Thread by @NateB_Panic

A few weeks ago top US medicine man Anthony Fauci was in hospital with West Nile virus, saying he'd never been sicker. So I looked into West Nile virus and woah, did I find out some things. Not good things 🧵

The first astonishing thing I found out is how quickly this virus, transmitted by mosquitoes, has become a serious health threat in many parts of the world, especially Europe and North America, where a little over twenty years ago >it didn’t even exist<

The first North American (in fact Western hemisphere) detection was in New York City in 1999, where it infected 8,000 and killed seven. By 2002 it was all along the east coast, the US south by 2003, by 2012, just 13 years after its emergence, it was in all 48 continental states

The virus was first detected in Canada in Ontario in 2001, with human cases subsequently in Quebec, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia and British Columbia. It appeared in southern Europe in the early 2000s, and has now spread as far north as Germany and the Netherlands

In a majority of cases the virus causes a fever and a nasty but self-limiting illness, but for 1 in every 140 people the virus invades the brain, triggering swelling, inflammation, and death in 10-20% of cases. This presentation is known as West Nile Neurological Disease

Researchers have found that when the virus does invade the brain and cross into the central nervous system, severe and chronic sequelae results, and up to 40% of survivors fail to return to baseline health years after infection

By 2015, researchers said the spread of West Nile virus meant it was “the most important causative agent of viral encephalitis” worldwide. Meaning it took barely 15 years for it to go from non-existent in parts of the world to the leading cause of virus-induced brain damage

It is spreading because of global heating, climate breakdown and expansion of intensive agriculture. Hotter temperatures expand mosquito range and birds congregate more closely together around limited water sources during more droughts, presenting stronger mozzie feeding opps

Migratory birds carrying the disease arrive earlier in the northern hemisphere and in new places, and the expansion of intensively farmed birds like chickens create more densely populated hosts for mosquitoes to feed on

The growth of infections may even be causing a hidden brain damage epidemic. Only a minority of people who present with neurological symptoms consistent with the virus are tested for it, yet to 2016, 7 million people in the US alone were estimated to have been infected

There is no vaccine and there are no therapeutics, because the virus, until the 2000s, had not been a threat in the west. Developing treatments was therefore, in the words of researchers, ‘unlikely to result in cost savings’ compared with the small economic cost it was exacting

In the US cases could triple in 30 years, with epidemic outbreaks that will see thousands struck down every year with neurological disease and prolonged sequalae. In Europe, under all climate heating scenarios, the virus becomes a high risk disease across most of the continent

All these projections were done pre-covid. We now have a significantly larger global population of people with damaged immune systems from repeat covid infections, and West Nile, like all viruses, hits the immune-compromised harder

This may have been a factor in the seriousness of Fauci’s illness - he was hospitalised with what he said was the non-neurological disease just weeks after his third covid infection

The story of West Nile virus, from non-existent concern to major health threat, is a story of nature-destroying capitalist expansion. Yet it is never covered this way. The spread of the virus is inevitable and infection prevention up to you, spray and cover your skin

As mosquitoes hosting brain invading viruses come to dominate our increasingly unbearable summers, don‘t think of revolution, just wear long sleeves. For all sources and to read more. donotpanic.news/p/the-frighten…