Zika Gets Worse

More problems from the new virus:

The top U.S. health officials leading the response to the mosquito-borne Zika virus sweeping through the hemisphere said its growing links to a broad array of birth defects and neurological disorders are worse than they originally suspected, increasing the risk for devastating harm during pregnancy.

Until Zika, “there has never been a mosquito-borne virus that could cause serious birth defects on such a large scale,” Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Thursday during a conference call with reporters…

The two experts cited a study last week in the New England Journal of Medicine that examined the pregnancies of a group of Brazilian women who tested positive for Zika infection. Ultrasounds for about 29 percent of them showed fetal anomalies with “grave outcomes,” which likely means many more complications that won’t show up until after birth, Fauci said.

They now think it may cause other long term neurological problems, akin to Multiple Sclerosis as well.

Whenever a virus finds its way into a new host, there will be a period of adaptation. It will begin infecting the new hosts with specific docking proteins it has targeting specific cell surface receptors on its original host cells, it will have certain genes to overcome tumor suppressor systems designed to prevent takeover of its original host system DNA machinery, and its protein shell may have some facet of its design intended to try and stall immune recognition by the original host immune system in some way. These traits will all be designed to function optimally in the reservoir species/population it originally developed in. When it hits the new host population, there will often be some aspect of its original system that is a poor fit in the new host, since the new host will probably have slightly different cell surface proteins to dock on, slightly different DNA machinery controls to corrupt, and slightly different immune responses. The virus will likely adapt all of those systems to the new host population somewhat.

This means when a new pathogen arises in a population, it may behave differently at first – and as time goes on, and it adapts its rough edges to the new host population it may behave even more differently.

The point being, all of these articles say things like, “Now we find out it is scarier than we thought it was at first.” They speak of “Zika” as if it is some set-in-stone entity, and the Zika now is the exact same Zika we saw two months ago. It is not. Already we are seeing things out of this pathogen which we have not seen when it broke out before. I’ll bet before it is done, we will find it may have a few more tricks up its sleeve that we had no idea it was capable of.

The thing which I am waiting to see is what effect it will have as it moves through the promiscuous population, selectively aborting their offspring and sometimes neurologically kneecapping the infected adults as well.

If it adapts to more effectively attack the neurological system, develops the ability to persist longer in the host after the acute phase has ended, and develops the ability to spread through sexual contact as easily as a Herpes virus, this could be a real rabbit killer in the long run.

Imagine if Herpes were to have long term effects similar to Polio, and every Herpes-infectee were rendered like Stephen Hawking. Promiscuity and long-form DRD4 receptor genes would quickly be culled from the population.

There is no way to tell if it could ever get that far, but that is the point. The truth is, at this point there is no predicting where this could go. All we know is it is fighting as we speak to transmit more effectively, take over cells faster and more powerfully, and it seems to be making headway.

Add in a weakened, nutritionally deficient, stressed-out host population, as we will have at the collapse, and the sky is the limit.

Still can’t tell if this ends in a bloody orgy of violence, or a death-dealing pandemic. All we know for sure is all the options look bad for the rabbits.

This is K-selection coming, after all.