Posts: 14,105
Threads: 424
Joined: Aug 2012
http://www.westhawaiitoday.com/news/loca...r-outbreak
Gov. David Ige did not issue an emergency proclamation ... will issue such a proclamation if and when conditions meet the following criteria:
The dengue outbreak requires additional resources beyond current levels
The dengue outbreak has spread to other islands
The outbreak has expanded to include Zika and other vector-borne diseases
It is necessary to waive certain laws and regulations
The state determines it will need federal assistance
Posts: 10,212
Threads: 344
Joined: Apr 2009
I can't tell from the wording of the WHT article if a state declaration of emergency happens if 1) all those criteria are reached, or 2) just one is reached. If it's (1) that's worrying. Anyone know?
As for the conspiracy stuff, it's odd how many want to believe in a hoax despite contrary evidence. There was an interesting study published a year ago called " Science vs Conspiracy: Collective Narratives in the Age of Misinformation":
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article...ne.0118093
A more lay-person friendly summary of that article is here:
http://goo.gl/vxtxgd
Posts: 10,212
Threads: 344
Joined: Apr 2009
" What conspiracy are we discussing? The only mention of one was HOTPE's and I thought that was in jest."
Keep up, dakine, it's in the link Gypsy gave.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/fe...y-theories
Posts: 4,902
Threads: 83
Joined: Feb 2009
"The State of Emergency will suspend the law that prohibits tires being accepted at County landfills as a means of effectively controlling and eliminating the dengue fever virus on the Big Island.
A State of Emergency for the island will last for a minimum 60 days, or until further notice from the Mayor’s office."
This is all the statement from Kenoi said.
Posts: 171
Threads: 3
Joined: Mar 2013
quote:
Originally posted by Punatic007
So it appears in link number 1, the cities are not properly mapped. Regardless these are the facts:
*Severe Dengue outbreak in Brazil
*Experimental trial release of GMO's to combat Dengue, supposedly very successful.
*Few years later a Zika outbreak with an absolutely chilling potential of microcephaly being linked to Zika. But only in Brazil, the trail area for GMO mosquitos. Zika has been around for sometime globally with no correlation to microcephaly previously noted.
Logically it seems important to wait and see if the microcephaly stays localized and if it can be linked to Zika. Lots of very important steps to take before considering releasing the super mosquito. This is why we have and need unbiased experts to lead the way. I've read Florida is pushing for the release of GMO mosquitos before the studies are conclusive. We shall see....
Did we even read the same article?
quote:
Oops. There are two cities called Juazeiro in Brazil, and AntiMedia’s big red arrow was pointing at the wrong one, as the myth-busting science blogger Christie Wilcox quickly spotted. The Juazeiro where the GM mosquito releases had actually taken place was 300km away. Both cities are in turn rather a long way from the main Zika outbreak areas, which are located on the coast.
quote:
The timing was wrong too. Zika was first reported in Brazil in 2015, while the Oxitec mosquito releases began four years earlier. Moreover, Zika is thought to have come to Brazil from a 2013 outbreak in French Polynesia, which in turn spread from a 2007 outbreak in Micronesia. So the GM mosquitoes were effectively being blamed for causing a disease many thousands of miles away and several years before they were even released.
quote:
The Ecologist failed to note Dr Ho’s real credentials, however. She is a decades-long anti-GMO activist who today divides her time between pushing anti-vaccine misinformation about MMR, bizarre ideas about about mobile phones causing cancer, and pseudo-scientific woo about homeopathy and “holistic” Chinese medicine.
Plus she made an elementary mistake: the mosquitoes couldn’t inadvertently insert additional DNA into the Zika virus genome, because Zika has no DNA - it’s an RNA virus. That’s a different type of molecule, Dr Ho. Moreover, the DNA sequence in question is 8400 bases long, almost as long as the entire Zika virus genome. Dr Ho’s purported mechanism is a biological impossibility and the Ecologist story is science fiction.
It is more likely the virus mutatated, RNA virus, well I will let the next study say it.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3900646/
quote:
RNA viruses show high rates of spontaneous mutation, a feature that profoundly influences viral evolution, disease emergence, the appearance of drug resistances, and vaccine efficacy. However, RNA virus mutation rates vary substantially and the factors determining this variability remain poorly understood. Here, we investigated the effects of host factors on viral replication fidelity by measuring the viral mutation rate in different cell types and under various culturing conditions
quote:
Since VSV alternates between mammalian and insect hosts in nature, we sought to measure the viral mutation rate in insect cells (Figure 1). In S2 cells from D. melanogaster embryos, the average estimate from three independent fluctuation tests was m#8202;=#8202;4.08×10#8722;6, representing a fourfold decrease compared with BHK-21 (t-test: P#8202;=#8202;0.009, n#8202;=#8202;9). To further investigate this, we selected two additional insect cells lines: Sf21 ovarian cells from the moth Spodoptera frugiperda, and C6/36 from Aedes albopictus mosquito larvae. Also, since insect cells were infected at 28°C and mammalian cells at 37°C, we performed four additional tests in BHK-21 at 28°C. We used estimates obtained in mammalian (BHK-21, BHK-21 at 28°C, MEF, MEF p53#8722;/#8722;, CT26, and Neuro-2a) and insect cells (S2, Sf-21, and C6/36) to jointly test for the effects of host type and temperature (fixed factors) in a two-way ANOVA in which the specific cell line was treated as a random factor nested within host type. This confirmed that VSV shows lower mutation rate in insect cells than in mammalian cells (ANOVA: P<0.001), and also that temperature cannot account for this result because the estimates in BHK-21 were actually higher at 28°C than at 37°C (P#8202;=#8202;0.001).
Short Answer: The virus is more likely to mutate in mammals (humans) then insects. This doesn't even account for sterile male insects, which I assume procreate much less often.
Let's get back to zika..
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/...t-epidemic
quote:
Virologists said Zika has already reached “epidemic” proportions in El Salvador, where doctors were able to isolate the virus in some children suffering from microcephaly.
quote:
Vasilakis, who studied Zika with the Brazilian health ministry in December 2015, said that an estimated 1.5 million people have been infected in Brazil, possibly leading to the recent spate of an estimated 3,000 cases of the ordinarily rare birth defect. By the Centers for Disease Control’s estimate, the rate is 10 times the average for cases of microcephaly. Brazilian health authorities cited just 147 cases of microcephaly in 2014, and 167 cases in 2013, according to the New York Times.
“What we’re looking at now [in Brazil] is the avalanche. In the clinics we see anywhere from 10 to 15 cases a day [of microcephaly],” said Vasilakis. “Last year, we’ve seen about 3,000 cases of microcephaly, which is an extremely, extremely sad condition.”
To recap: The spike of microcephaly happened in 2015, 4 years after the GMO sterile male mosquitoes were released.
quote:
Hotez suspects that a genetic mutation in the virus may be behind its more recent rapid spread, but frustratingly, scientists don’t have any conclusive answers.
“Zika is a very obscure virus,” Hotez said. “Up to 2007 there were less than 20 documented cases of Zika infection in humans. After 2007, in south-east Asia, Micronesia, we started seeing the first reports of large human epidemics, so we don’t really know what is happening … We don’t really know why this is happening, why the global spread is taking place that fast.”
quote:
The first Brazilian case was reported in May 2015, according to the CDC.
Let's not let logic and facts get in the way of pushing an agenda.
Posts: 2,490
Threads: 222
Joined: Dec 2005
Posts: 10,212
Threads: 344
Joined: Apr 2009
" To recap: The spike of microcephaly happened in 2015, 4 years after the GMO sterile male mosquitoes were released."
I would add that the GM mosquitoes were released hundreds of kilometers from the outbreak of zica, which makes HOTPE's post so amusing as it really hit the nail on the head. If there was any connection between those mosquitoes, microcephaly and the zica virus outbreak, there would be a trail of cases from those sites to the current outbreak which would could be traced over those four years. The only way to avoid that would have bionic mosquitoes that can fly 300km in one go (but take four years to do it).
The Guardian article referenced a scientific article detailing the results of using GM mosquitoes to kill off Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, the carriers of dengue and zika. The success rate was extremely high, much higher than any other method, yet as soon as GMOs get mentioned, the conspiracy theorists wet their pants.
http://journals.plos.org/plosntds/articl...td.0003864
"[...] This study spanned over a year and reduced the local Ae. aegypti population by 95% (95% CI: 92.2%-97.5%) based on adult trap data and 81% (95% CI: 74.9-85.2%) based on ovitrap indices compared to the adjacent no-release control area. The mating competitiveness of the released males (0.031; 95% CI: 0.025-0.036) was similar to that estimated in the Cayman trials (0.059; 95% CI: 0.011 – 0.210), indicating that environmental and target-strain differences had little impact on the mating success of the OX513A males. We conclude that sustained release of OX513A males may be an effective and widely useful method for suppression of the key dengue vector Ae. aegypti. The observed level of suppression would likely be sufficient to prevent dengue epidemics in the locality tested and other areas with similar or lower transmission."
Posts: 1,513
Threads: 18
Joined: Oct 2014
I think it's pretty childish to polarize issues and assume others are extremists who don't agree with you. Too many armchair geneticists and epidemiologists chiming in here with their conclusive but mostly worthless opinions. The bottom line is GMO mosquitos are still being tested for safety, the USA is following state of the art scientific protocol which needs to take it's course.
Posts: 10,212
Threads: 344
Joined: Apr 2009
I would say it's childish to base your opinions on a hoax.
Posts: 14,105
Threads: 424
Joined: Aug 2012
Ige says it's not really an emergency:
http://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/news...rant-state
The idea that it might suddenly "become" an emergency if dengue spreads to another island confirms what we've all known all along: the Big Island isn't a priority.
|
