Posted on 06/22/2018 7:52:02 AM PDT by BenLurkin
Just in time for the hot, humid, bug-bite-riddled summer, here's another disease to worry about:
Researchers from the University of Florida have confirmed a new mosquito-borne virus has made the jump from infecting only animals to infecting humans in a study published earlier this month.
The first known case of the Keystone virus has been identified in a 16-year-old boy after a year of tests and analysis, Glenn Morris, director of the university's Emerging Pathogens Institute, told NPR member station WUSF.
The teen was infected while attending band camp in north Florida last summer, and suffered from a fever and severe rash. Doctors could not figure out what was ailing him, and tested for Zika and various other pathogens, but hit a series of dead ends.
"We couldn't identify what was going on," Morris told the station. "We screened this with all the standard approaches and it literally took a year and a half of sort of dogged laboratory work to figure out what this virus was."
As the station reported, the virus was initially discovered in the northwestern of Tampa in 1964 and "has been found in animal populations along coastal regions stretching from Texas to the Chesapeake Bay."
But until now, there hasn't been a way to test humans for the Keystone virus, spread by Aedes atlanticus, a common Florida mosquito and a cousin to the insect that carries Zika.
Diseases Spread By Ticks, Mosquitoes, Fleas Have Surged Since 2004, CDC Says
Scientists reported the virus is part of a group that can cause encephalitis — inflammation of the brain — in humans and other species. But it is unclear if Keystone does.
Morris suspects a lot of other people in the Southeast may be carrying the virus.
"There is a reasonable chance that there is a number of cases out there," he told Tampa's Fox 13.
Post to me or FReep mail to be on/off the Bring Out Your Dead ping list.
The purpose of the “Bring Out Your Dead” ping list (formerly the “Ebola” ping list) is very early warning of emerging pandemics, as such it has a high false positive rate.
So far the false positive rate is 100%.
At some point we may well have a high mortality pandemic, and likely as not the “Bring Out Your Dead” threads will miss the beginning entirely.
*sigh* Such is life, and death...
Go Gators!
Bill Gates mosquito meeting - remeber that?
And one time. At band camp.
Oh boy. Just what we need. Another dose of doom and gloom to make us all wish there were some insects God had left on the drawing board.
Allow me to spray DDT again and we can make those numbers plummet even faster than they rose.
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