# zika



## Plainsman (Jul 30, 2003)

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/Z/ ... 3-08-50-09

New diseases pop up all the time naturally. However, it appears we have some new flue every year that we need to be vaccinated for. On top of that most come from China. Now we have zika. I am retired, but I can't stop thinking like a biologist. That makes me ask myself are we already in a biological warfare with someone and we don't even know it. I would not think this way if not for the children's toys from China having bacteria more than once. I understand that this isn't likely, and not probable, but possible.


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## dakotashooter2 (Oct 31, 2003)

It's mother earth telling us there are too many people on this planet................. oke: Our current population is nothing compared to what it might be if there were no black plague of the middle ages or the many wars since then......


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## blhunter3 (May 5, 2007)

Its an interesting idea. I always worry about ISIS sending sick people to America via smuggled in thru Mexico. With so many anti-vaxxers out there, diseases we thought we didn't have to worry about will show up again. Causing more money to be spent on healthcare, protection, and border security (Go Trump).


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## Plainsman (Jul 30, 2003)

dakotashooter2 said:


> It's mother earth telling us there are too many people on this planet................. oke: Our current population is nothing compared to what it might be if there were no black plague of the middle ages or the many wars since then......


I agree. If Iran gets a nuke they will solve some of that problem. I hear Muslims are carbon units. How many would we have to bury to keep Obama from crying global warming?


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## Chuck Smith (Feb 22, 2005)

I agree it is mother nature finding away to limit the population.

Also think of it like this.... we keep coming up with ways to cure diseases or different vaccinations. We are coming up with different chemicals to "clean" or kill bactieria, there is purell everywhere, etc. This stuff must mutate every year or so and that is why we need to come up with new vaccinations, medicine, etc.. So we as a society with all the vaccinations, new medicines, etc are causing these "bugs", viruses, and bacteria to mutate so they can stay "alive".

Now this might sound like I am against vaccinations but that is not the case. We need them and everyone should have them.


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## north1 (Nov 9, 2010)

Overuse of antibiotics in humans and animals is also a contributing factor. What is particularly scary is that pharmaceutical companies have stopped putting money into new antibiotic research. There is not enough money in the R&D, manufacture and sales apparently. So we overuse what we have without developing new drugs, and are setting ourselves up for a pandemic IMHO. Evolution of viruses and bacteria as well as the species that can exist will work itself out evidentially. We may not like the outcome, however.


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## indsport (Aug 29, 2003)

The best available data shows the zika virus was first isolated in 1947 in Africa. it has since been moving eastward through Asia and into south and central america just recently. I surmise the problem is the human population in the Americas is just susceptible since we have not seen it before. No conspiracy theory here. Just another invasive species.


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## Plainsman (Jul 30, 2003)

indsport said:


> The best available data shows the zika virus was first isolated in 1947 in Africa. it has since been moving eastward through Asia and into south and central america just recently. I surmise the problem is the human population in the Americas is just susceptible since we have not seen it before. No conspiracy theory here. Just another invasive species.


I think that's right, but I think we could also be hit without us even suspecting it. Time to shut the border either way. I do contemplate, not necessarily suspect, the multiple times we have found bacteria and viruses in imported childrens toys. If those bacteria and viruses had the same occurrence rates in other imported items I would think nothing of it. Perhaps the occurrence rate is the same, but they check childrens toys more closely. That makes sense also. I do think we need to be on our toes so to speak. We don't need to have dozens of conspiracy theories, but we do need to destroy complacency. To many Americans drink that poison social cocktail of arrogance and complacency.


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## Habitat Hugger (Jan 19, 2005)

All of the above mentioned things are factors, PLUS modern travel makes spread of all kinds of diseases easy! 
Get infected with XYZ virus in the woods of Myamar today and spread it to all your neighbors in ND 3 days later, long before the disease itself raises its ugly head! Impossible to try to effectively control the travel factor!


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## Plainsman (Jul 30, 2003)

I noticed quarantine was a question in tonights Republican debate. I was wishing one of them would have said what's better quarantine one person for a couple of days or let hundreds maybe thousands die. They were asking g Christie if he had it to do overy would he still quarantine the nurse with symptoms of ebola?


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## Habitat Hugger (Jan 19, 2005)

Quarentine sounds good, but the trouble is, who do you quairentine? Anyone with a disease sure, but it is the potential hundreds if not thousands of carriers that you'd need to lock up till past the incubation period. Even if you had a quick easy, 100 percent accurate test for carriers it would be problematic. 
I worry about some radical group or country getting some smallpox virus and starting to spread it around. We'd all be like the Mandan Indians who.got smallpox from the early fur traders and deliberately infected blankets and died by the thousands. Since immunization for smallpox stopped in this country about 45 years ago, the lions share of our people here and everywhere else in the road are unprotected. The secured remaining sample of smallpox has recently been shown to be unsecured, ( the idiots) so the bad guys wouldn't even need " new" viruses!


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## blhunter3 (May 5, 2007)

They really need to have a quarantine for anyone traveling outside oft he USA where there are known spreadable and deadly disease. A minimum of 45 days. We need as a country to be smarter about who and what we let into the country.


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## indsport (Aug 29, 2003)

How would a quarantine work? Last year, 68 million Americans traveled outside the country (over 20% of the population). Are you suggesting to quarantine all of them upon return to the US?


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## blhunter3 (May 5, 2007)

Yes, if you travel outside the USA, into an area where certain disease are, you need to be quarantined, unless you have vaccines for said diseases.


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## indsport (Aug 29, 2003)

blhunter3 said:


> Yes, if you travel outside the USA, into an area where certain disease are, you need to be quarantined, unless you have vaccines for said diseases.


Interesting, but over half of the 68 million traveled to areas where various diseases exist. Where do you plan to quarantine 30+ million Americans for 45 days? Who pays for it?


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## Habitat Hugger (Jan 19, 2005)

Id say about 90 percent of travelers went to some place where there is some communicable diseases of some kind! A quarantine would be hopelessly expensive even if not absolutely impossible to make work! A non starter! 
Heck, I've donated blood over 67 times in my lifetime. Was scheduled to bleed today. We just came back from a 10 day bus tour through the Sonora and Chihauhau deserts and a train trip through Copper Canyon in Mexico. Mexico's Grand Canyon. Not a single mosquito has ever lived there during any season of the year, nor probably ever will! BUT, now some fool made a rule that if anyone travels to any country with the Zika Virus present, you can't donate blood for a year! Good grief! 
That's the kind of insanity any kind of quarantine for traveler would open! And cost us trillions per year! Only a stupid politician trying to get votes would even come up with such a stupid idea! Not trying to sound condescending, but there are far more effective less expensive ways of dealing with this kind of thing, if one can just get the politicians out of it with some of their nutty medical ideas!


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## blhunter3 (May 5, 2007)

indsport said:


> blhunter3 said:
> 
> 
> > Yes, if you travel outside the USA, into an area where certain disease are, you need to be quarantined, unless you have vaccines for said diseases.
> ...


The traveler. He decided to leave and possibly expose themselves to something dangerous. Who would pay if someone brought a disease to the USA?


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## Habitat Hugger (Jan 19, 2005)

Far better to put taxpayers hard earned money into things that actually work. Like research on mosquito control, research into disease PREVENTION and more knowledge about what causes viral and bacterial mutation, research into immunization (even though our more evangelical leader wannabes badmouth immunizations and vow to reduce or stop it whenever thy can)

Worried about Zika on the unborn? Similar effects that rubella, toxoplasmosis, syphilus, CMV and many other nutritional and iatrogenic factors had, till researchers figured out how to PREVENT them by a whole lot of ways! I realize prevention nowadays is a bad word in some circles, but hopefully politicians of both stripes can stay out of medical problems long enough for us to start up the world ladder of medical research again, assuming they will fund it!?! 
To try to quarantine millions of travelers per year would be a silly as our multi billion dollar just say No anti HIV programs back in the 1990's! Hopefully those days of vote buying programs are over! 
Probably be called a dratted Liberal by posting this!


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## Habitat Hugger (Jan 19, 2005)

Just heard there has been some cases of Zika in three or four of our southern states, and some dengue, malaria, etc. there as always. And it's not even mosquito season yet! Maybe we northerners should quarantine every traveler, trucker, NFL player, visitor of any kind who goes down ther in those awful contaminated states!  
I wonder if the Blood Services will now say anyone who has lived or travelled anywhere in USA cannot donate blood for a year!?! All I can say is that they will be awfully short of blood pretty soon! :roll: Better do up your seat belt and don't shoot your self in the leg when you are hunting.
This whole Zika thing has gotten way out of hand, way too much overreacting! Having said.that, IMO Plainsman is 100% correct to be very aware of bioterrorism, without becoming too afraid and having whole populations fearfully overreacting. When all it takes is a vial or,two of some really bad organisms, how do you prevent that vial for being smuggled across our huge borders? Even our well guarded border crossings? No brilliant answers here other than suggesting sound forward thing preventive research so,we won't be caught totally blindsided WHEN, not IF it happens! IMO we probably can't prevent it from happening but we can try to be as prepared as possible when it does, but only through intelligent though very expensive medical research! Not by useless after the fact political finger pointing by both sides of the aisle!


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## Plainsman (Jul 30, 2003)

> I wonder if the Blood Services will now say anyone who has lived or travelled anywhere in USA cannot donate blood for a year!?!


Ouch, didn't watch the news last night did you HH.  Blood services tells people who have been in the affected areas of South and Central America not to give blood.

You and I agree we can't quarantine a million people. We should restrict travel to those areas and quarantine some that come back. I think much of my idea comes from my reaction to that nurse returning a couple years ago that Christie gave orders for her quarantine. She was very arrogant talking about her rights etc. I guess she thinks it's her right to endanger perhaps thousands of people. I have less than zero respect for that type of arrogance and lack of concern for others. How can a nurse be so thoughtless of others?

If doctors and nurses want to go let them go with the understanding they will be held for observation for two weeks. If they care that much about people in Brazil can't they also care for their fellow citizens? We should help, but we need to be careful. Why did we not treat Ebola patients in the countries where they were rather than bringing them and the disease back home? Do we not have the technology to bring intensive required care to an individual about anywhere on earth? I think the doctors were all thrilled to work on Ebola and deemed their research more important than our lives. Arrogant XXXXXXXX.


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## stash (Jan 20, 2007)

postby indsport » Mon Feb 08, 2016 2:58 pm

How would a quarantine work? Last year, 68 million Americans traveled outside the country (over 20% of the population). Are you suggesting to quarantine all of them upon return to the US?

California seems to be a likely spot


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## Habitat Hugger (Jan 19, 2005)

Wasn't the one that was so arrogant and broke a bunch of rules some lawyer? Seems the nurse WAS quarantined because she was already diagnosed with Zika and ended up in a special isolation ward somewhere, etc. But my memory may be wrong. Wasn't she brought back by private jet, etc. If I remember correctly, that lawyer was told to NOT return to USA but he defiantly caught an airliner, potentially infected the rest of,the plane and everyone in the airports while yelling about his " rights!" Now you want literally millions of people all over the world and the country to,yell,about their " rights?" Sounds like a huge make work project for the law community!  
In any cas, trying to keep track of and isolating literally millions of people, not only travelers, businessmen, military, visitors from other parts of the world, etc. definitely a non starter. Even of we could afford it. You think Samders brainchildren are expensive......who...I think we all spend enough on useless projects come April 15 as it is.
You are right concerning bioterrorism. If we can't catch tons of illegal drugs coming into the country every week to "feed the huge Americqn Noses" then I won't be surprised when we can't stop a few vials of some bad butt virus or bacteria from being smuggled across the border, ultimately making 911 look like child's play! I have no idea how to prevent or fight this, but politicians should leave this up to the military, the multiple border guard agencies we now have, and most importantly the medical Infectious Disase researchers. Spending billions on ineffective quarantines might gain some ignorant politician some votes, but that's about all......


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## indsport (Aug 29, 2003)

As others have noted, quarantine will not work. As for North Dakotans, no more trips to mexico or cruise ships or anywhere south of the border. Lastly, it is not the people who are the problem, it is the mosquitoes who don't stop at border crossings. The potential outbreak of other diseases like dengue fever and malaria in the southern US is more troubling. No more trips to disney world, florida or any gulf coast state including Texas if you really want to avoid the diseases because they are spreading in the US already.


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## Plainsman (Jul 30, 2003)

Reports today say the big Island of Hawaii has a serious outbreak of dengue.


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