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    courtJoanna Rothkopf
    3/04/16 12:04pm

    It’s always fuckin mosquitoes. Do your goddamn job, frogs!

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      WerkwerkwerkisaBurnercourt
      3/04/16 12:13pm

      We may have to activate the bat signal

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      courtWerkwerkwerkisaBurner
      3/04/16 12:14pm

      There’s a lot of layers to this post.

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    courtJoanna Rothkopf
    3/04/16 12:10pm

    “ Obama can’t force me to autisimise my little Dakota and Tyler with that big government Vicodin visine!"

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      GELLA - LLAPcourt
      3/04/16 12:16pm

      its genetically trasmissable

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      courtGELLA - LLAP
      3/04/16 12:19pm

      Two of my five little shitheads finishing off last night’s sushi.

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    DoIDareToEatAPeachJoanna Rothkopf
    3/04/16 12:03pm

    Two things:

    (A) As a woman with infertility who is still hoping to conceive, knowing I can’t go to any warm vacation-y place outside the U.S. even though I probably can’t get pregnant anyway is infuriating in ways I can’t even describe.

    (B) Thank you for a Zika article without a gigantically blown-up picture of a mosquito. Pretty over Godzilla skeeters.

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      thatsjustmyhairDoIDareToEatAPeach
      3/04/16 12:40pm

      Morrocco is warm. No Zika.

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      AnonymousCivilPersonDoIDareToEatAPeach
      3/04/16 12:51pm

      The potential damage to adult hippocampal neural stem cells is something else to worry about for people not having babies.

      Depending on the purpose of those cells later in life and the ability of Zika to infect them it could result in permanent problems for adults.

      Example not based in actual evidence but rather loose association:
      It is possible that lacking those stem cells later in life could decrease cognitive process.

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    GELLA - LLAPJoanna Rothkopf
    3/04/16 12:15pm

    thank you science

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      deerlady83GELLA - LLAP
      3/04/16 12:29pm
      GIF
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      Stig-a-saw-us wrecks loves nuclear power.GELLA - LLAP
      3/04/16 1:22pm
      GIF
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    DoodleStumpJoanna Rothkopf
    3/04/16 1:06pm

    Am I the only one who thinks the news feeds on this virus read right out of a Plague, Inc. scenario? First it’s spread in warm weather environments. Second it’s pretty unnoticeable. But then it focuses its efforts in Brazil, right when the frickin Olympics are taking place (this is literally one of the bonuses you get in the game, your virus spreading to the place where the olympics are being held, unless they are cancelled because society gets wise). Then I read that two people have a strange form of paralysis that is linked to the virus.

    When I read about the paralysis, I actually said, omg, this is the beginning of the end. The mutation is occurring, and we’re all fucked.

    Then I went back to my crossword.

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      bigdamnheroesDoodleStump
      3/04/16 3:58pm

      I assume the strange form of paralysis you’re referring to is Guillain-Barre Syndrome? Guillain-Barre is already a rare side effect of influenza and dengue fever, so it being possibly linked to Zika is not really a new apocalyptic scenario.

      I’m not sure what you mean by “the mutation is occurring”, but I really wouldn’t start planning for the end of days just yet. It’s true that it seems likely that the Zika virus underwent some mutation in the last year that made it spread more effectively and cause more harmful symptoms, but all the stuff that keeps popping up in the news is not evidence of continuing rapid mutation - it’s just us learning more about the virus. It’s very possible that it was causing GBS before 2015, but because it wasn’t spreading as widely and wasn’t really being studied much, we didn’t know about it. Now that it’s getting attention, we should be able to develop a vaccine and quash it.

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      DoodleStumpbigdamnheroes
      3/04/16 4:06pm

      You’d have to play Plague, Inc. to get the mutation thing. Basically you create a virus (or bacteria, or other deadly thing), and you can mutate it over time. You focus on spreading it out first (i.e., by having it infect a country hosting the olympics, for example), and mutating it to survive in different climates. Then, when you want to start killing, you upgrade to different symptoms that are more and more deadly. Paralysis is a favorite, because it makes it harder to cure (for various reasons). Throughout all of this, you see various headlines about the spread of the disease and the cure research.

      So seeing a headline say “crazy virus hits Brazil, which by the way has the olympics...” you’re like, crap. Then you see headlines about it infecting babies, crap. Then you read a headline that’s like “two people found with paralysis linked with Zika” and you’re like holy shit this is literally someone playing Plague, Inc. and trying to exterminate humanity! (but then you read a headline that says a vaccine is about two months away, and you breath a sigh of relief).

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    Stephan ZielinskiJoanna Rothkopf
    3/04/16 1:07pm

    The BBC points out, however, that if the incidence of the virus has begun to wane when the vaccine becomes ready, it may be difficult to obtain enough test subjects.

    Dang! If the problem goes away of its own accord before we have a potential solution in hand, it’ll take longer to test the solution! Boy, I’m going to be losing sleep over THIS one.

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      Ladyheatherlee 2016 EditionJoanna Rothkopf
      3/04/16 1:09pm

      Omg we already have a vaccine. Big Pharma has played you all like fiddles! Keep up!

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