Thousands of monkeys are dying from yellow fever in Brazil

Seems an extreme breakout of yellow fever has hit Brazil, and it doesn't look good for the howler monkey's or humans.

March 22 (UPI) -- Yellow fever, a viral disease transmitted by mosquitoes, is spreading through Brazil, infecting and killing both monkeys and humans.

According to the latest reports from local scientists, several thousand monkeys -- most of them howler monkeys -- have been killed by the virus since the outbreak began in late 2016.

Significant portions of the Brazilian rainforest are without a single howler monkey, researchers say.

"It was just silence, a sense of emptiness," Karen Strier, an anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin, said of visiting a familiar patch of forest in the state of Minas Gerais. "It was like the energy was sucked out of the universe."

www.upi.com... m_medium=1


Sorry my comment was short, got frustrated because I could not post it in breaking news.

But this could become a serious situation and needs to be monitored closely. The reason why is because it has been a problem in the past.

Yellow fever is a viral hemorrhagic disease spread between humans, as well as between certain other primates and humans, by the bite of yellow fever-infected mosquitoes. The virus is called simply Yellow fever virus and belongs to the virus family Flaviviridae.

~~~~~

Yellow fever is endemic in areas of Latin America and Africa, while imported cases have appeared throughout the world. Globally, the disease infects about 200,000 people per year, causing fever, chills, nausea, vomiting, muscle pain, and headache.

There is no cure for yellow fever. Treatment consists solely of attempts to make the patient more comfortable. While many patients recover after 3-4 days of such symptoms, approximately 15% enter a second phase of the illness after a remission. This second phase includes a return of high fever, as well as jaundice; abdominal pain and vomiting; bleeding from the mouth, nose, eyes, or stomach; and deteriorating kidney function. As many as half of the patients who experience the second phase may die. In all, yellow fever kills 30,000 people globally each year.

www.historyofvaccines.org...

Sounds pretty bad.

originally posted by: rickymouse
Sounds pretty bad.

When all the monkeys die, guess who is next in line.

originally posted by: Groot

originally posted by: rickymouse
Sounds pretty bad.

When all the monkeys die, guess who is next in line.

Politicians I hope.

It's not just primates although they are going to be hit and are being hit as your OP states pretty hard in the next several years to come. Primates are succeptible to practically all human diseases and pathogens... some of ours have even come from the practice of eating primates as food in some areas. Being too cose in genomes such a thing is never a good idea.

Bird flu was found to have mutated from cock fighting where the owners of the birds would suck the blood and mucusa out of the birds nostrils after a fight so that it healed quicker and could fight again sooner in "care and maintenance" of the bird. Eventually the flu virus from the birds was able to adapt and tada...

So aside from losing habatat being exposed to disease and pathogens crossing species as we grow and evolve together has been something over looked for a long time.


Extinction Crisis

The poor monkeys ! How painful that must be for them ....this will spread to other animals too, if it's transmitted by mosquitos .

Hmm, wonder if there's money in it for a vaccine? If there is, it may have been helped along not to say it can't happen naturally though. And/or that it was known about prior but not dealt with due to lack of funding. Sadly with ebola the growing epidemics weren't dealt with because officials didn't care enough about the effected populations(pretty much racism entailed).

It sounds like there might have been a mutation with the virus. If it was the same virus I would imagine the rates of death would be the same as before.

a reply to: dreamingawake

The animals will likely be treated just the same; a non issue. The only reason some were freaking out else where was due to the possible migration of it... not for those already in the middle of it.

a reply to: dreamingawake

We're already being vaccinated. In my town we just got about 70,000 new vaccines, even though there still haven't been any cases around here, but my town is considered at risk. I haven't noticed any dead monkeys around my house though, they all seem to be doing pretty well.

a reply to: Thorsen
Thank you for the local update!!! So if they are vaccinating at least they are taking this serious. Have you guys had any of the local monkey population effected?

a reply to: Martin75

People here are scared, which is good because everyone is taking the necessary steps to avoid a bigger problem. And we haven't had any official cases of monkey deaths due to the disease in my town specifically, but there is another big problem that is the fact that the lower information population are killing the monkeys for fear of them transmitting the virus, as they aren't aware that that doesn't happen.

a reply to: Groot

I been following the problems within Brazil epidemics since the zika virus because a problem in their farming areas.

Yellow fever have an impact in how zika behave in humans, now that monkeys are dying from this outbreak watch out of another type of pandemic start to hit humans related to mosquitoes.

a reply to: Groot

This is bad...

Just speculating, could this have anything to do with it?

Researchers release bacteria-infected mosquitoes to combat Zika

Bill Gates is one backer of a project that deliberately infects mosquito populations with virus-fighting bacteria. The modified insects will then, hopefully, take over local populations.

Researchers said on Wednesday that they plan to release swarms of mosquitoes infected with bacteria to combat the spread of the Zika virus in Colombia and Brazil.
The $18 million (16.5 million euro) plan, financed by governments and philanthropists, involves infecting mosquitoes with Wolbachia bacteria and allowing them to breed in Zika affected areas.
Wolbachia occurs naturally in 60 percent of insects but not in mosquitoes.
When introduced to Aedes aegypti –- the tropical mosquitoes primarily responsible for spreading viruses such as Zika, yellow fever, dengue fever and chikungunya - it significantly hampers their ability to spread such viruses.

www.dw.com...

Bill Gates supports eugenics, this could be on purpose for all we know. Or it could be completely unrelated...who knows. I find it more than a coincidence that after they release all those GMO mosquitoes all of a sudden there is a rise in Zika and now this yellow fever.

a reply to: Thorsen

We're already being vaccinated. In my town we just got about 70,000 new vaccines, even though there still haven't been any cases around here, but my town is considered at risk. I haven't noticed any dead monkeys around my house though, they all seem to be doing pretty well.

Thank you for sharing your personal experience to this .

originally posted by: Mikehawk
a reply to: Groot

This is bad...

Just speculating, could this have anything to do with it?

Researchers release bacteria-infected mosquitoes to combat Zika

Bill Gates is one backer of a project that deliberately infects mosquito populations with virus-fighting bacteria. The modified insects will then, hopefully, take over local populations.

Researchers said on Wednesday that they plan to release swarms of mosquitoes infected with bacteria to combat the spread of the Zika virus in Colombia and Brazil.
The $18 million (16.5 million euro) plan, financed by governments and philanthropists, involves infecting mosquitoes with Wolbachia bacteria and allowing them to breed in Zika affected areas.
Wolbachia occurs naturally in 60 percent of insects but not in mosquitoes.
When introduced to Aedes aegypti –- the tropical mosquitoes primarily responsible for spreading viruses such as Zika, yellow fever, dengue fever and chikungunya - it significantly hampers their ability to spread such viruses.

www.dw.com...

Bill Gates supports eugenics, this could be on purpose for all we know. Or it could be completely unrelated...who knows. I find it more than a coincidence that after they release all those GMO mosquitoes all of a sudden there is a rise in Zika and now this yellow fever.

It could be related as zika and yellow fever, along with Dengue are in the same family of viruses.

You might have heard the term flavivirus recently due to the outbreak of Zika virus in Central and South America. Zika, along with West Nile virus, dengue, yellow fever and Japanese encephalitis, belongs to this family of virus – of which many are threats to public health.

Flaviviruses are defined by the shape and size of the virus particle (which is extremely small and not visible by the naked eye but requires a high powered electron microscope). They are able to replicate and spread within both insects and mammals, and they infect humans and domesticated animals.

How Are Flaviviruses Spread?
Flaviviruses are arboviruses, which means they are spread via infected arthropod vectors such as ticks and mosquitoes.

www.iflscience.com...

a reply to: Mikehawk

The danger of such things is the smaller the species the faster it evolves and adapts to the adversity given to it... how the mosquito adapts to our gentic tinkering as an adversity has the potential to breed something quite dangerous as a result. Several years ago there was genetic engineering modification to wipe out mosquitoes how it would effect bird populations etc. that feed on them or when adapating to the adversity how it would modify in the genome... some think that this is exactly where Zika came from our genetic tinkering unaware of the side effects that could arise from it... with the only view or outlook being placed on erradication at the time.

DDT at one time was hailed the best solution for crop infestations of all kinds; and it was lauded and used for years; and then it was found to be having an effect on bird populations making their eggs not harden the situation grew so bad many feeds were introducing ground up oyster shells to help combat the issue aside from seeping and leeching into rivers lakes and ponds as ground water effects killing things fish would feed on.

So of course all facets should be looked at instead of just the goal; seeing how all of this is in one big cycle or chain... if one pulls out one link; how many others are going to fall due to it? 1000s of species going extinct what chain did they hold up, how is their disappearance going to effect the food chain and life cycles of those closely related in the environment that competed or defended against them, did they keep down the numbers of one population? Did another population keep their numbers in balance? and basically what occurs when that link goes missing?

None of that is really concidered when such environmental tinkering goes on; ourselves being an invasive species that destroy habitat after habitat in building our own either for living or resources are either to blind or selfish to concider the entire picture.

Obviously; about time more of us did... as these links in the chain and cycles of life keep falling apart or going extinct the chain reaction effect of it continuing on and on to no avail becomes pretty obvious.