Friends, meet the Zika virus. Health officials haven’t explicitly stated that it will cause people infected with it to rise from their graves and hunt down the living, spreading death and bringing about a global catastrophe, but that said, it kinda sounds like it will, per Rueters.
The mosquito-borne Zika virus, which has been linked to brain damage in thousands of babies in Brazil, is likely to spread to all countries in the Americas except for Canada and Chile, the World Health Organization said on Monday.
Brazil’s Health Ministry said in November that Zika was linked to a fetal deformation known as microcephaly, in which infants are born with smaller-than-usual brains.
Now, I’m not calling these babies zombie babies, because that would be insensitive, but … I’m just saying. They could be zombie babies. Zombie babies that are going to span the globe pretty soon. Because the Zika virus is already tearing across the planet.
The clinical symptoms of Zika are usually mild and often similar to dengue, a fever which is transmitted by the same Aedes aegypti mosquito, leading to fears that Zika will spread into all parts of the world where dengue is commonplace.
Zika’s rapid spread, to 21 countries and territories in the Americas since May 2015, is due to the prevalence of Aedes aegypti and a lack of immunity among the population, the WHO said in a statement.
We’ve got nothing to stop its spread.
“We’ve got no drugs and we’ve got no vaccines. It’s a case of deja vu because that’s exactly what we were saying with Ebola,” said Trudie Lang, a professor of global health at the University of Oxford. “It’s really important to develop a vaccine as quickly as possible.”
Ahhh. A deja vu of Ebola. That’s exactly what we all want to hear. That said, it’s not that much of a concern to Bros, but it can be devastating to pregnant women. From The BBC:
But the biggest concern is the potential impact on babies developing in the womb. There have been around 3,500 reported cases of microcephaly – babies born with tiny brains – in Brazil alone since October.
Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador and Jamaica last week recommended women delay pregnancies until more was known about the virus.
Again, I don’t wanna say it’s because officials are afraid of zombie babies, but ….
Zombie babies.
[Via Reuters]