Why Were There Fewer Microcephaly Cases from Zika Last Year?

[Rollo]

They all moved to the Midwest and voted for Trump?

Why Were There Fewer Microcephaly Cases from Zika Last Year?

Of the many mysteries that remain about the Zika virus and its attack on the Americas, perhaps the most puzzling one relates to the bizarre distribution of babies born with Zika-induced microcephaly.

After so many such births were recorded in Northeastern Brazil in the last quarter of 2015, the country — and other places where the virus fanned out to from Brazil — braced themselves for a similar tsunami in 2016. But it didn’t materialize — at least not to the same degree.

A new and intriguing letter to the New England Journal of Medicine offers a theory for how to explain the missing microcephaly cases, the babies that were predicted to be born in Northeastern Brazil after Zika’s second wave of infection in the early part of 2016.

The authors suggest the region’s first wave of Zika may have been its only wave of Zika to date. Something that caused similar illness, likely the chikungunya virus, was probably responsible for the high level of fever and rash illnesses Brazil recorded in 2016, they theorized.

[womanofthehills]

1. there are other causes of microcephaly too - like pesticides

I used to work in a children's hospital in NM yrs ago and we would occasional have microcephaly babies. Mostly the mothers were Mexican women who worked in the fields.

[Warpy]

2. Those were ruled out in Brazil

I have to wonder if there wasn't synergy with another virus no one suspected or tested for. All the women who had microcephalic infants got sick with Zika, which is often a very mild illness people don't even know they've been exposed to. It was discovered in the Zika Valley in Africa, but was considered a mild childhood disease and never particularly studied.