west nile zika

=<h1 class="widgetheadline h1" style="margin: 10px 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; cursor: pointer; overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a class="widgetheadline-text custom-post-headline" href="https://www.ecowatch.com/mosquitoes-disease-climate-2594289911.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; outline: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; margin: 0px; line-height: 31px;">Mosquito-Borne 'Disease Danger Days' Rise Across U.S.</a></h1><div class="body js-expandable clearfix js-listicle-body js-update-url" data-elid="2594289911" data-authors="Climate Nexus" data-headline="Mosquito-Borne 'Disease Danger Days' Rise Across U.S." style="margin: 10px; line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="body-description"><div class="widget__brief">The number of days each year when mosquito-borne illnesses are more likely to spread is rising as average temperatures soar across the U.S., according to a new analysis.Climate Central examined 244 cities across the country for its <a href="https://climatenexus.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=d1f5797e59060083034310930&id=43bb29a8f5&e=bc036cc506" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; overflow-wrap: break-word;">analysis</a>, finding that 94 percent are experiencing more "disease danger days"—days with temperatures between 61 degrees and 93 degrees F, optimal conditions for transmission of diseases like West Nile and other vector-borne diseases—than they were in 1970ew</div></div></div><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/invasive-ticks-disease-cdc-2621977743.html">https://www.ecowatch.com/invasive-ticks-disease-cdc-2621977743.html</a><a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://ecowatch.us7.list-manage.com/track/click?u=214ab5fbb3f6015d74ffab4ec&id=3485c0d2bb&e=c2e8fdabfa" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">New Tick Species Spreads in U.S. for First Time in 50 Years</a><a href="https://www.alternet.org/environment/lyme-disease-spreading-because-climate-change">https://www.alternet.org/environment/lyme-disease-spreading-because-climate-change</a><a href="http://www.risingupwithsonali.com/lyme-the-first-epidemic-of-climate-change/">http://www.risingupwithsonali.com/lyme-the-first-epidemic-of-climate-change/</a><a href="https://www.alternet.org/environment/climate-change-creating-global-pest-problem-will-spread-disease-and-threaten-food" class="external text" title="https://www.alternet.org/environment/climate-change-creating-global-pest-problem-will-spread-disease-and-threaten-food" rel="nofollow" style="margin: 0px; background: url("");" lock_icon.gif="lock_icon.gif" right="right" center="center" no-repeat="no-repeat" rgb="rgb" padding-right="padding-right" px="px" font-family="font-family" georgia="Georgia" lucida="Lucida" grande="Grande" verdana="Verdana" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size">Climate Change Is Creating a Global Pest Problem That Will Spread Disease and Threaten Food Production</a> The future could hold less coffee and more Zika. 11/17 see <a href="https://ic.ucsc.edu/college8core/c8wiki/index.php/Chemicals" class="external text" title="https://ic.ucsc.edu/college8core/c8wiki/index.php/Chemicals" rel="nofollow" style="margin: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; background: url("");" lock_icon.gif="lock_icon.gif" right="right" center="center" no-repeat="no-repeat" rgb="rgb" padding-right="padding-right" px="px" font-family="font-family" georgia="Georgia" lucida="Lucida" grande="Grande" verdana="Verdana" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size">Chemicals</a>.<a href="https://www.alternet.org/environment/5-scary-diseases-climate-change-may-awaken-melting-permafrost">https://www.alternet.org/environment/5-scary-diseases-climate-change-may-awaken-melting-permafrost</a>If you are lacking in thoughts to keep you up at night, may I submit for your consideration the melting of the Arctic permafrost. The frozen subterranean soil in the Earth's polar regions accounts for about 25 percent of the Northern Hemisphere. Climate change, that great consequence of human arrogance, industry and tendency toward destruction, is causing that ice to melt at rates previously unseen. Studies show the <a href="https://www.npr.org/2014/12/18/371438087/arctic-is-warming-twice-as-fast-as-world-average" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Arctic is warming twice as fast</a> as the rest of the world, and a 2017 report from the Arctic Council suggests <a href="https://www.vox.com/2017/9/6/16062174/permafrost-melting" style="text-decoration-line: none;">20 percent of the uppermost layers of permafrost</a> may melt by 2040. As the ice begins to thaw, each eroding layer will expose new layers, along with microbes that have been frozen away for thousands of years. That vast collection of bacteria, viruses and other pathogens may impact—or infect—our lives in ways that are best not to consider just before bed.Here are five scary diseases climate change may expose to humanity.1. Anthrax.In 2016, an anthrax outbreak in Siberia killed a 12-year-old boy and more than 2,300 reindeer. More than 70 nomadic herders, among them over 40 children, were hospitalized during the health crisis, and at least seven other adults and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/01/anthrax-outbreak-climate-change-arctic-circle-russia" style="text-decoration-line: none;">children were diagnosed with the disease</a>. The culprit? The carcass of an anthrax-infected reindeer who died of the infection way back in 1941.A Siberian heat wave sent temperatures soaring as high as 95 degrees Fahrenheit—exceptionally hot for the area—melting the permafrost that encased the corpse for decades and exposing spores of <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/as-earth-warms-the-diseases-that-may-lie-within-permafrost-become-a-bigger-worry/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Bacillus anthracis into water, soil and ultimately, food supplies</a>. The Guardian notes that “Thawing permafrost has also led to greater erosion of river banks where nomads often buried their dead” in shallow graves, because of the difficulty of digging deep beneath the ice.“We literally fought for the life of each person, but the infection showed its cunning,” Dmitry Kobylkin, a governor in the region, told a local news outlet. “It returned after 75 years and took the life of a child.”2. Previously unknown viruses.Jean-Michel Claverie and Chantal Abergel are microbiology professors who study viruses that attack amoebae. In a 30,000-year-old sample of Siberian permafrost, the scientists discovered two “giant viruses”—so named because of their comparatively enormous size to other viruses—Pithovirus sibericumandMollivirus sibericumcan. (The former, according to the World Economic Forum, is “<a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/05/the-deadly-diseases-being-released-by-climate-change/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">more than 10 times larger than the HIV virus</a>.”) Both viruses were still infectious. Though only amoebae are susceptible to the viruses, their discovery holds troubling implications for other contagions.“We tried to isolate amoeba viruses without knowing they were going to be giant viruses—and a totally different type of virus than we already know appeared,” Claverie told the Atlantic. “It turns out the viruses we are getting [in the permafrost] <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/11/the-zombie-diseases-of-climate-change/544274/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">are extremely abnormal, extremely fancy</a>.”“<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24591590" style="text-decoration-line: none;">[T]he thawing of permafrost either from global warming</a> or industrial exploitation of circumpolar regions might not be exempt from future threats to human or animal health,” the couple wrote in a study.3. Diseases that had been previously eradicated.Putting aside long-dormant new (or new to us) viruses, there’s also the issue of “zombie diseases” that have been safely tucked away in the ice for tens of thousands of years. These could very well include infections that have wreaked havoc on human populations in previous eras, including smallpox, various flu varieties, bubonic plague, and other deadly illnesses long since forgotten. Other infections that didn’t kill previous generations, but which we’ve lost immunity protection for, could also emerge.In a 2011 paper foreshadowing the Siberian anthrax outbreak last year, researchers Boris A. Revich and Marina A. Podolnaya warned that “[a]s a consequence of permafrost melting, the vectors of <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3222928/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">deadly infections of the 18th and 19th centuries may come back</a>, especially near the cemeteries where the victims of these infections were buried.”“No one really understands why Neanderthals went extinct,” Jean-Michel Claverie told the Atlantic. In an interview with Vox, he explained, “We could actually <a href="https://www.vox.com/2017/9/6/16062174/permafrost-melting" style="text-decoration-line: none;">catch a disease from a Neanderthal’s remains</a>. Which is amazing.”4. Whatever killed our now-extinct human ancestors.A BBC article notes that melting permafrost could potentially yield “<a href="https://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20170504-there-are-diseases-hidden-in-ice-and-they-are-waking-up" style="text-decoration-line: none;">viruses from long-extinct hominin species</a> like Neanderthals and Denisovans, both of which settled in Siberia and were riddled with various viral diseases. Remains of Neanderthals from 30-40,000 years ago have been spotted in Russia. Human populations have lived there, sickened and died for thousands of years.”5. Any of the scary things on this list.Okay, not to be alarmist but oh my god someone sound the alarm, a lot of really frightening stuff might surface as warming continues and the ice exposes layers frozen to time. The <a href="https://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20170504-there-are-diseases-hidden-in-ice-and-they-are-waking-up" style="text-decoration-line: none;">BBC catalogs a few</a> terrifying examples.Scientists from the State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology in Novosibirsk examined the corpse of a Stone Age man in the Siberian region of Gorny Altai, and other men who died in 19th century viral epidemics “and were buried in the permafrost region of Russia.” The BBC notes “they have found bodies with <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/509022a" style="text-decoration-line: none;">sores characteristic of the marks left by smallpox</a>. While they did not find the smallpox virus itself, <a href="https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc1208124" style="text-decoration-line: none;">they have detected fragments of its DNA</a>.”The BBC story points out that “fragments of RNA <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17944266" style="text-decoration-line: none;">from the 1918 Spanish flu virus</a>” have been discovered by scientists “in corpses buried in mass graves in Alaska's tundra. Smallpox and the bubonic plague are also likely buried in Siberia.”A bacterium that had been encased in an Antarctic glacier for 8 million years <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/104/33/13455" style="text-decoration-line: none;">was successfully revived by a team of scientists</a> laboring under the mistaken impression that we’re all hoping to star in a real-life version of "Stranger Things."And in perhaps my favorite example of all, a group of NASA scientists revived bacteria dating back to the Pleistocene period. These Carnobacterium pleistocenium shared the era with mastodons, woolly mammoths and saber-toothed cats. Though the microbes had been immobilized in a chunk of ice for 32,000 years, they were in fine form after things warmed up.“<a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1099/ijs.0.63384-0" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Once the ice melted</a>,” according to the BBC “they began swimming around, seemingly unaffected.”===

<span style="font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; float: none; display: inline !important;">In California, the western blacklegged tick, or Ixodes pacificus, is the main culprit of transmitting the disease. On average, California sees 100 cases of Lyme disease each year, with less than one case per year for Monterey County.

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<a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/14092017/deer-ticks-disease-lyme-babesiosis-climate-change-map">https://insideclimatenews.org/news/14092017/deer-ticks-disease-lyme-babesiosis-climate-change-map</a>

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More than 300,000 Americans will be infected with Lyme and other tick-borne diseases this year, up from fewer than 15,000 confirmed cases in the 1990s. The cost of treating them is roughly $1 billion per year, leading one U.S. senator to call tick-borne diseases an "<a href="http://www.ctpost.com/local/article/Warm-winter-credited-with-explosion-of-Lyme-11746026.php" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">epidemic-like scourge</a>."

Epidemiologists knew as early as two years ago that 2017 would be especially bad. High acorn production in New England, ground zero for tick-borne disease in America, triggered an increase in mouse reproduction last year. With mice being a<a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/03/06/518219485/forbidding-forecast-for-lyme-disease-in-the-northeast" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;"> major transmitter of Lyme</a>and other tick-borne diseases —they harbor the pathogens in their bloodstream, and infect almost every tick that bites them—it followed that this year would be a big one for Lyme and other tick borne diseases.

But other, longer-term changes are afoot.

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<a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/species/insects/deer-tick">https://insideclimatenews.org/species/insects/deer-tick</a>

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Obama administration siphoned $500 million that could have gone toward combating the Zika virus into a United Nations effort aimed at mitigating climate change.

Sen. James Lankford (R., Okla.) <a href="http://dailysignal.com/2016/05/23/obama-raided-500m-for-zika-to-finance-uns-green-climate-fund/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=thf-tw" target="_blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none; margin: 0px; background-color: transparent;">wrote</a> in an op-ed published in the Daily Signal that the Senate last year granted Obama the authority to pay for a response to Zika, but his administration chose instead to allocate those funds toward the U.N.’s Green Climate Fund.

Lankford wrote:

Congress last December provided the Obama administration with authority to pull money from bilateral economic assistance to foreign countries. They can use those funds to combat infectious diseases, if the administration believed there is an infectious disease emergency. In the middle of the Zika epidemic, the administration did use their authority to pull money from foreign aid and spend it, but they didn’t use it for Zika. … In March, President Obama gave the United Nations $500 million out of an account under bilateral economic assistance to fund the U.N.’s Green Climate Fund. Congress refused to allocate funding for the U.N. Climate Change Fund last year, so the president used this account designated for international infectious diseases to pay for his priority.

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The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have recorded 618 cases of U.S. travel-associated Zika virus as of June 1. The number marks a stark increase since February when 107 cases were recorded.

Government officials have been pressuring the GOP-led Congress to pass the roughly $1.9 million in emergency funding for Zika preparedness that Obama requested in February.

But Lankford said funding that could be reallocated toward combatting Zika already exists despite the $500 million the administration contributed instead toward the U.N.’s climate change efforts.

The Department of Health and Human Services, the State Department, and International Assistance Programs have a combined $80 billion in “unobligated” funds. A slice of this, Lankford said, could be redirected toward a response to the Zika epidemic without increasing the national debt.

Obama requested this authority in 2009 to respond to the H1N1 virus, for example.

“Zika is an important international crisis, but every crisis does not demand new ‘emergency funding’ that is all debt,” Lankford wrote. “If there is a way to avoid more debt, we should take that option.”

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