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Friday 19 February 2016

Propaganda Machine Takes Aim at Zika Virus


By Dr. Mercola

It's that time again — time for the pandemic outbreak propaganda machine to cry "Wolf!" and justify the mass use of vaccines and the necessity for chemical remediation. The World Health Organization (WHO) has already declared another global public health emergency.1
We've seen a string of these over-hyped virus scares over the past six years, from the bird and swine flu to Ebola — all of which died down as suddenly as they emerged, without causing the predicted widespread catastrophic damage in the real world.
This year, it's the Zika virus, which is being blamed for a rash of reports of microcephaly2,3 among infants born in Brazil. The condition, in which babies are born with unusually small heads, is said to have surged from an average of about 150 cases annually to more than 4,780 cases since October 2015.

Microcephaly Cases Vastly Over-Reported


The Brazilian government has already admitted that overly generous parameters resulted in dramatic over-reporting of the rare condition public health officials have associated with the Zika virus, which has been dubbed by the media as the "shrunken head" virus.
To be on the safe side, when Zika-affected areas began seeing a rise in microcephaly, the Brazilian government asked health officials to report any case in which a child was born with a head circumference smaller than 33 centimeters.
False positives were expected, and when they realized that most of these babies were in fact healthy and normal, the threshold was lowered to 32 centimeters in December. The limit may be lowered even further, to 31.9 centimeters for boys and 31.5 centimeters for girls.
As reported by The New York Times:4
"Of the cases examined so far, 404 have been confirmed as having microcephaly. Only 17 of them tested positive for the Zika virus...
Another 709 babies have been ruled out as having microcephaly ... underscoring the risks of false positives making the epidemic appear larger than it actually is. The remaining 3,670 cases are still being investigated." [Emphasis mine]
As noted by The New York Times, there's actually very little scientific evidence tying the Zika virus to this particular condition.
Still, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the Zika virus a global health emergency5 on February 1, noting that the "main worry" is the virus' potential link to microcephaly and subsequent brain damage.
According to WHO, the Zika virus may have infected as many as 4 million people in the Americas, and public health officials in Brazil, Colombia and El Salvador are reportedly all researching the effects of Zika infection in pregnant women.

Poverty, Pollution, and Vitamin Deficiencies May Affect Microcephaly Rates in Brazil


The Zika virus was initially identified in 1947 in Uganda, where it was originally limited to rhesus monkeys. It's an arbovirus, meaning the disease is transmitted via mosquito, tick or flea bites.
According to ATCC,6 a "global biological materials resource...organization whose mission focuses on the acquisition, authentication, production, preservation, development, and distribution of standard reference microorganisms," the Zika virus7 — which they sell for about $500 — causes paralysis and death.
In humans, Zika infection typically causes only mild flu-like symptoms, if any, and there does not appear to be any prior evidence suggesting it might cause birth defects.
That certainly doesn't exclude the possibility, of course, but there are many other factors and co-factors that offer a far more likely and rational explanation for the rise in microcephaly in this area of Brazil, besides Zika-carrying mosquitoes.
For starters, the "outbreak" is occurring in a largely poverty-stricken agricultural area of Brazil that uses large amounts of banned pesticides.8,9,10
Between these factors and the lack of sanitation and widespread vitamin A and zinc deficiency, you already have the basic framework for an increase in poor health outcomes among newborn infants in that area.11
Environmental pollution12,13 and toxic pesticide exposure have been positively linked to a wide array of adverse health effects, including birth defects. When you add all these co-factors together, an increase in microcephaly doesn't seem like such a far-fetched outcome.
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