Sat Mar 23, 2024 11:33 pm by globalturbo
What’s the Truth About the Zika Virus?
Zika Outbreak Epicenter in Same Area Where GM Mosquitoes Were Released in 2015
by Claire Bernish
The World Health Organization announced it will convene an Emergency Committee under International Health Regulations on Monday, February 1, concerning the Zika virus ‘explosive’ spread throughout the Americas. The virus reportedly has the potential to reach pandemic proportions — possibly around the globe. But understandingwhy this outbreak happened is vital to curbing it. As the WHO statement said:
“A causal relationship between Zika virus infection and birth malformations and neurological syndromes … is strongly suspected. [These links] have rapidly changed the risk profile of Zika, from a mild threat to one of alarming proportions.
“WHO is deeply concerned about this rapidly evolving situation for 4 main reasons: the possible association of infection with birth malformations and neurological syndromes; the potential for further international spread given the wide geographical distribution of the mosquito vector; the lack of population immunity in newly affected areas; and the absence of vaccines, specific treatments, and rapid diagnostic tests […]
“The level of concern is high, as is the level of uncertainty.”
Zika seemingly exploded out of nowhere. Though it was first discovered in 1947, cases only sporadically occurred throughout Africa and southern Asia. In 2007, the first case was reported in the Pacific. In 2013, a smattering of small outbreaks and individual cases were officially documented in Africa and the western Pacific. They also began showing up in the Americas. In May 2015, Brazil reported its first case of Zika virus — and the situation changed dramatically.
Brazil is now considered the epicenter of the Zika outbreak, which coincides with at least 4,000 reports of babies born with microcephaly just since October.
When examining a rapidly expanding potential pandemic, it’s necessary to leave no stone unturned so possible solutions, as well as future prevention, will be as effective as possible. In that vein, there was another significant development in 2015.
Oxitec first unveiled its large-scale, genetically-modified mosquito farm in Brazil in July 2012, with the goal of reducing “the incidence of dengue fever,” as The Disease Daily reported. Dengue fever is spread by the same Aedes mosquitoes which spread the Zika virus — and though they “cannot fly more than 400 meters,” WHO stated, “it may inadvertently be transported by humans from one place to another.” By July 2015, shortly after the GM mosquitoes were first released into the wild in Juazeiro, Brazil, Oxitec proudly announced they had “successfully controlled the Aedes aegypti mosquito that spreads dengue fever, chikungunya and zika virus, by reducing the target population by more than 90%.”
Though that might sound like an astounding success — and, arguably, it was — there is an alarming possibility to consider.
Nature, as one Redditor keenly pointed out, finds a way — and the effort to control dengue, zika, and other viruses, appears to have backfired dramatically.
Juazeiro, Brazil — the location where genetically-modified mosquitoes were first released into the wild.
Map showing the concentration of suspected Zika-related cases of microcephaly in Brazil.
The particular strain of Oxitec GM mosquitoes, OX513A, are genetically altered so the vast majority of their offspring will die before they mature — though Dr. Ricarda Steinbrecher published concerns in a report in September 2010 that a known survival rate of 3-4 percent warranted further study before the release of the GM insects. Her concerns, which were echoed by several other scientists both at the time and since, appear to have been ignored — though they should not have been.
Those genetically-modified mosquitoes work to control wild, potentially disease-carrying populations in a very specific manner. Only the male modified Aedes mosquitoes are supposed to be released into the wild — as they will mate with their unaltered female counterparts. Once offspring are produced, the modified, scientific facet is supposed to ‘kick in’ and kill that larvae before it reaches breeding age — if tetracycline is not present during its development. But there is a problem.
Aedes aegypti mosquito. Image credit: Muhammad Mahdi Karim
According to an unclassified document from the Trade and Agriculture Directorate Committee for Agriculture dated February 2015, Brazil is the third largest in “global antimicrobial consumption in food animal production” — meaning, Brazil is third in the world for its use of tetracycline in its food animals. As a study by the American Society of Agronomy, et. al., explained, “It is estimated that approximately 75% of antibiotics are not absorbed by animals and are excreted in waste.” One of the antibiotics (or antimicrobials) specifically named in that report for its environmental persistence is tetracycline.
In fact, as a confidential internal Oxitec document divulged in 2012, that survival rate could be as high as 15% — even with low levels of tetracycline present. “Even small amounts of tetracycline can repress” the engineered lethality. Indeed, that 15% survival rate was described by Oxitec:
“After a lot of testing and comparing experimental design, it was found that [researchers] had used a cat food to feed the [OX513A] larvae and this cat food contained chicken. It is known that tetracycline is routinely used to prevent infections in chickens, especially in the cheap, mass produced, chicken used for animal food. The chicken is heat-treated before being used, but this does not remove all the tetracycline. This meant that a small amount of tetracycline was being added from the food to the larvae and repressing the [designed] lethal system.”
Even absent this tetracycline, as Steinbrecher explained, a “sub-population” of genetically-modified Aedes mosquitoes could theoretically develop and thrive, in theory, “capable of surviving and flourishing despite any further” releases of ‘pure’ GM mosquitoes which still have that gene intact. She added, “the effectiveness of the system also depends on the [genetically-designed] late onset of the lethality. If the time of onset is altered due to environmental conditions … then a 3-4% [survival rate] represents a much bigger problem…”
As the WHO stated in its press release, “conditions associated with this year’s El Nino weather pattern are expected to increase mosquito populations greatly in many areas.”
Incidentally, President Obama called for a massive research effort to develop a vaccine for the Zika virus, as one does not currently exist. Brazil has now called in 200,000 soldiers to somehow help combat the virus’ spread. Aedes mosquitoes have reportedly been spotted in the U.K. But perhaps the most ironic — or not — proposition was proffered on January 19, by the MIT Technology Review:
“An outbreak in the Western Hemisphere could give countries including the United States new reasons to try wiping out mosquitoes with genetic engineering.
“Yesterday, the Brazilian city of Piracicaba said it would expand the use of genetically modified mosquitoes …
“The GM mosquitoes were created by Oxitec, a British company recently purchased by Intrexon, a synthetic biology company based in Maryland. The company said it has released bugs in parts of Brazil and the Cayman Islands to battle dengue fever.”
From The Anti-Media @ http://theantimedia.org/zika-outbreak-epicenter-in-same-area-where-gm-mosquitoes-were-released-in-2015/
Zika Freakout: The Hoax and the Covert Op Continue
By Jon Rappoport
If you want to hide anything on this planet, twist it into a (fake) story about a virus. You’re home free.
This is my second article on the Zika-virus scam (article archive here). I’ve been to these rodeos before: HIV, West Nile, Swine Flu, SARS, Ebola. In each case, a virus is blamed for illness and death that actually arises from other causes.
The Zika virus, now being blamed for the birth of babies with very small heads and impaired brains, has been around for a long time—late 1940s, early 1950s—and suddenly, without warning or reason, after inducing, at best, mild illness, it’s producing horrendous damage? This is called a clue. A clue that scientific liars are lying. Furthermore, many of the women who are giving birth to deformed babies test negative for the presence of the Zika Virus.
So, what is causing babies to be born with very small heads and brain damage? While researching my first book in 1987-8, AIDS INC., I concluded: don’t assume there is only one cause for illness. That can be very misleading. Various factors can combine to produce disease and death.
For example, in the case of this “Zika” phenomenon:
One: Pesticide use in Brazil:
Brazil, the center of the “Zika” crisis, uses more pesticides than any nation in the world. Some of these are banned in 22 other countries. And as for babies born with smaller heads, here is a study from Environmental Health Perspectives (July 1, 2011), “Urinary Biomarkers of Prenatal Atrazine Exposure…”:
“The presence versus absence of quantifiable levels of [the pesticide] atrazine or a specific atrazine metabolite was associated with fetal growth restriction… and small head circumference… Head circumference was also inversely associated with the presence of the herbicide metolachlor.” (emphasis added)
Atrazine and metolachlor are both used in Brazil.
Two: The TdaP vaccine:
This is a case of suspicious correlation. A study posted in the US National Library of Medicine, “Pertussis in young infants: a severe vaccine-preventable disease,” spells it out:
“…in late 2014, the [Brazilian] Ministry of Health announced the introduction of the Tdap vaccine for all pregnant women in Brazil.”
Obviously, pregnant women are the target group; they are giving birth to babies with smaller heads and brain damage, and the recommendation for them to take the vaccine was recent; 2014.
Barbara Loe Fisher, of the National Vaccine Information Center, writes:“Drug companies did not test the safety and effectiveness of giving influenza or Tdap vaccine to pregnant women before the vaccines were licensed in the U.S and there is almost no data on inflammatory or other biological responses to these vaccines that could affect pregnancy and birth outcomes…The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) lists influenza and Tdap vaccines as either Pregnancy Category B or C biologicals which means that adequate testing has not been done in humans to demonstrate safety for pregnant women and it is not known whether the vaccines can cause fetal harm or affect reproduction capacity. The manufacturers of influenza and Tdap vaccines state that human toxicity and fertility studies are inadequate and warn that the influenza and Tdap vaccines should ‘be given to a pregnant woman only if clearly needed.’” (emphasis added)
Three: Genetically engineered mosquitoes that have already been released in Brazil to “combat” dengue fever—a project implemented by Oxitec, a company supplied with grant money from Bill Gates:
A town in Brazil has reported continuing elevated levels of dengue fever since the GE (genetically engineered) mosquitoes have been introduced to combat that disease.
The scientific hypothesis is: the trickster GE bugs (males) will impregnate natural females, but no actual next generation will occur beyond the larval stage. However, this plummeting birth rate in mosquitoes is the only “proof” that the grand experiment is safe. No long-term health studies have been done—this is a mirror of what happened when GMO crops were introduced: no science, just bland assurances.
Needless to say, without extensive lab testing, there is no way to tell what toxic elements these GE mosquitoes may actually be harboring, in addition to what researchers claim. That’s a major red flag.
Wherever these GE mosquitoes have been introduced, or are about to be introduced, the human populations have not been consulted for their permission. It’s all being done by government and corporate edict. It’s human experimentation on a grand scale.
Four: Pesticide manufacturing in Brazil:
Reuters, May 19, 2015, “Brazil prosecutors seek $16 million from pesticide makers”:
“Brazilian prosecutors said on Monday they would seek at least 50 million reais ($16.6 million) from multinational pesticide manufacturers for alleged safety violations at a collection facility for used pesticide containers… Those manufacturers, prosecutors said, include the Brazilian units of BASF, DuPont, Monsanto, Nufarm, Syngenta, Adama, FMC and Nortox… The charges come as scientists, regulators, public health officials and consumers increasingly complain that Brazil’s ascent as an agricultural powerhouse has led to unsafe and excessive use of pesticides. Reuters reported in April that at least four foreign manufacturers sell pesticides in Brazil that they are not allowed to sell in their home markets.” (emphasis added)
How convenient for these corporate giants to evade blame for horrific birth effects—out of nowhere a virus is touted as the cause.
Five: Severe and endemic malnutrition, lack of basic sanitation, and grinding poverty:
These are major factors in all illness and death, in the areas where they are prevalent (e.g., major parts of Brazil). Suppression of the immune system is the result, and anything that then comes down the pipeline, germs or manmade toxic substances, become catastrophic to the body.
Six: anti-mosquito sprays:
The Guardian, January 26, 2015, “Brazil is ‘badly losing’ the battle against Zika virus, says health minister”:
Sprays are now being given out to 400,000 pregnant women in Brazil. Naturally, the sprays are toxic. What better way to multiply the attack on mothers and their unborn children? For example, widely used organophosphates in sprays can be highly disruptive to the nervous system.
Some or all of these six elements I’ve listed, in combination, form a sustained attack on human life.
And as I keep stressing, the virus becomes the formidable cover story that conceals the truth.
And don’t forget the Rio Olympic Games, coming up in August. There are multiple scenarios which could play out in front of a global television audience. Will Zika be pushed as some sort of worldwide pandemic? Will a Zika vaccine be magically “discovered” and rushed into production, in time to show (as an advertisement) lines of people dutifully trudging up to receive shots?
Every fake epidemic is, in part, designed to create fear and induce blind compliance to medical and government dictates. The germ is positioned as the “tiny terrorist” in this stage play.
In my first book, AIDS INC.(1988), I indicated that covert medical ops are the most dangerous, because they appear to be politically neutral, they fly under no flag, and they claim to forward only humanitarian aims. But in fact, modern “Rockefeller Medicine” is built as a vast partner in the Globalization of the planet. Its vision is a universal in-utero-to-cradle-to-grave system for the human race: every human walks a bleak lifelong path of disease-diagnosis after diagnosis, receiving toxic drugs and vaccines at every turn, which weaken his body and mind, and make him unable to consider what is happening outside his perimeter of suffering or resist political totalitarianism.
Medical freedom means: the freedom to refuse medical care, and it’s based on knowledge of destructive effects. This freedom must win, against any odds.
“Official science” is a contradiction in terms, and a grand illusion.
Thanks to reporters and researchers Jim Stone, Kathy Ford, the fullerton informer, Jim West, Martin Maloney, and Claus Jensen, who have moved this story forward and exposed the scam.
(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, Power Outside The Matrix, click here.) The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.
Via Activist Post @ http://www.activistpost.com/2016/01/zika-freakout-the-hoax-and-the-covert-op-continue.html
Zika and the New Climate Dystopia — Human Hothouse as Disease Multiplier
As of today, authorities in Brazil, Colombia, Jamaica, El Salvador and Venezuela were urging women to avoid getting pregnant… It is unthinkable. Or rather, it is something out of a science fiction story, the absolute core of a dystopian future.
— Bill McKibben in a recent statement on global warming and the now pandemic Zika virus.
There are a plethora of diseases out there. Diseases we don’t know about. Diseases locked away in far-off, rarefied corners of the world. Diseases that operate in small niche jungle environments. Diseases that live in only cave systems or within a single species. Diseases that were locked away millions of years ago in the now-thawing ice. Diseases that, if given a vector — or a means to travel outside of their little rarefied organic or environmental niches — can wreak untold harm across wide spans of the globe.
(Countries with reported active Zika transmission. Until recently, Zika flare-ups had been isolated to Central Africa and French Polynesia. Now the virus is a global pandemic with World Health Organizations authorities concerned infections could top 4 million. Image source: The CDC.)
Such was the case with the once humble Zika virus. Discovered in 1947 in Central Africa, the disease first only existed in monkeys. The virus took 7 years to make the leap into humans in 1954. But, at first, symptoms were only mild and for most of the history of this disease it was considered to be a less harmful form of the Dengue Fever Virus — to which it is closely related. The virus, at first, appeared only to result in fever, headaches, rash and back pain — if any symptoms appeared at all. It would take much longer for the devastating and horrific after-effects of an, at first, seemingly harmless virus to begin to show up.
Until 2007, when the virus began to grow to its current pandemic levels, it was mostly isolated to Central Africa and a region of French Polynesia in the Pacific. Both areas are among the warmest and wettest in the world. Both featuring very large and persistent populations of the kinds of mosquitoes most suited for the transmission of this, now widely-feared, illness.
An Issue of The Expanding Range of Disease Vectors
In epidemiology parlance, a vector is a disease carrier. In the case of Zika, the primary carrier is the mosquito. In total, seven species of the Aedes variety of mosquitoes are known to carry Zika.
Under normal climate conditions, the ranges of these disease-bearing insects would tend to remain rather stable. But that’s not the case in the current world. Since 1880, the world has been warming and the extents of disease vector mosquitoes has been expanding. Under the current regime of 1 C temperature increase over the past 136 years, Aedes aegypti — one of the chief transporters of the Zika virus — has expanded its range on out of the tropics and into increasingly higher Latitudes.
(Global Aedes aegypti distribution in 2015 — red indicates highest frequency, blue indicates zero frequency. Aedes aegypti is a disease vector for viruses like Dengue and Zika. As the globe has warmed, their range has been expanding into ever higher Latitudes. Image source: Aedes aegypti Distribution.)
But not only is the global extent of these disease carriers expanding — so is their persistence in the regions into which they’d previously occupied. Regions that may have seen only one or two weeks out of the year in which female, Zika infected, mosquitoes were active may now experience a month or two of exposure. And regions in which the mosquito was active for only a few months may now see active, disease-bearing populations for half of the year or more.
It is this increasing duration and expansiveness of disease vector exposure that is one of the most dangerous epidemiological impacts of climate change. Not only does climate change enable the movement of diseases out of previous isolation in remote reservoirs. It also enables an ever-broadening range of transport as the areas in which disease-carrying species are adapted to live dramatically expands both in terms of space and in terms of time of exposure.
It’s as if we decided to load up trillions of mosquitoes with what amounts to biological live rounds and then gave them the ability to unload that deadly ammunition over broader and broader expanses of the globe. That’s basically what you get when you warm the world. An expansion and global invasion of hitherto unknown illnesses spread throughout the world by vectors like the mosquito.
Zika’s Viral Explosion Occurs During Hottest Year on Record
Returning to our tale of the Zika virus’s expansion during 2007 through 2016, we find that Zika during this time-frame had leapt out of its traditional 20th Century range and expanded coincident with the spread of Aedes variety mosquitoes along the warming and moistening climate bands. In 2007, the first leap outside of Central Africa and French Polynesia occurred in Yap — a part of the Federated States of Micronesia.
The epidemic range then again expanded through 2014 into Easter Island, broader Polynesia, the Cook Islands, and New Caledonia. The geographic expansion of this illness along the Pacific Island chains indicates that Zika’s increased virility likely sparked from the French Polynesian strain and not from the strain in Africa.
Then, in 2015, coordinate with the hottest global temperatures on record, Zika leapt out of its Pacific Island basin environmental confines and spread into Brazil and the Caribbean. The virus subsequently spread through a broad section of Central and South America. As of yesterday, travel warnings of possible exposure to the Zika virus included this list of 22 countries:
Barbados, Bolivia, Brazil, Cape Verde, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Martinique, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, Saint Martin, Samoa, Suriname, and Venezuela.
By today, the World Health Organization was issuing warnings that as many as 4 million people may end up being infected before the most recent outbreak is finished.
The New Climate Dystopia — We are Now Telling Women Not to Have Children
Like many viral fevers, Zika attacks the nervous systems of those it infects. And though initial onset symptoms may seem mild, with up to 80 percent of those infected showing no symptoms at all, the virus may cause severe longer-term damage to both the unborn and to vulnerable individuals. For as infection rates for the virus increased what were suspected to be related instances of a kind of temporary paralysis called Guillian Barre Syndrome and a terrifying shrinking of the heads of unborn infants called microcephaly also spiked.
(A spike in microcephaly rates — a tragic shrinking of the heads of unborn children as a result of viral damage to the nervous system — among infants in regions of Zika virus outbreak has raised global concerns about the virus’s ongoing impact. Most particularly, women in an expanding number of countries are now being asked to refrain from having children for months or even years. Image source: The CDC.)
From BBC today:
The virus, which has no symptoms 80% of the time, is blamed for causing stunted brain development in babies. About 3,500 cases of microcephaly have been identified in Brazil so far. And medical staff in Recife, a state capital in north-east Brazil, say they are struggling to cope with at least 240 cases of microcephaly in children.The city’s Health Secretary, Jailson Correia, a specialist in tropical diseases, told the BBC he and others needed “to fight very hard”.
These are profoundly terrible impacts. Ones that were not initially expected from a virus that at first seemed so innocuous. And it’s this threat of Zika-spawned microcephaly among infants that is spurring everything from travel warnings to the hitherto unprecedented measure of some countries requesting that their human populations take the extreme step of avoiding pregnancy.
As of Monday authorities in Brazil, Colombia, Jamaica, El Salvador and Venezuela were urging women not to get pregnant. The pregnancy moratorium — which is voluntary — ranges in duration from a few months to two years in the case of El Salvador. And the reason for the requested moratorium is sadly practical. Authorities in these countries are now forced to choose between asking women to avoid pregnancy or having their healthcare systems overwhelmed by infants suffering from microcephaly.
With a vaccine likely 10-12 years away for Zika, with 4 million cases expected in the current outbreak, and with the range of Aedes type mosquitoes who carry the virus continuing to expand on the back of a human-forced warming of the globe, we are sadly just at the beginning of this particular tragedy. An event that, as Bill McKibben noted in The Guardian earlier this week, has leapt fully into the realm of dystopia.
A Profound Dislocation For Humankind
Microcephaly among infants is both tragic and terrifying. Its impact strikes at the very heart of what it means to be a human being. If a virus, driven to far-flung regions by the heating of the world through fossil fuel burning, is able to cripple our children while still in the womb, our sense of security is shattered as we witness heart-breaking brutality. It’s the kind of thing so terrible it couldn’t come from the human imagination. Which is why, when we witness it, we experience a strange sense of dislocation. A surreal sense that all is not right. Like the moment after the car hit the telephone pole, the moment you’re still flying through the air flung free of the vehicle. The moment just before the inevitable impact with the pavement.
But the impact, sadly, does come. Not only are we turning many of the species of this world into climate orphans. Into creatures without a safe space in which to live and thrive, we are also doing it to ourselves. For the children of Zika are climate orphans too. The tragic victims of an expanding range of environmental conditions that are hazardous to human life. And Zika is but one example of the deadly diseases, extreme weather, sea level rise, glacial collapse, ocean death, and crop disruption we are now forcing upon the human habitat. A habitat we are rendering less livable for ourselves and pretty much everything else.
That’s what terminal dislocation means — to be forceably ejected. To be suddenly introduced into a very hostile environment in which survival, and in this case reproduction, is suddenly a crap shoot. For human beings, this is a profound dislocation. One that makes the world we’re living in now seem all-too-alien. For we’re not living in the world we are used to. And the one we’re making is both terrible and tragic. And, in all honesty, we desperately need to stop the damage before some other very big, or terrible, or essential thing breaks free.
Links:
The Zika Virus Foreshadows Our Climate Dystopian Future
About Climate Change and Vector-Borne Diseases
The CDC
The Zika Virus
Mosquito Borne Zika Virus Spreading Explosively
Aedes Aegypti
UCAR: Climate Change and Vector-Borne Disease
Brazilian City Sees Spike in Microcephaly Cases
Facts about Microcephaly
2 C Warming Increases Mosquito Population by 50 Percent
From Robert Scribbler @ http://robertscribbler.com/2016/01/28/zika-and-the-new-climate-dystopia-human-hothouse-as-disease-multiplier/
Thanks to: http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com
