I have never heard of a mosquito borne disease being transmitted from

[malaise]

human to human during sex. Something is wrong about this Zika virus story,

[Brickbat]

1. It's a blood-borne pathogen; not a surprise.

[malaise]

5. I know of no one who caught Malaria, Dengue or ChikV

from another human. All are transmitted by mosquitoes - hence mosquito-borne.

[AngryAmish]

9. Malaria is a parasite that needs the mosquito gut to reproduce.

I am not familiar with the other two.

[Recursion]

26. Dengue and Chikungunya also only transmit through mosquitos

I never, ever, ever want dengue again...

[Faux pas]

2. Me either

but Mother Nature is as mad as hell, ya know?

[malaise]

3. And she should be

We've fugged up her planet

[tecelote]

8. Yes.

[Faux pas]

38. Yep

mankind has been a pretty crappy custodian. for sure

[uppityperson]

4. I'm surprised more pathogens aren't transmitted by mosquitoes

[In_The_Wind]

17. I've always wondered about that.

[NightWatcher]

6. I heard it was transmitted sexually and wondered who was screwing the mosquitos

Ba dum tss

[AngryAmish]

10. Leave the Irish guys out of this.

[malaise]

11. ROFL

[Lochloosa]

15. Georgia farmers.

[tecelote]

7. Let's see how fast they come out with an antidote to sell us.

[TBF]

31. Now you're thinking

like a capitalist. When a story takes off like this I also wonder what it is they are distracting from ...

[StopTheNeoCons]

12. Google genetically modified mosquitoes

released in Brazil, then you'll get the picture

[malaise]

13. I've been following that

I'm reading everything on this one because we have one case here

[snooper2]

35. I think it traces back to Maduro's scientists...

[nadinbrzezinski]

40. Explain this to me

what is the virus named after? The Zika forest, in Africa

When was it first identified?

1947

Please, the mosquitoes were released to control Dengue, and the Zika is suspected to have made the leap due to... the damn world cup.

[Odin2005]

22. Dumb conspiracy theory that belongs in Creative Speculation.

Thinking GM skeeters have anything to do with this is ignorant scaremongering.

The virus spread to South America from the Pacific islands, or so I heard on NPR.

[Yo_Mama]

24. Oh, this is quite unfounded.

The local mosquitoes bit someone that was infected, and thus the joy began. They think it is most probable that it was a sports event.

People travel; disease travels.

[Orrex]

29. MONSANTO!

[font color=white]XXX[/font]
[font color=white]XXXXXX[/font]
[font color=white]XXXXXXXXX[/font]
[font color=white]XXXXXXXXXXXX[/font]

[CentralMass]

14. There is a Meriden CT based company working on a vaccine.

http://www.myrecordjournal.com/southington/southingtonnews/8369431-129/meriden-company-set-to-make-zika-virus-vaccine.html

[malaise]

19. That's good news

I'm sure the Cubans are working on a vaccine as well. They are usually ahead of most folks in our hemisphere

[Warpy]

16. It's certainly unusual because I've never heard of this, either

although there are certainly diseases out there that are transmitted by means other than sex, like Ebola. Usually those diseases don't live in mosquito guts, which is why HIV has been less of a human catastrophe than it might have been.

Still, this is not a panic situation unless you are a woman who is pregnant or who plans to become so. Most people who are infected don't develop illness and early information suggests that people who have had it are immune to it. Unfortunately, the mild nature of the illness even when it's severe means we don't have a lot of data on this virus, even though it was first identified in 1947.

[malaise]

18. Yes women who are pregnant or thinking of becoming pregnant need to pay attention

In reality it is way milder than Dengue, ChikV or Malaria. You're right re HIV.

[lapislzi]

34. Ummm...there is an elephant in this room

Why women?

In the heavily Catholic countries of Latin America, women do not have much control over family planning, other than refraining from engaging in sex. Why the responsibility on women alone?

Why shouldn't males shoulder the responsibility for using condoms or refraining from procreative sexual activity? Why not free condoms for everyone?

Unless something drastic happens within the Church, this is going to be a humanitarian disaster.

[Bluenorthwest]

41. AIDS is the #1 killer in Africa, this month more than 100,000 will die from it in Africa, and again

next month. This is a 'better' rate of death than previous years if you can imagine that. The Church very aggressively forbids the use of condoms and opposes sexual and health education very strongly. Some Bishops tell their flocks that condoms actually spread or cause HIV.
An example country within Africa such as Uganda which is 44% Catholic has 7.2% rate of HIV infection. Just 13% of Ugandans report having used a condom even once. Uganda has one tenth the population of the US, but more than 10 times the deaths from AIDS, Uganda has over 60,000 deaths a year from HIV/AIDS. Of course those deceased adults are often parents, meaning Uganda has over 650,000 AIDS orphans of minor age. Some others have one living parent, often that parent is also sick.

The Church's attitude toward all of this can best be seen in Pope Francis' verbiage when he came to the US Congress. He said he was there to speak of 'concerns about threats to the family' but he did not mean the 60,000 dead, nor the 650,000 orphans in Uganda or the uncounted millions of Africans dead or orphaned by AIDS. Not at all, he is not concerned with that, what he sees at a threat to the family is people who want to get married and have a family.

That is the actual reality of Francis, his Church and how their dogmas relate to human health issues. Many people on DU eagerly claim that Francis' anti condom teachings don't really matter at all because Americans are smart and don't listen to everything the Pope or his Bishops tell them to do. They say it does not matter, because Americans know better. That's what they will say again, for this virus.

[SummerSnow]

20. Florida is now on a state of emergency from Zika .Saw on news today

[malaise]

21. Nine cases in four counties

I think that's a health emergency not a state of emergency

http://wgntv.com/2016/02/03/florida-governor-declares-zika-emergency/

[Yo_Mama]

25. Well, the object is to prevent the virus from passing into the local skeeter pop

and thus creating a much more severe problem. So, yeah, it's an emergency.

[SoCalDem]

28. Perhaps they will reconsider their anti-abortion stuff

when millions of young women start having babies who will require bazillions of dollars in state aid..for decades

Micro-cephaly is surely detectable in-utero at an early stage..

[Yo_Mama]

23. Many systemic viruses are transmitted by sex. Consider the hepatitis strains.

I don't see that it is that surprising.

This is a mild illness; if it were not for the potential for severe birth defects, no one would be worrying about sexual transmission.

The reason there is all the hoopla about sexual transmission is that the public health authorities are trying to figure out who needs to be screened, and to provide that information to doctors ASAP.

It also changes the information that doctors will give to their patients, the questions they will ask, and the warnings they will give.

[malaise]

32. Wow I never knew hepatitis was mosquito borne n/t

[Yo_Mama]

37. I am trying to say that the mosquito transmission doesn't have any relevance here.

Hepatitis would only be occasionally transmitted by mosquitos, (in circs like fly-borne transmission) because hepatitis is destroyed in the mosquito gut. It is certainly theoretically possible, but such transmissions would be few and not of concern to public health.

I don't understand why you believe that human sexual viral transmission of a virus has anything to do with whether it is adapted to survive in an insect vector?

What's relevant to human person-to-person transmission is whether it goes systemic and can be found in the lymph system, and also how acute the virus is. If the illness is acute, by the time it has gone systemic few individuals are going to be up for sex, and until it has spread through the body, it wouldn't be present in seminal fluid.

It may be that zika is neuroinvasive now, somewhat like West Nile virus. If it were not for the sudden linking of fetal injury to this virus, we wouldn't know or care that it could be spread sexually. Zika was considered benign. They knew it was spreading rapidly in 2013 and 2014, but no one was excited about it.

The first known human-to-human sexual transmission of Zika in the US was I think in 2009. In that case, the man who returned and transmitted it to his wife reported swollen/aching joints. So it was systemic.

[malaise]

39. Yellow Fever, Malaria, Dengue and

Chikungunya are only transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. We were told that ZickV was mosquito borne and clearly if someone was infected during sex, it is not only mosquito borne.

[Zorra]

27. I suspect you never heard of a genetically modified mosquito

until a few years ago either.

Bioperversity.

Oryx and Crake
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oryx_and_Crake

[Orrex]

30. While they're in naked proximity, the mosquito can zap both of them. Simple!

And then the mosquito probably uploads video of the whole thing, the filthy bugger.

[malaise]

33. ROFL

[1939]

36. Multiple means of transmission are not uncommon

While the main cause of bubonic plague is getting bitten by an infected flea, you can also catch the plague by airborne transmission from a sick person or by skinning rodents infected with the plague.

[Marrah_G]

42. Any virus has the potential to eventually cross the species line completely.

Zika is a blood-borne pathogen (the blood transmitted from person to person via the mosquito). So it's not out of the realm of possibility that it could be passed through bodily fluids eventually. Hopefully there would be a limited time the person is contagious and it won't become too wide spread.