The costs of these handicaps could be devastating:
Brazilian researchers followed 83 infants born since August 2015 to mothers believed to have been infected with Zika. The study included families from eight states, mostly in Brazil’s northeast, where birth defects have soared. Because solid testing for Zika was not yet in place last fall, however, only 10 of the 83 mothers were confirmed as Zika-exposed through laboratory testing—a major caveat that applies to most current Zika-outcome studies. That reality leaves open the possibility that the birth defects could be due to other environmental or genetic factors. Still, about 70 percent of the mothers in this study remember experiencing a rash—a known Zika symptom—during their pregnancies, and the researchers eliminated other leading causes of the birth defects including certain toxic exposures and viral infections from cytomegalovirus.
The Brazilian team found that about 10 percent of the 83 babies had knee or elbow joint limitations so severe that the infants cannot fully extend their arms or legs. Another 43 percent of the babies had less-pronounced joint problems that impeded finger or toe motion, or the babies had other limb abnormalities like clubfeet. And half of the babies had seizures and abnormal eye exams.
The real cost of this to the reproductive fitness of rabbits will not be the defects. It is not clear yet if a Zika infection ever fully clears, and it appears it is more easily sexually transmitted than previously thought.
As a result, as Zika burns through the promiscuous population it may end up infecting all of the promiscuous, leaving them with latent infections. That would mean that all of their subsequent offspring would have a high probability of being handicapped at birth.
Liberals already have a diminished desire to raise children, and exhibit a propensity to abort any offspring which appear to be disabled in any way. The real effect this might have is leading an entire segment of liberalism to self-sterilize, rather than risking giving birth to a handicapped baby.
This could end up selecting out both narcissism and promiscuity quite storngly, and dealing a real blow to the biological underpinnings of the liberal psychology.