East County mosquito abatement to battle spread of West Nile virus
Members of the Contra Costa Mosquito & Vector Control District, Patrick Vicencio, left, checks the calibration on the machinery as Joe Hummel checks the wind speed along Fulton Shipyard Road on Wednesday, Aug. 15, 2012 in Antioch, Calif. A crew with two trucks equipped with fogging machines were in the area to spray; however, due to consistent winds over 10 miles per hour, the spraying was postponed. Fogging with the trucks is due to take place in the area soon because of the high number of mosquitoes and the detection of West Nile virus in the area. (Susan Tripp Pollard/Staff)
With West Nile virus outbreaks at record levels across the country and warning signs popping up in the Bay Area, some counties are stepping up efforts to control virus-carrying mosquitoes.
In Contra Costa, some East County cities were fogged with pesticide in recent weeks to combat a swell in the number of adult mosquitoes found carrying the virus. Officials are treating water in catch basins under sidewalk storm drains, which collect water as residents water lawns or wash cars and create a fertile breeding ground for swarms.
“Year-to-date, we’re seeing four to five times as many mosquitoes carrying the virus as we have in any recent years,” said Deborah Bass, spokeswoman for the Contra Costa Mosquito and Vector Control District.
The agency tracks local outbreaks and has fogged or planned fogging in parts of Byron, Brentwood and Antioch with pyrethrin, a chemical derived from chrysanthemum flowers and deemed in low doses to pose minimal risks to human health and the environment.
Nationwide, 693 human cases have been reported this year, the highest annual number reported through the second week of August since West Nile virus was first detected in the United States in 1999, according to the Center for Disease Control.
Outbreaks have been worst by far in Texas, where the mayor of Dallas declared a state of emergency Wednesday and called for an aerial spraying of the entire city.
In California, the numbers are highest
in Sacramento and Kern counties. Statewide, 23 human cases of the virus have been reported so far in 2012, and none of them have been in the Bay Area. But local experts say that’s to be expected. Seasonally, humans in the Bay Area are most at risk to contract the virus in August and September, and discovery of a person catching it can be delayed as much as a month after that.The weather this year has likely played a big role in the increased number of cases, said the Contra Costa district’s lab director, Steve Schutz. A mild winter allowed more mosquitoes than usual to survive, and a dry, hot summer has residents watering their plants and keeping water in their pools more often, creating prime breeding grounds for the insects, he added.
Most of the Bay Area’s risk has historically been seen in Contra Costa, where three to nine human cases are typically reported each year, and where two people died of the virus in 2006. Risks are growing elsewhere, however. The Santa Clara district found its first sample of mosquitoes carrying the virus this year in Los Altos on Aug. 1.
Samples of the virus have also been found in birds and mosquitoes in San Mateo, Solano and Sonoma counties.
The virus is normally not fatal, but is still to be taken seriously, Schutz said.
“There is a minority of cases where it can cause extremely severe symptoms, including permanent paralysis and other disabilities,” Schutz said. “It’s not something to be taken lightly. Generally, it’s most dangerous for older people, or those with weaker immune systems.”
One or two mosquito bites are probably not dangerous, as even in swarms where the virus is present, few individual mosquitoes are usually carrying it, Schutz said.
Aug. 16, 2012 — Effective immediately, all U.S. baby boomers should get a one-time blood test for the hepatitis C virus, the CDC says.
One in 30 baby boomers born between 1945 through 1965 has been infected with hepatitis C, and most have no clue. Hepatitis C can go undetected without symptoms, but slowly causes serious liver diseases, including liver cancer. It is also the leading cause of liver transplants in the U.S.
“Three-quarters of all hepatitis C infections and three-quarters of hepatitis C deaths occur in baby boomers,” CDC Director Thomas R. Frieden, MD, MPH, said today during a conference call with reporters. “Baby boomers are five times more likely to have Hepatitis C than other adult Americans.”
The new recommendations strengthen existing guidelines that state that all people at high risk for hepatitis C should be tested. “While we continue to recommend testing for high-risk individuals, baby boomers are now added to the list,” Frieden says. This move could help identify 800,000 more Americans with hepatitis C.
West Nile virus is spreading faster than it has in years, and the pace of the mosquito-borne disease is getting worse, health officials report.
States are reporting more cases than usual, says Marc Fischer, a specialist in mosquito-borne diseases with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Fort Collins, Colo. “There’s been a lot of mosquito activity in most states” this year, Fischer says.
Texas is getting the worst of it.
Seventeen people have died of West Nile virus this summer in Texas. That’s out of 465 cases of the illness statewide. “We’re on track to have the worst year ever,” says Christine Mann, spokeswoman for the Department of State Health Services in Austin.
Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings on Wednesday declared the city’s recent West Nile virus outbreak to be a state of emergency and authorized the first aerial spraying of insecticide in the city in more than 45 years. Sprayings will begin Thursday evening.
Sixteen people have died of West Nile virus this summer in Texas. That’s out of 381 cases of the illness. “We’re on track to have the worst year ever,” says Christine Mann, spokeswoman for the Department of State Health Services in Austin.
Dallas and other North Texas cities have agreed to the rare use of aerial spraying from planes to combat the nation’s worst outbreak of West Nile virus so far this year. Dallas last had aerial spraying in 1966, when more than a dozen deaths were blamed on encephalitis.
Nationwide there have been at least 693 cases and 28 deaths, according to the CDC and state numbers released Tuesday. That’s up from 390 cases and eight deaths last week.
A mild winter and ample spring rains allowed the mosquito population to build up early. Heat and scant rainfall are creating stagnant water pools, which make great breeding grounds, says Michael Merchant, an entomologist at the Texas AgriLife Extension Service in Dallas.
Thirty-two states have had cases of West Nile, the CDC says.
Louisiana has had six deaths in 68 cases, Oklahoma one death in 55 cases, and Mississippi one death in 59 cases. In Arizona, there’s been one death in seven cases.
California had 23 cases, one of which was fatal, and South Dakota had one fatality in 37 cases.
Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings on Wednesday declared the city’s recent West Nile virus outbreak to be a state of emergency and authorized the first aerial spraying of insecticide in the city in nearly 40 years.
Dallas and other North Texas cities have agreed to the rare use of aerial spraying from planes to combat the nation’s worst outbreak of West Nile virus so far this year. Dallas last had aerial spraying in 1966, when more than a dozen deaths were blamed on encephalitis.
More than 200 cases of West Nile and 10 deaths linked to the virus have been reported across Dallas County, where officials authorized aerial spraying last week. State health department statistics show 381 cases and 16 deaths related to West Nile statewide.
Scientists in Germany and Africa on Wednesday said they had found two variants of genes that help to explain why some lucky individuals do not develop severe malaria.
The two variants were netted in a comparison of 1,325 people in the West African state of Ghana who had fallen ill with severefalciparum malaria and of 828 counterparts who were otherwise healthy.
One variant is found in a gene called ATP2B4, they reported in the journal Nature. The gene’s function is to help the passage of calcium through the membrane of red blood cells, which are targeted for infection by the malaria parasite.
The other variant is located near a gene called MARVELD3, controlling a protein on the lining ofblood vessels. The gene could play a part in reducing damage that occurs when colonised blood cells stick to tiny blood vessels, according to the research.
The results of the study, led by Christian Timmann of the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine in Hamburg, Germany, were compared with a similar survey among children in Gambia.
A fast-growing tool in basic research, genomic comparison entails sifting through the human genetic code and looking for tiny changes that signify why some people are likelier to fall sick from disease and others less so or maybe not at all.
The goals are to provide diagnostic tools, helping to identify people who are at greater risk, and develop new drugs inspired by the pathways which confer immunity.
Previous work has found that people with the blood group O have a protection against falciparum malaria, the severest form of the disease.
People with sickle-cell disorder, in which blood cells with an abnormal sickle shape can trigger anaemia, have also been found to be resistant to malaria.
In 2010, malaria infected about 216 million people and claimed an estimated 655,000 lives, particularly in Africa and among small children, according to the UN’s World Health Organisation (WHO). Other experts say the toll is at least double that estimate.
Colorado hit with first anthrax disease outbreak in 31 years
August 16, 2012 – COLORADO – Two more cows have died from anthrax exposure in northeast Colorado, expanding the first outbreak of the disease in the state in 31 years to three ranches. Last week, 60 cows died on a Logan County ranch, where anthrax was positively identified in one animal. Officials say it’s likely they all died of the disease. The Colorado Department of Agriculture said Wednesday the additional cows were on two separate adjacent ranches. Both died from the disease. State Veterinarian Keith Roehr said all three ranches involved share fences and the new cases likely are the result of cows grazing in an area with soil containing anthrax spores. Neighboring herds have been vaccinated. No cows left the affected ranches so none entered the food supply and no human infection has been reported, Roehr said. Anthrax kills livestock within hours of infection and can decimate herds if animals are not quickly treated, he said. Anthrax is caused by a bacterium that forms in spores and can lie dormant in soil for decades until ingested. Humans get anthrax most commonly through direct contact with infected animals usually when spores get into a cut or abrasion on the skin. Without treatment it can be fatal, but early treatment with antibiotics is very effective. The personnel on the three affected ranches are working with their doctors and public health officials and are being given antibiotics as a precaution, Roehr said.
New deadly, highly contagious Ebola family virus found in snakes
August 15, 2012 – NATURE – The cause of a fatal illness that affects captive snakes has been identified, a study has shown. The condition – called Inclusion Body Disease (IBD) – affects constrictor snakes including boas and pythons. There is no treatment and symptoms include “stargazing” – a fixed upward stare – as well as breathing problems and general muscular paralysis. Snakes tie themselves in knots they can’t get out of and they die. It was long suspected that the disease was caused by a virus, but until recently its identity remained elusive. The research is published in the open-access journal mBio. In amongst some of the snake DNA was foreign genetic material – nucleic acid – that closely resembled that present in viruses belonging to a family called arenaviruses. This family includes Lassa Fever virus, which is associated with haemorrhagic fever in humans. However, there is no evidence that the newly discovered virus can pass from snakes to humans. The genetic analyses also revealed that one of the genes in the newly isolated virus group was more like that present in viruses belonging to a totally different family of haemorrhagic viruses called filoviruses. Ebolavirus belongs to this family. In this breakthrough study, researchers from the University of California San Francisco analysed samples obtained from snakes diagnosed with IBD, using sensitive DNA sequencing techniques. Professor Jim Wellehan from the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine, who authored the paramyxovirus study, said: “The epidemiology of the paramyxoviruses is different [to IBD]. These are hot agents that snakes die quickly from, and it works fast. You have a room full of dead snakes in a week.” It is uncertain how the highly contagious IBD virus is spread. One possibility is that transmission occurs through inhalation – either directly from another infected snake or indirectly from contaminated bedding or following handling. Alternatively, mites – often found in colonies suffering from an IBD outbreak – might be implicated. So far the disease seems to be restricted to captive snakes but some scientists are worried that the release of captive bred or rehabilitated snakes might unwittingly unleash this devastating virus into the wild.
Europe braces as mosquitos venture north due to climate change
Behind air-tight doors in a lab in a southern French city, scientists in protective coveralls wage war against a fingernail-sized danger.
Lurking in net cages is their foe: the Asian tiger mosquito, capable of spreading dengue fever and other tropical diseases in temperate Europe.
First spotted in Albania in 1979, the black-and-white striped invader has gained a foothold on Europe’s Mediterranean rim and is advancing north and west, according to captors’ reports.
Colonies are established in 20 European countries, in moderate climes as far north as Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands.
“The risk of disease is very low but it is growing,” entomologist Jean-Baptiste Ferre told AFP at France’s leading mosquito-control institute.
“The more mosquitoes there are, the higher the risk.”
The Asian tiger mosquito — Latin name Aedes albopictus — can spread many kinds of viruses.
They include dengue, which can result in a deadly haemorrhagic fever, as well as West Nile virus, St. Louis encephalitis and a painful disease of the joints called chikungunya.
A. albopictus transmits the virus by taking blood from a sick person and handing on the pathogen the next time it takes a meal.
The worry is that the insect will spread disease in Europe by biting infected people arriving from tropical countries where the viruses are endemic.
In 2007, the tiger mosquito caused a home-grown outbreak in Italy of chikungunya, and in 2010, 10 locally-transmitted cases of dengue occurred in Croatia.
That same year, two cases of each disease surfaced in southern France, prompting the alarm bells to ring loudly.
From Montpellier, Ferre and his colleagues at the Entente Interdepartementale pour la Demoustication en Mediterranee (EID) monitor the spread with some 1,500 traps dotted around France, luring mosquitoes to lay their eggs.
These provide insights into how A. albopictus is adapting to European life, with its varied habitats and cooler climate.
Ferre points to maps that begin in 2004, when a tiny red dot represented the first settling of albopictus in France around Menton, near the Italian border.
Year by year, the dot grows into red tentacles that probe north and west.
The insect has a flight range of only about 200 metres (yards), so it hitch-hikes a ride in cars, trucks and traded goods.
With climate change, “further expansion is probable,” the journal Vector-Borne and Zoonotic Diseases warned this year.
That assessment is supported by scientists at Britain’s University of Liverpool who point to warming trends in the Balkans and northwestern Europe.
Asian tiger mosquitoes are aggressive and robust, able to breed prolifically in their short, 10-day lives.
Feeding during the day, they can bite several people in quick succession, and their offspring can hatch even after long periods without water.
Worse, the insect is a stealthy urban dweller.
It does not need large, open bodies of water to reproduce, for it can lay its eggs in small, water-holding receptacles such as flowerpots, toys and blocked gutters, and this makes it much harder to fight.
Since May this year, surveillance in France has thrown up 267 suspected dengue and chikungunya cases among people who had arrived from abroad, said EID project coordinator Gregory Lambert.
The institute sometimes launches pre-emptive strikes if this can prevent the mosquitoes from spreading disease locally.
It orders out insecticide trucks that spray streets in a 200-metre (650-foot) radius around the area where a case is notified.
The operations take place before dawn, while most people are still in bed.
“The imperative is to kill the mosquitoes before they transmit the disease,” said Lambert.
The war is unrelenting.
“It is impossible to kill them all,” said Anna-Bella Failloux of France’s Pasteur Institute, one of the world’s top centres for infectious disease.
“Even if there is no mosquito around you, you still have eggs somewhere, waiting for the next rain.”
Court forces chemo on eight-year-old Minnesota girl despite family’s desire to use alternative medicine
Where once it was rare for courts of law to invade the privacy and purview of parents when it came to raising their children, in today’s America the wall between parental rights and the state’s Leviathan is increasingly being dismantled by activists disguised as public servants.
Karen Parisian of Minnetonka, Minn., told a local television station during a recent interview that her cancer-stricken eight-year-old daughter, Sarah, was having a lot of difficulties following a single cycle of chemotherapy.
Besides the standard hair loss, Sarah lost weight and suffered from nausea and a sore throat.
“The week that we were to start chemo she was sleeping 22 hours a day,” her mother told WCCO-TV.
Because of the chemo’s negative effects, Sarah’s family wanted her to forego further treatments. Instead, they wanted to use alternative medicine techniques because a) they know alternative medicine; and b) it was their choice to make.
Or so they thought.
Use our plan – Or lose your daughter
“She is very sick from the standard treatment so we wanted to explore and option of modifying the treatment so that it would be more appropriate for Sarah,” said Karen Parisian.
The Parisians feared the side-effects of the treatments, but doctors felt like every day Sarah did not get chemo was a risk, so they notified child protective services, who then went to court.
“So in order to modify her treatment, we had to go in front of a judge and fortunately we seem to be working this out,” she said.
But the order to appear in court came with an onerous caveat: if the Parisians failed to show up and work with the court on a treatment plan, they could lose custody of Sarah.
“As parents, you don’t have the right to choose the kind of treatment you want your child to have,” a flabbergasted and exasperated Karen Parisian said.
Dr. Kevin Conners, Sarah’s cancer specialist, told the TV station he believed there was a way to make both sides happy.
“Do what’s best for the patient,” he said. “Let’s take her case as an individual case and not try to fit her into what is standard protocol and look at her as an individual. What she can tolerate what other therapies added to a traditional approach is going to be best for her.”
So, after the court allowed the Parisians to be parents, Sarah is now at home and is being treated under the court-ordered “plan” that still includes chemotherapy.
“It’s going to include some chemotherapy, but it’s going to include a dose that is not going to send her tipping over the edge,” she said.
Making a bad situation worse?
WCCO-TV reported that the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office said it respects the right of parents to make decisions for their children. But officials there said they “had strong evidence that the Parisians weren’t doing what was best for Sarah,” according to the report.
It wasn’t clear what that “strong evidence” consisted of, but what is clear is that the Parisians’ parental rights were not very well-respected.
It also wasn’t clear whether Dr. Connors, the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office or the court advised the Parisians of the results from recent studies showing that chemotherapy can undermine itself by causing a rogue response in healthy cells, thereby developing a resistance to treatment.
A study by Seattle researchers led by Peter Nelson and colleagues at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, published in Nature Medicine, found that 90 percent of patients with solid cancers, such as breast, prostate, lung and colon, that spread – metastatic disease – develop resistance to chemotherapy.
Translated, that means that “chemotherapy could actually help some cancers survive, grow faster, and resist treatment,” The Week magazine reported.
If that happens to Sarah, will Connors, the attorney’s office and the court step up and take responsibility for circumventing parental rights?
A broken pipeline is forcing millions of gallons of raw sewage in New York to bypass a treatment facility and instead be sent right into the Hudson River — and just in time for the Big Apple’s first ever Ironman triathlon!
For the fourth time in only two years, a pipe that carries an average of 3 million gallons of sewage has broken in Tarrytown, NY, forcing county workers to send the waste not to treatment facilities in the Empire State but instead right into a river in nearby Sleepy Hollow.
From there the sewage is draining directly into the Hudson River, where only 25 miles downstream the tributary’s waves wash by downtown Manhattan.
New York City is expected to host its first annual Ironman competition tomorrow,a contest that consists of a 26.2 mile run, a 112 mile bike ride and a 2.4 mile swim.
As it stands right now though, participants will be truly put through the test, to say the least — authorities say they will dilute the contaminated water with doses of chlorine, but otherwise the triathletes will be trying to swim through millions of gallons of, well, shit.
Workers in Tarry Town are scheduled to replace the damaged 20-foot-long, 30-inch-wide segment of the pipe causing the problem on Friday, but meanwhile millions of gallons are being continuously pumped into the Hudson.
Although a round of chlorine is being added to the runoff to attempt to disinfect the river, WABC reports that the contest’s organizers will arrange to have the river tested before the competition is underway.
“Obviously the safety of the athlete has to come first,” organizer Shane Facteau tells the network.
Some athletes, though, seem to think it’s no big deal.
“I’m from the Jersey shore,” Michael Halfacre adds to WABC, “so I’ve been swimming in New York’s garbage my whole life.”
In the meantime, officials have advised against swimming in select parts of the river north of New York.
At the start of the new school year, the Scottish government will begin “giving” the Gardasil vaccine to teenage girls.
BBC: The vaccine helps protect thousands of Scottish women, the government said.
According to the BBC, the Scottish government says it will begin implementing the vaccinations to “protect thousands of Scottish women” during the new school term.
“The HPV vaccine…will continue to be offered to girls in their second year of secondary school, when they are about 13 years old,” the article states.
Reportedly, the vaccine is replacing the Cervarix vaccine, which only offers “protection” against two strains of HPV, while Gardasil offers “protection” from four.
The article goes on to say that following a “procurement exercise” by the UK’s respective Departments of Health, the controversial HPV vaccine Gardasil will go into use across the country.
In the past, British doctors have even admitted to only saying publicly what helps the vaccine be well received by the public. “We, as consultants in sexual health, have been told to say nothing publicly that would damage the current (HPV) vaccine campaign,” they stated in a piece run by the BBC.
Here are some facts:
- According to the FDA’s own website, the vaccine was only tested on approximately 21,000 girls and women before pushed on millions of children, teens, and adults around the world.
- The FDA’s site never mentions that any studies were ever conducted on men, however the CDC recommends the vaccine for “all teen boys and men through age 21.”
- The CDC’s own website admits that “In 90% of cases, the body’s immune system clears HPV naturally within two years.“
- The drug was “fast-tracked” to the market, meaning the FDA granted approval in 6 months, bypassing the usual four year waiting period.
- The drug is hailed as a cervical cancer prevention drug, when in actuality “No one has determined whether or not persistent [HPV] infections actually cause cancer without other risk factors being present.”
This is a brazen effort that governments and Merck are hoping will go unchallenged. However, if we put up a fight, we may just get them to back off.
In 2007, Rick Perry tried to force the same vaccine on most girls in Texas entering the sixth grade, however, the Texas Legislature overruled his executive order. His ties to Merck were discovered to run deep when his former Chief of Staff was hired as lobbyist for the pharmaceutical giant in 2009.
As they continue to push Merck’s vaccine as a solution – to a problem that has a 90% chance to resolve itself within two years and 70% within one year – they increasingly reveal their true profit and eugenics driven agendas.
One has to wonder exactly who these governments think they’re fooling.
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August 15, 2012 – NATURE – The cause of a fatal illness that affects captive snakes has been identified, a study has shown. The condition – called Inclusion Body Disease (IBD) – affects constrictor snakes including boas and pythons. There is no treatment and symptoms include “stargazing” – a fixed upward stare – as well as breathing problems and general muscular paralysis. Snakes tie themselves in knots they can’t get out of and they die. It was long suspected that the disease was caused by a virus, but until recently its identity remained elusive. The research is published in the open-access journal mBio. In amongst some of the snake DNA was foreign genetic material – nucleic acid – that closely resembled that present in viruses belonging to a family called arenaviruses. This family includes Lassa Fever virus, which is associated with haemorrhagic fever in humans. However, there is no evidence that the newly discovered virus can pass from snakes to humans. The genetic analyses also revealed that one of the genes in the newly isolated virus group was more like that present in viruses belonging to a totally different family of haemorrhagic viruses called filoviruses. Ebolavirus belongs to this family. In this breakthrough study, researchers from the University of California San Francisco analysed samples obtained from snakes diagnosed with IBD, using sensitive DNA sequencing techniques. Professor Jim Wellehan from the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine, who authored the paramyxovirus study, said: “The epidemiology of the paramyxoviruses is different [to IBD]. These are hot agents that snakes die quickly from, and it works fast. You have a room full of dead snakes in a week.” It is uncertain how the highly contagious IBD virus is spread. One possibility is that transmission occurs through inhalation – either directly from another infected snake or indirectly from contaminated bedding or following handling. Alternatively, mites – often found in colonies suffering from an IBD outbreak – might be implicated. So far the disease seems to be restricted to captive snakes but some scientists are worried that the release of captive bred or rehabilitated snakes might unwittingly unleash this devastating virus into the wild.
BBC: The vaccine helps protect thousands of Scottish women, the government said.
