Zika Emerges – A Model Of What Could Come

Zika is a virus which yields mild flu-like symptoms now, and for which a vaccine will not be immediately forthcoming:

It will take scientists around a decade to develop a vaccine for the fast-moving Zika virus, an infectious disease expert claimed today.

The US and other world leaders have called for swift action in developing a vaccine for the virus that is currently rampaging through Latin America and the Caribbean.

But Dr Amesh Adalja, senior associate at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, told Daily Mail Online that officials shouldn’t expect any fast results.

This becomes scary when you realize it appears it may be transmittable through sex, which means it may hit the Latin American gay-sex-tourist populations soon. From there it is a small hop into the immuno-compromised gay populations in America.

At the moment, there is clear scientific evidence the virus is transmitted by the same type of mosquito that spreads other tropical diseases, such as dengue fever, chikungunya and yellow fever.

But there are also fears the virus may be passed on through sex, following two reports in medical literature.

One states that Zika was found in the semen of a man from Tahiti, the other that the virus was passed from a husband to his wife after intercourse.

Once it hits the gays, it can adapt quickly within AIDS infected, weakened human hosts, and begin to gain the tools it needs to overcome the immune defenses of healthy human hosts more effectively. That would probably begin with a few gay guys complaining of a chronic flu that hung around and wouldn’t go away, and end with bodies beginning to pile up around Miami from the new killer mosquito-borne virus. How it would look on exiting the gay population could be much different from how it entered.

If this had been a virus that was slightly more communicable, and hit when our populations had a significant proportion poorly nourished, and under the stress of the apocalypse, it could easily gain the fuel it needs to become another pandemic killer.

A 1995 study showed that the students who reported “feeling stressed” the most during exam periods also had the highest levels of molecules with immunosuppressant characteristics…

For instance, a group of scientists in Spain used surveys to assess stress in 1,149 people for a year and then measured how many colds occurred within the group.

They found that every dimension of stress they measured was associated with an increased risk for getting the common cold…

While this study’s large sample size and design make it particularly noteworthy, the relationship between colds and stress has been reported since the 1960s.

Minimizing stress, while running for your life from a horde of angry Orcs every day, can be easier said than done. Apocalypse alone will increase the number of pathogens floating around and adapting to humans, as it is increasing each individual’s ability to be infected by those pathogens. Sooner or later something very bad will emerge, and you had better be prepared to isolate yourself, minimize external contact, and follow good hygiene when you have to have contact.

The irony is, we know one thing which has historically made this far worse:

Tracing the devastation of Native Americans in the Southwest U.S. to the missionary efforts of the 1620s, the study suggests that waves of epidemic diseases, violence, and famine which followed wiped out near-entire communities in just decades.

As European settlers arrived, they brought infectious diseases, including smallpox, measles, influenza, bubonic plague, diphtheria, typhus, cholera, scarlet fever, chicken pox, yellow fever, and whooping cough.

We already had cheap mass air travel. So what better time than now to begin shuffling humans from some of the most disease-ridden parts of the world into our clean, first world nations, so when the Apocalypse hits, we cam maximize the mortality.

Zika will likely not be the big one, unless it can jump into the fluids in the nasal cavity like it does into semen. The stress of the Apocalypse is still a long ways off, and people are too well fed anyway. But those variables are going to change, new diseases will emerge suddenly, and Apocalypse will be the catalyst.

When those from more K-times look back on this, it will be fascinating for them to see it first hand through all the various forms of visual media. Without that, I do not think they would fully understand just how poisoned society’s brain had been by the narcotic of free resource availability. I hope r/K has taken firm hold by then, so they can understand the perils of free and easy monetary policy, as well as the dangers of trying to make everyone too happy, all of the time.