with all these mosquitoes?

Zika virus was sexually transmitted in Texas, CDC says

@Storm ?

Because he wears his rubbers, just like he learned about in health class last week.

In 1980 AIDS was not officially known but people did talk about "gay wasting disease" or "gay cancer". Demands by gay people for the government to fund research into that mystery illness is why AIDS was identified in 1982.

In other words, you got it half right, gul, and worse you were a complete dick about it while still getting it half wrong. Stop acring like an ass, man. I know FF isn't the most popular poster but try learning to just respond to the message instead of attacking the poster.

You're full of shit. Your grudge against @gul is pathetic as your grudge against me. He's talking about knowing about something swiftly once it becomes public knowledge, which it did in 1982. I don't see what that has to do with anything prior 1982. Once again you're mouthing off without even reading what you're bellyaching about.

Here's the best part, Reagan didn't even mention it until 1985, which is most likely when the majority of the country and the world truly became aware of it.