Plagues
S


Question

Dozens hospitalized in Las Vegas with mystery illness


KMBZ Kansas City
Sat, 30 Nov 2013 10:19 UTC
Norovirus
© Lightspring / Shutterstock
Dozens of children and adults who are in Las Vegas for the National Youth Football Championships have been hospitalized after coming down with a mystery illness.

The mystery disease shows flu-like symptoms, including vomiting. ABC News Chief Health and Medical Editor Dr. Richard Besser says "norovirus" may be the cause.

"Norovirus is the largest cause of outbreaks of gastroenteritis stomach flu in the United States-- 20 million cases a year," Dr. Besser said. "This is the peak season."

"It's one of the nastiest germs around, 'cause it spreads from person to person through contact. It spreads through food, and also spreads from contaminated surfaces, so it's one of the most contagious ones we see," Besser said.
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Health

Measles outbreak hits Queensland

Brisbane Times
Tony Moore
Fri, 08 Nov 2013 11:57 UTC
Measles vaccine
© John Woudstra
Thirty-five people have now contracted measles in Queensland in one of the worst outbreaks of the disease in Queensland's recent history.

This year 30 of the 35 measles cases have emerged since August, with eight cases now confirmed at Woodford Correctional Centre.

Last year only four Queenslanders contracted measles.

Questions are being asked if the measles outbreak is linked to overcrowding in Queensland prisons.

The Department of Justice and Attorney General on Wednesday evening confirmed there were now 6432 prisoners in Queensland jails on November 6.

It is the first time in Queensland history prisoner numbers have been more than 6000.The extra 832 prisoners include hundreds "doubling up" in cells at several prisons in the Ipswich area.

Comment: Diseases usually flourish in conditions of overcrowding and poor nutrition. Coincidentally (or not), a measles fear-mongering campaign is also underway in the UK.

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Syringe

Second major measles outbreak in four months hits UK - Doctors tell parents: 'Lobotomise your children with MMR vaccine now!'

Jo Wiley
Daily Express, UK
Sat, 09 Nov 2013 12:15 UTC
Image
© GETTYMeasles can be fatal.
Thousands of children are in ­danger of catching measles because their parents still refuse to let them have proper vaccinations.

Health chiefs have warned Britain is on the brink of a second major ­epidemic just four months after the previous outbreak which claimed one life and more than 1,200 victims.

The virus is highly contagious. Experts say one child with measles sitting in a classroom for just an hour will pass it on to at least 70 per cent of other pupils who are not vaccinated.

Cases have once again soared in Swansea, the area which was hit earlier this year.


Comment: Measles can indeed be a fatal disease. This is usually the case in infants with already compromised immune systems due to different factors such as poor nutrition, hygiene etc.

On the other hand, the risks associated with the administration of measles vaccines are not to be taken lightly.

A quick search of the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS)2 reveals nearly 5,100 vaccine-related deaths were reported in the U.S., for example, between 1990 and August 2012. The vast majority of deaths - nearly 60 percent - occurred in children under the age of three. Just over 360 of the reported vaccine-associated deaths in the US have been related to any of the measles-containing vaccines.


Comment: Coincidentally (or not) there is also another measles fearmongering campaign underway in Australia at this time.

It's strange that UK doctors today blame measles outbreaks on people refusing to lobotomise their children with the MMR vaccine... and yet just two years ago, outbreaks were also happening despite record numbers of children being vaccinated.

See also:

US Media Blackout: 'MMR Vaccine Caused Autism' Rules Italian Court

Girls aged 15 and 11 forced to have MMR jabs by High Court judge after parents disagree over vaccine

Dr Wakefield demands retraction from BMJ after documents prove innocence from allegations of vaccine autism data fraud

Vaccine Dangers: Interview with researcher Dr. Andrew Wakefield

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Health

Dengue cases reach 5,757 in Philippines' Davao City; floods, poor sanitation blamed

Judy Quiros
Inquirer Mindanao
Tue, 05 Nov 2013 12:00 UTC
Image
© Unknown
Davao City - Floods and dirty surroundings were among the causes for the surge in dengue cases here during the first 10 months of the year, a Department of Health official in Southern Mindanao said Monday.Mary Divine Hilario, chief of the DOH's health education and information division, said the number of cases in this city was staggering.

Out of the 9,593 dengue cases posted region-wide as of October 30, Davao City accounted for 5,757 cases, Hilario said. Compostela Valley registered 971 dengue cases; Davao del Norte, 731; Davao Oriental, 1,113; and Davao del Sur, 1,004, she added. Thirty of the 60 deaths in Southern Mindanao were also from this city."These are mainly from the Buhangin District," Hilario said.
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Bomb

Study: Bat-to-human leap likely for SARS-like virus

Gautam Naik
The Wallstreet Journal
Wed, 30 Oct 2013 19:07 UTC
Chinese horseshoe bat
© Dr. Libiao Zhang, Guangdong Entomological Institute/South China Institute of Endangered AnimalsA Chinese horseshoe bat. SARS-like coronaviruses were found in a colony of these animals in Yunnan province in southwest China.
A decade after SARS swept through the world and killed more than 750 people, scientists have made a troubling discovery: A very close cousin of the SARS virus lives in bats and it can likely jump directly to people.

The findings create new fears about the emergence of diseases like SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome. The virus spread quickly from person to person in 2003 and had a mortality rate of at least 9%. Worries of a severe pandemic led the World Health Organization to issue an emergency travel advisory.

While bats have previously been fingered as a host for SARS, it was believed that the virus jumped from there to weasel-like mammals known as civets, where it went through genetic changes before infecting people. Operating on that belief, China cracked down on markets where bats, civets and other wildlife were sold for food.
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Health

SARS-like viruses can jump from bats to humans

Mariette Le Roux
Agence France-Presse
Wed, 30 Oct 2013 00:00 UTC
Image
© Getty Images

Paris - Scientists said Wednesday they had found evidence that SARS-like coronaviruses can jump straight from a type of Chinese bat to humans without the need for an intermediary animal "host".

The find has "enormous implications" for public health control, with potentially pandemic viruses present, right now, in bats in China that could cause another outbreak, said the authors of the study published in the journal Nature.

"Even worse, we don't know how lethal these viruses would be if such an outbreak erupted," co-author Peter Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance, a New York-based research group, said in a statement.
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Bizarro Earth

The disease that killed a million piglets in China has spread to the US, and no one knows why

Heather Timmons
Quartz
Wed, 23 Oct 2013 21:03 UTC
Dead Pig
© AP Photo/Eugene HoshikoOne of China's floating pigs.
America's pork industry has been gripped by an outbreak of porcine diarrhea since mid-May, the first appearance of the condition in North America. US farmers have reported 768 cases of the disease, known as porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV), through the first week of October, which implies that many more thousands of animals could be affected.

Although the disease is not transferable to humans, it has been devastating for the US pork industry. It causes severe "watery diarrhea and vomiting in nursing pigs," according to information from the US's National Pork Board. Almost all the piglets who get the disease die because of it, and farmers are reportedly filling "wheelbarrows of dead piglets."

Now researchers at the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine at Virginia Tech say they've traced the virus back to eastern China's Anhui province. Anhui is one of China's major pig-farming areas, home to companies like the fast-growing Anhui Antai Agricultural Industry Group, which slaughtered 500,000 pigs last year.

Pinpointing the origin of the virus isn't going to provide much reassurance to US farmers. Years after it spread in China, it still hasn't been controlled.
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Arrow Down

Australia bushfires: Largest blaze 'was started by the military'

Adam Withnall
The Independent, UK
Wed, 23 Oct 2013 13:58 UTC
Bush Fire
© The Independent, UKRural Fire Service volunteers retreat after unsuccessfully try to save a house from a bushfire at Dragan north of Lithgow, Australia.
The largest of the wildfires wreaking havoc across New South Wales was started by the Australian military, investigators have found.

One man has died and more than 200 homes destroyed in the country's most populous state since Thursday as a result of more than 100 different fires.

Investigators were called after reports that the biggest of them, near the city of Lithgow to the west of Sydney, started at around the same time as the army was performing training exercises.

Today, the Rural Fire Service issued a statement which said the blaze "was started as a result of live ordnance exercises" at an army range.

Though it has not caused any deaths or injuries, as the single biggest fire it has burned through 47,000 hectares (180 square miles) of land and destroyed a number of homes. It was only downgraded from the highest emergency category this morning.

The Australian Defence Department said it would not comment further on the fire service investigators' findings, but it had previously confirmed it was engaged in exercises at the time and has been carrying out its own inquiries.
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Alarm Clock

Moose die-off: 100,000 ticks on just one moose, is Lyme disease culprit?


Examiner
Tue, 15 Oct 2013 12:32 UTC
ticks, moose
© Wikimedia Commons
Moose die-off, this is a term that is not going away anytime soon as moose are disappearing at an alarming rate across North America. This moose-die off is seen in several northern states where ticks are prevalent and according to the N.Y. Times on Oct. 14, moose have been found with over 100,000 ticks on them.

According to the Northern Wild website, moose are testing positive for Lyme disease.While climate change is considered a variable in the moose-die off, it is also a factor in the amount of ticks you will find during any given year. Ticks thrive when the weather is warmer.

The winter tick is one of several types of ticks found on animals in the wild, and according to the website, Moose in Minnesota, this state is one of the states seeing the moose die-off, the moose population are visibly suffering from the ticks.

This is seen with moose that are missing massive spots of fur, as they have tried to remove the ticks from their bodies by rubbing up against trees. While a few ticks sucking the blood of a moose doesn't lead to much blood loss, but a hundred thousand ticks sucking blood can leave the moose with substantial blood loss.

The winter tick, found on moose, take their final blood meal in the spring, a time when the moose are at their weakest from a winter of very little food. According to Lymedisease.org, a moose calf can lose their entire blood supply from ticks, killing them.

Lymedisease.org reports researchers blaming climate change for the population explosion in ticks. This is because ticks live longer when it is warmer and "reproduce in greater numbers if there's less snow on the ground by spring."
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Bug

'Alien bugs' discovered in atmosphere


Sky News, Australia
Thu, 19 Sep 2013 17:07 UTC
Nitzschia
© Milton Wainwright et al.This image shows a diatom frustule, possibly a Nitzschia species, captured on a stud from a height of 25 km in the stratosphere. Image
British scientists believe they have found small bugs from outer space in the Earth's atmosphere.

Tiny organisms were discovered by University of Sheffield experts on a research balloon they had sent 27 kilometres into the atmosphere during last month's Perseids meteor shower. The microscopic bugs were detected when the balloon landed back on the ground in Wakefield, West Yorkshire in England.

But the scientists insist the samples could not have been carried from the Earth's surface into the stratosphere - the second layer of our atmosphere, which stretches up to 50 kilometres from the ground. Strict tests were taken to avoid any contamination, they said.

Professor Milton Wainwright, who led the team, said: 'Most people will assume that these biological particles must have just drifted up to the stratosphere from Earth, but it is generally accepted that a particle of the size found cannot be lifted from Earth to heights of, for example, 27 kilometres.

'The only known exception is by a violent volcanic eruption, none of which occurred within three years of the sampling trip.' He went on: 'We can only conclude that the biological entities originated from space.

'Our conclusion then is that life is continually arriving to Earth from space, life is not restricted to this planet and it almost certainly did not originate here.' The findings are to be published in the Journal of Cosmology.

'If life does continue to arrive from space then we have to completely change our view of biology and evolution,' Prof Wainwright added. 'New textbooks will have to be written.'

He said further 'crucial' tests on the samples are planned and researchers will carry out further experiments during a meteor shower in October.
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