Moon of Alabama.png Moon of Alabama, 5 February 2016 The Zika Virus is Harmless So Who Benefits from the Media Panic? The media are currently creating a panic about the allegedly dangerous Zika virus: . U.S. doctors upgrade Zika precautions; virus found in saliva, urine <http://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-zika-idUSKCN0VD2QF> . The Latest: UN chief backs review of birth control rules <http://www.chron.com/news/medical/article/The-Latest-Brazil-finds-active-Zi ka-virus-in-6809361.php> . First case of pregnant woman with Zika in Europe <http://www.rte.ie/news/world/2016/0204/765488-zika/> . Why Zika is a ticking <https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2016/02/03/a-zika-tim e-bomb-with-limited-access-to-birth-control-and-strict-abortion-laws-women-i n-latin-america-fear-the-future/> 'time bomb' for Latin America . NO SEX, PLEASE! <http://www.news24.com/World/News/us-urges-condoms-or-abstinence-to-avoid-zi ka-virus-20160206> - US Centre for Disease Control . Race is on to develop Zika vaccine but tests on pregnant women raise concern <http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/03/zika-virus-vaccine-research-te sts-pregnant-women-raise-concern> There is absolutely no sane reason for this panic campaign. The virus is long known, harmless and the main current scare, that the virus damages unborn children, is based on uncorroborated and likely false information. A recent Congressional Research Service report <http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/IN10433.pdf> (pdf) about Zika notes: Zika is a virus that is primarily spread by Aedes mosquitoes [..]. Zika transmission has also been documented from mother to child during pregnancy, as well as through sexual intercourse, blood transfusions, and laboratory exposure. Scientists first identified the virus in 1947 among monkeys living in the Ugandan Zika forest. Five years later, human cases were detected in Uganda and Tanzania. The first human cases outside of Africa were diagnosed in the Pacific in 2007 and in Latin America in 2015. The thing is just one of many thousand viruses that can affect humans. It is known. It is rather harmless. It effects, if there are any at all, are very mild: A relatively small proportion (about 1 in 4) of infected people develop symptoms. The virus is only detectable for a few days in infected people's blood. [..] Zika typically causes mild symptoms, including fever, rash, and conjunctivitis, which usually last up to one week. Hospitalization and death following infection are rare. Only 1 in 4 infected people are affected and any typical flue would be more aggravating to them than this little bugger. BUT WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN????!!!! The CRS report says: Health experts are uncertain whether Zika causes microcephaly, a potentially severe birth defect involving brain damage. Since October 2015, Brazilian officials have reported more than 4,000 cases of microcephaly in areas with ongoing Zika transmission, up from roughly 150 cases in previous years. Health officials are concerned that this may be a result of infection in the fetus when a pregnant woman is infected. Synopsis: We do not know if the virus harms unborn children at all. But that number of 4,000 cases looks suspiciously high. That is because it is false. Microcephaly, the so called "pinhead", is not easy to diagnose. There is no standard or certain border value for the size of a newborn baby that doctors can agree on. A baby head may look too small and develop perfectly well or it may look too small and not develop perfectly. Not every case gets regularly reported. There are possible structural reason why this years number differ a lot from last years numbers. A new doctor? A new reporting system? Changed diagnosis guidelines? We do not know. What we know is that the 4,000 cases number from Brazil that is circulating is a. misleading, b. wrong and c. unrelated to the virus. The number is misleading because it does not give any real base like the total number of birth to which those 4,000 cases relate. According to a 2009 paper <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19752457> published inNeurology and quoted here <https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2016/01/31/busted-25000-cases-of-microce phaly-in-the-us-per-year/> : "Microcephaly may result from any insult that disturbs early brain growth [...]annually, approximately 25,000 infants in the United States will be diagnosed with microcephaly .." Hundreds of children are born with microcephaly every day. That is sad. But it also tells us that the "big number" of 4,000 is not really that high. It is also false. As was reported <http://www.sfgate.com/news/medical/article/Brazil-270-of-4-120-suspected-mi crocephaly-cases-6787928.php> already a week ago: New figures released Wednesday by Brazil's Health Ministry as part of a probe into the Zika virus have found fewer cases of a rare birth defect than first feared. Researchers have been looking at 4,180 suspected cases of microcephaly reported since October. On Wednesday, officials said they had done a more intense analysis of more than 700 of those cases, confirming 270 cases and ruling out 462 others. So more than half of those 4,000 children reported with microcephaly do not have microcephaly. That the numbers now see such a sharp correction points to problems in the standard of diagnosis in Brazil and elsewhere. Are we sure that we have really correct numbers for earlier years to compare with the current numbers? But what about that dangerous virus? Six of the 270 confirmed microcephaly cases were found to have the virus. Two were stillborn and four were live births, three of whom later died, the ministry said. Only 6 out of 270 were confirmed to have had the virus. Is that a reason to be scared? Or not? That number only tells us that the detection of this virus is rare. It does not tell us how many of the 270 have at a time been infected. It also does not tell us if such an infection has caused microcephaly or not. But you want another scary headline? "Five out of six kids diagnosed with Zika virus died!!!" That headline is of course also wrong. We do not know how many, if any, of the surviving kids once had the virus and got rid of it. When were those tests done? Remember that the CRS report noted: The virus is only detectable for a few days in infected people's blood. It is likely that the virus can be detected in a dead human body if that body was infected at the time of the death. But in a living body with a working immune system the virus will have vanished after just a few days. It is quite possible that a whole bunch of the surviving children once had the virus, that it caused no harm, and that it vanished. There is absolutely no sane reason for the scary headlines and the panic they cause. The virus is harmless. It is possible, but seems for now very unlikely, that it affects some unborn children. There is absolutely no reason to be concerned about it. As this is all well known or easy to find out why do the media create this sensation? Cui bono? Has someone a vaccine they want to sell? Is this to damage Brazil's Olympics? Feel free to speculate. From: http://www.moonofalabama.org/2016/02/the-zika-virus-is-harmless-why-then-thi s-media-panic.html#comments -- -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. 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