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Medicine

First US Malaria Cases Diagnosed In Decades In Florida and Texas (reuters.com) 165

Posted by BeauHD from the quick-someone-call-Bill-Gates dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Five cases of malaria have been confirmed in Florida and Texas, the first time the potentially fatal mosquito-borne disease has been locally acquired in the United States in 20 years, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday. The four Florida cases, along with one in Texas, have been diagnosed over a period of two months, the agency said. The state of Florida said that its first case was diagnosed on May 26 in Sarasota County, while officials in Texas said on June 23 that a Texas resident who worked outdoors in Cameron County had been diagnosed with the disease.

The CDC said in an alert released Monday that malaria is considered a medical emergency, and that anyone with symptoms should be "urgently evaluated." However, the CDC said that risk of malaria remains low in the United States, and that most cases are acquired when people travel outside of the country. Fully 95% of malaria infections are acquired in Africa, the health agency said. Malaria is caused by five species of a parasite carried by certain female mosquitoes. Symptoms include fever, chills, headache, muscle pain and fatigue. Nausea, diarrhea and vomiting may also appear. Malaria can cause life-threatening damage, including kidney failure, seizures and coma.
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First US Malaria Cases Diagnosed In Decades In Florida and Texas More

First US Malaria Cases Diagnosed In Decades In Florida and Texas

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  • Shit. (Score:3, Informative)

    by sinkskinkshrieks ( 6952954 ) on Tuesday June 27, 2023 @11:36PM (#63638870)
    Cameron County is way down at the southernmost tip. Malaria was endemic to the US South prior to 1952 but a post-WW2 effort wiped it out by sheer tenancy of applying DDT to everything and everyone, and wiping out mosquito habitats. https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/ab... [cdc.gov]

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by sinkskinkshrieks ( 6952954 )
      Climate change will fuck shit up, and this El Nino year is particularly troublesome. The current conditions of Austin TX are tropic akin to Colombia with both high heat and high humidity, and increased precipitation. It's the middle of the night and it feels like 97 F (90 F and 60% humidity).

      • Not Climate Change (yet) (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Roger W Moore ( 538166 ) on Wednesday June 28, 2023 @12:01AM (#63638924) Journal

        Climate change will fuck shit up

        Yes, but climate change means that the malaria parasite may be able to spread and transmit further north than it ever has before. It does not explain why malaria is returning to areas where it has always been a potential problem until it was eradicated. If there were evidence of malaria transmission in Minnesota that would be evidence of climate change, in Texas and Florida it is possibly because they have not kept up the eradication effort and it has returned by whatever means it got to those locations in the first place, before climate change was a problem.

        • Spreading North than ever before.

          What do you mean by ever before? The entire history of Earth? History of the species? History of civilization?

          So what happened 1200 years ago when grapes were growing in Greenland? How far North did malaria travel?

          • In the Americas?
            No where. Malaria did not exist there.

            And Greenland - as the name says - Green, was a local phenomena. Not "global warming".

            So no idea what your silly question is about.

      • Boo-fucking-hoo. I have been to Texas in the summer, and Florida is so much worse for heat and humidity.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mark-t ( 151149 )

      You know that we can cure malaria now though, right?

      A fairly big difference between now and then

      • Re:Shit. (Score:4, Interesting)

        by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Wednesday June 28, 2023 @12:14AM (#63638950)

        Not all strains. There are multi-drug resistant strains. Reference: https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/ma... [cdc.gov] That's why that Chinese woman got a Nobel prize cause basically her drug was the last one that works for most strains. You know that if we start allowing Malaria to come back resistant strains can dominate and then we're fucked.

      • Of course we can. The question is, will we, and will anyone who catches it get bankrupted in the process?

      • Re:Shit. (Score:4, Interesting)

        by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Wednesday June 28, 2023 @03:31AM (#63639112)

        You know that we can cure malaria now though, right?

        A fairly big difference between now and then

        We can cure some of the 6 different strains, in some circumstances. We can't cure them all, and the most deadly form's cure has side-effects that prevent it from being applicable in many cases (at which point the physician will prescribe hydroxychloroquine and hope for the best). Malaria remains the most deadly virus for travellers and expats. In many cases Malaria symptoms only appear weeks or months after return to a competent western country and yet the condition is deadly due to being widely misdiagnosed and people still very much die from it even in a country with a good health system.

        The only really suitable defence against malaria is a prophylaxis, and one that you need to take over a week after you leave a risky area due to the way the parasite works.

        Anecdote: A colleague of mine caught malaria in Angola. Symptoms came up 3 weeks after he was back in the USA. Went to the doctor, "you have the flu, sleep it off". 2 days later went to another doctor "I'm sure it's just the flu, go sleep it off". Contacted an international travel doctor for expats who our company subscribes to for global medical services, and they arranged for him to be rushed to a hospital and after 2 weeks he did actually recover. But holy fuck was he close to giving his sob story to St Peter.

        This shit is no joke.

        • Not a virus.

          • Yes it is, which is why I specifically mentioned an anti-parasitic as treatment and called it a parasite in my post, even with one typo.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jonadab ( 583620 )
          Your anecdote nicely illustrates the fact that the American medical system is not accustomed to seeing cases of malaria. It basically hasn't happened within the memory of anyone still practicing, except in special cases involving travel to the third world.

          The CDC is right on both counts here: A) anyone who has malaria symptoms should be looked at very carefully, and also B) the risk of catching malaria in North America is currently very low. These aren't contradictory, because malaria is a quite nasty il
          • Comment removed based on user account deletion

            • THUS, if symptoms are 95% or better likely influenza, i
              They are not like influenzia.

              And you see the parasite in a microscope. The test in Germany is about $100, and includes basically every test you can do on a blood test ...

          • Your anecdote nicely illustrates the fact that the American medical system is not accustomed to seeing cases of malaria.

            Yeah absolutely. That is not just American medical system, that is fundamentally in most western systems. A quick search through available literature will show that in western countries malaria is misdiagnosed between 60-75% of cases depending which journal you're reading. Heck the high rate of misdiagnosis is a core point of my company's training for expats, rotators and visitors going to Africa, and they make a point of being very persistent about getting a malaria test if you end up needing to go to the

        • Except that Malaria is not a virus ...

    • Malaria was in fact endemic. A relative in NE Texas had it around 1940, age 13. As an adult, they did not much like chocolate, due to having taken chocolate flavored quinine (intensely bitter) preparations.

      • Speaking of quinine, I drink far too much gin and tonic to worry right?

        • Another relative worked for an airline. They said that pilots were advised to stay away from tonic and bitter lemon after reports of visual impairment from quinine use. Bitter lemon was one of my favorites.early 20s, but I quit drinking it regularly after hearing the airline anecdote and after realizing that it was not reducing my sugar intake.

  • Here comes the "truth" (Score:4, Insightful)

    by AlanObject ( 3603453 ) on Wednesday June 28, 2023 @12:01AM (#63638922)

    I full expect to see in the news and on cable TV all the following valuable information and discourse:

    1. Fauci "lied to us" about something.

    2. The disease was bred in a Chinese lab in Ukraine as a bio weapon.

    3. Vaccines are against my religion (Narrator: Malaria is not treated with vaccines) and the libtards are not going to make me take them.

    4. My immune system is so strong and I don't trust health authorities.

    5. That doctor who claimed covid was caused by sex with demons will show up and say something even more weird.

    6. Face masks don't work.

    7. Biden let this happen.

    Did I miss anything? We've been to this rodeo before and Texas knows how to run them.

    • Re:Here comes the "truth" (Score:4)

      by The Evil Atheist ( 2484676 ) on Wednesday June 28, 2023 @12:38AM (#63638976)
      You forgot the Mexicans.
    • You forgot ". . .critical race theory is not taught in schools, it is an academic study at the undergraduate and graduate level that aims to examine the role of racism in the modern era and the ways it has become woven into the social fabric."

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by waspleg ( 316038 )

      8. It was all laid out this would happen in Hillary's emails/Hunter Biden's laptop.

      9. If the border were closed/walls built this couldn't have happened, filthy immigrants.

      10. Gov't regulations something something repeal everything that tries to protect people at all.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dgatwood ( 11270 )

        9. If the border were closed/walls built this couldn't have happened, filthy immigrants.

        To be absurdly pedantic, a sufficiently tall wall would have prevented this. Mind you, building a wall that's 37,000 feet high (high enough to prevent birds from migrating and thus preventing U.S. mosquitoes from being able to spread it from those birds to humans) isn't very practical. Also, the environmentalists would rupture an aneurysm. :-D

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by chas.williams ( 6256556 )
      I fully believe masks will be effective against malaria if you wear them in your basement.

    • Regarding malaria:
      1. Masks will not work
      2. Social distancing will not work
            2a. Hiding in basement or other shelter in home might work
      3. Hydroxycloriquine (sp?) will have a statistically significant chance of working

      • So what you're saying is that the conspiracy set are going to get on board with masking and social distancing, and they're going to have right-wing media rants about some clever pseudonym (clot shot, etc.) they come up with for their miracle drug from the last public health crisis based on an observably rare but serious side effect?

        Bonus: apparently there are drug interactions between hydroxychloroquine and Mifepristone (the abortion pill that the right tried to get their bought-and-paid-for hand-picked-thr

    • Wait until people find out what the treatment for malaria is...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      Here you go:

      https://twitter.com/RobertKenn... [twitter.com]

    • You didn't mention anything about the southern border or "woke". Otherwise I'd say you've probably nailed it.

      • Oh, and there needs to be a compulsory "Hunter Biden" angle in there somewhere too. Perhaps that they found some conspiracy to re-introduce malaria to the American south on his laptop next to his dick pics?

  • DeSantis Utopia (Score:2, Insightful)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 )

    Properties of DeSantis Utopia:

    1. Higher murder rate than California .. Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
    2. Higher drug overdose rate than California .. Reference: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/press... [cdc.gov]
    3. Higher suicide rate than California .. Reference: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/press... [cdc.gov]
    4. More drownings than California .. Reference: https://www.worldlifeexpectanc... [worldlifeexpectancy.com]
    5. Fatter governor than California

    As you can see, Florida is a leader.

  • Dont be so sure (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mdvx ( 4169463 ) on Wednesday June 28, 2023 @01:07AM (#63638994)
    >>CDC said that risk of malaria remains low in the United States, and that most cases are acquired when people travel outside of the country. I have survived malaria 3 times, and its about where the mosquitos are, not where you are.
    • yea, chill y'all. It's still much more likely to get killed by gunfire in Florida and Texas than to catch Malaria

    • I have survived malaria 3 times

      So, one accident, and two demonstrations of extreme stupidity? Malaria is 100% preventable. Take the damn prophylaxis.

      • The prophylaxis only have a chance to prevent it. They are for from 100% And all have serious side effects. I rather use anti mosquito spray ...

  • This is caused by old technology (Score:4, Funny)

    by illogicalpremise ( 1720634 ) on Wednesday June 28, 2023 @04:25AM (#63639172)

    Florida and Texas still use CDMA networks. According to experts:

    CDMA causes Malaria
    2G causes Swine Flu
    3G makes frogs gay
    4G gives you Super-Herpes

    Spread the word!

  • I looked it up & apparently there are malaria vaccines under development. However, the only one that's available right now has ~30% efficacy. Since it infects ~247 million people & kills ~619,000 each year, it'd be a good idea to invest more into them. You know, now that it may affect not just poor brown people in larger numbers.
    • Give the people DEET. Make it free, spray it all over everyone. I love the smell of that shit.
      • I'm allergic to some mosquito varieties so I'm keenly aware of what works & what doesn't. Deet reduces the number of bites but doesn't eliminate them altogether. It also doesn't last for very long so you need to keep re-applying. If you're not thorough, mosquitoes will bite anywhere you've left. Citronella oil seems to work better but it's mildly irritant & starts itching & burning after a few days of applying. The best way to not get bitten is to stay in direct sunlight, where they can't see yo

        • The best way to not get bitten is to stay in direct sunlight, where they can't see you.
          Lol what nonsense.
          a) they see in infra red
          b) they smell your CO2 exhaust

    • The vaccines in development target the strains of malaria with the highest death tolls, and those strains are almost exclusively found in Africa. Plasmodium vivax, the strain found in the Americas, has an absurdly low death rate [biomedcentral.com], it's just not a priority for vaccination, relatively speaking. It's main issue is that it's not just a one-time deal when you get infected; you get recurrence for years unless stronger treatments are applied to burn out the reservoir in the liver.

    • Nope, gotta use taxpayer money to sue Disney. The company who has an entire building dedicated to legal matters and IP.

  • Or is it still horse paste?

    • It's still horse paste. Ivermectin is not taken up in the liver and is of little use to treat malaria. Ironically for your attempted joke the actual drug you want is hydroxychloroquine, the other fake COVID cure which is actually an anti-malarial.

      • Nope, Ivermectin also shows promise. To be specific, the ivermectin metabolites desmethyl-H2B1a and hydroxy-H2B1a show great promise at killing mosquitos that bite humans, but at the end of the day it will be cheaper and easier to just prescribe everyone Ivermectin than create those specific drugs.

        • Indeed. Based on some’s snarky comment above, I looked in pub med and si,liar places; lots of good research.
  • they will be having malaria parties in Florida and Texas to spread it faster.

  • thoughts and prayers,

    don't do you much good does it ?
    that's all the sympathy i got left for you guys.

  • Home of free-market cholera and faith-healing for the brain parasites in your water supply.

  • Did they prepay for their Healthcare like good Conservatives, or did they go the usual route and subject themselves to the tyranny of insurance?
    Because we all know the ones who shout "buh muh freedumbs!!!" the loudest will also be first in line to either bail out from the situation (maybe a nice vacation in say, Mexico) or they'll be in the front of the line screaming about how they should get twice what everyone else is because mommy and daddy said they were special.
    Let them rot until they can find those

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