Stuff You Should Know - All we know about Zika so far...

Episode Date: September 22, 2016

Zika is all over the news these days, yet in America, people don't seem to be too concerned just yet. Some say it's a case of the media crying wolf. Others say it's because the risk factors for zika are limited. Learn all about the latest virus to take center stage in today's episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

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Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from houseforks.com. ["Frosted Tips with Lance Bass"] Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant,

and there's Jerry over there. This is Stuff You Should Know, about breaking news, Colin Zika. Yes, we've had a bunch of people ask us to do this over the summer, basically, and I finally gave in. Is it all right? Now that that epidemic is starting to wane, we'll step in and start talking about it.

Well, one of the reasons I'm always reticent to do something so on the forefront is like, this will be outdated by the time it's released in a couple of weeks. Yeah, I was looking at some of the dates on the material we used, and August 24th was the most recent data I could get on some stuff. I'm like, surely things have changed enough since then.

I want the newest numbers. Give them to me who, and they're like, let us go. And Roger Daltry said, no. That was a bad joke. Yeah, all over. So anyway, I mean, we're gonna give you the overview of what we know, but Zika is a, or at least the current outbreak is a pretty new thing,

and they don't know a ton about it. No. So there's a lot of mystery involved, and a lot is changing on a daily basis. So just take it with a grain of salt. Yes, that's not medical advice, though. And some deet. So you said it's a fairly recent, a fairly recent origin.

And a lot of people say, yeah, the weird stuff suddenly appearing around the world like chicken gunia, which is related to Zika, and Zika has to have something to do with climate change. There's definitely a thread that's going. Chicken, I was about to say, that's delicious. No, you're thinking of chicken tonight. Oh, okay.

Chicken gunia is not delicious. It's very painful. Yes, not making light of that. I was, but you know what I mean? Yeah, you're Chuck. Yeah. But it's actually, it was back in, I think, 1947, that some researchers from Europe and the United States

working in Uganda discovered this in a rhesus monkey named rhesus 766. It was born to be an experimental lab animal. Because it was named that. And they were looking for yellow fever, and they found instead this brand new virus that they'd never seen before. And so rhesus 766 became the first known carrier of Zika.

Yeah, and it's named after that forest in Uganda where they found this monkey. And they didn't find it in humans until 1952. And if you're thinking, and at that point it was Uganda, United, and Tanzania where they found it in humans. Right. And if you're thinking, 1947, 1952, guys, this is like breaking news.

Well, this outbreak is breaking news. Zika had not been previously a very big problem. No. Pre-2007. It was very localized to tropical Africa. Yeah, and not a lot of cases even. In fact, even in 2007, there were 14 cases documented, although they think it was probably more undocumented.

Yeah. And it wasn't until later in 2007 in Micronesia that they had sort of the first large outbreak, which was 49 cases, which isn't even that much. And then in 2014 in French Polynesia, 19,000 suspected cases. It's a lot bigger. And then now this one is much, much bigger.

Yeah, something like, again, I was really pressed to find hard figures, but it looks like something like a million people have been infected with Zika worldwide since 2015 is when this outbreak officially started. Right. And it's shown up in 67 countries since 2015, since the beginning of this outbreak. 67?

And I've seen so many different numbers. I was counting, too, and I came up with 58, but I was like, it's got to be more than that. I saw something in the 50s. Yeah. I saw 67, I think, on the World Health Organization website, which is why I was like, that's probably right. But while we were recording this,

literally another country could pop up. Yeah, actually, Singapore is in the midst of a new outbreak right now. As of September 20, they have 383 reported locally transmitted cases, which is pretty significant. But that's up from 54 on August 29. So less than a month, it's gone from 54 cases to 383. Wow.

I read, actually, a posted an article on our Facebook page yesterday about, I think it may have been from Slate, but the author's suggestion was that there's a lot of apathy in the United States toward Zika right now. And then there were a bunch of, I read the comments, and a lot of people had valid points. They were like, sort of a crying wolf situation. Like Ebola didn't turn out to be,

Mad Cow didn't turn out to be, none of these things turned out to be these devastating pandemics. Here in the US. Well, exactly. So the United States has a tendency to be a little US-centric. Sure. So I think the comments I got from our listeners at least

were like, you know what, we've heard this before. And so maybe there is some apathy. There's a huge fear that that is going to prevent a vaccine from being developed. That's why there's not an Ebola vaccine. Because the outbreak was contained. And everyone said, well, we don't need to fund, we don't need to start funneling emergency funds

toward vaccination research. Yeah. It's fine. It stayed basically in Africa. Hit a couple of people in America and Europe. But for the most part, it's over there. So we don't have to worry about it. And they're worried that the same thing is going to happen.

The end of October, mosquito season is going to decline. And the outbreak is going to naturally, in step, decline as well. And the public will and public funding for vaccinations, emergency vaccinations against Zika is going to dry up. The big problem is, we're eventually going to, those dire public warnings could eventually come to pass.

It might not have this past time with Ebola. It might not this time with Zika. But there's a definite possibility that it could happen. And we're going to be like, man, I really wish we would have stuck with it 10 years ago when we had the chance to develop a Zika vaccine. Yeah. It's a really narrow line, I think,

that with media reporting on stuff like avian flu and mad cow and to get people fired up and scared and preach fear. Or for people to know that there is a really good chance that this could be bad. And if it's not, then great. But then turn around and say, well, you got scared over nothing. Like, people should say, well, that's wonderful news

that it was smaller than we thought. Sure. But yes, you can lay a certain amount of the blame for this at the feet of the media for drumming up fear for ratings. And we should say that's not at all our intention with this. No, no. We're perfectly happy with our ratings normally. And I think it goes to say, most public health officials

are not panicking about this thing. And Zika itself is even like a pretty mild disease. The problem is, and the reason the World Health Organization created a global health emergency alert. They put everybody on high alert and started funneling money and attention towards Zika is because there is a cluster of microcephaly in Brazil, which is basically ground zero for this most recent outbreak.

And they're saying now there hasn't been any direct evidence, but there's so much correlation between being infected with the Zika virus while pregnant and having a baby with microcephaly afterward that they're like, yes, Zika causes microcephaly basically is the point we're at. Yeah, well, let's jump back a little bit. So if you get Zika, only 20% of the people infected

will show any symptoms at all. And these symptoms, just so you're looking out for them, which is always good to do, fever, red eyes, joint pain, bumpy rash, what else? You can have muscle pain and headache. Those apparently are less common symptoms. But that's about it. And like you said, I think four fifths of people

who have Zika are not going to show symptoms. And the ones who do have symptoms, probably they're not going to be bad enough to even go to the doctor for. Yeah, they only last a few days to a week. And it's not something that will kill you. And I think that's another reason that a lot of people have apathy is because it has

such a narrow focus of harm, which is specifically right now, at least, largely pregnant women's babies. That, and then there's one other thing that it's been linked to, although not quite as conclusively, is a Guillet-Barre syndrome, which is a really bizarre and mysterious disorder that comes out of nowhere where your immune system attacks the nerves in your body and can leave you paralyzed at worst,

but even milder on the spectrum can leave you laid up, bedridden, on a ventilator. Yeah, and the idea that they don't have any idea where it comes from is very unsettling. Yeah, and right now they've made a much stronger correlation with the microcephaly than they have the GBS. Because I'm going to try and pronounce that again. Guillet-Barre.

Yeah, it sounds easy. I know that because there's stuff you should know. Listen, remember the guy whose Get Well card we filled out? Oh, yeah. And I tweeted there's, I think, a GoFundMe to get a wheelchair access van because this guy is laid up. Wow. His name is John Say, he lives here in Atlanta.

He's a great guy. That's right. You can chip in for John if you want to. You can search John Say, S-A-Y-E, on GoFundMe.com, or go to GoFundMe.com-2-J-H-X-8-Y-K. But I should say, he didn't get it from Zika, but he has Guillet-Barre. They have no idea where it came from,

but all of a sudden one day your immune system just turns on your nerves and you're in trouble. Amazing. Yeah. All right, so let's talk a little bit about microcephaly. It is a birth defect. The characterization mainly is that your baby will have a very small head and as a result

an underdeveloped brain, or I don't know as a result, but those two things happen. Well, they think what happens is that the virus attacks stem cells in the developing brain and ends up preventing the brain from developing properly. And they think it's also possible, it simultaneously attacks structural proteins in the brain. So the existing tissue that's already been developed

can be destabilized, and then the stuff that's developing doesn't have a chance to develop correctly, in which case you have babies born with a lot of parts of their brain missing, right? Yeah, and I read this one interview on... It was an NPR interview. Yeah, it was from NPR and their health correspondent Rob Stein was talking about kind of like he went and visited Brazil

and visited these babies. And he said it was devastating and that some of the new research, they published some brain scan images from a bunch of these Brazilian babies. And they found some really weird things. Entire portions of their nervous systems are missing, just not there, like parts of the brain stem, parts of the spinal cord.

And then sometimes, in some cases, you think the baby's okay, and then they're born. And then you realize that parts of the brain are like full of fluid, so it has puffed up the brain, so it looks like it's a normal size. Unlike a scan or something, right? Yeah, but there's severe brain damage going on. Right, and so this leads to things like seizures,

developmental delay, intellectual disabilities, problems with moving around or balance, difficulty swallowing, hearing loss, vision problems. And typically, it's irreversible once it happens. Yeah, and super sad, he talks about the cries of these babies. He said they cry more, and not only more, but he said it's a really, you know,

if you have a baby, you know there are different cries, meaning different things, and one of the keys is to figure out what's what. And these cries, he said, are just abnormal in that they sound like anguishing pain is going on, and they're much harder to soothe, so that's just like heartbreaking stuff. It is, and so you can understand why couples

who are planning on getting pregnant, women who are pregnant, are just scared to death of the idea of contracting Zika. Sure. They've found that at first they thought that the first trimester was the most dangerous point, but now apparently after further study, they're like, yeah, there's really no safe point

in a pregnancy where you could get a Zika infection and probably be protected. Yeah, and I think they're airing on the side of caution because they're still so early in the game, they don't want to say like, nope, just the first trimester, they're kind of saying, we don't know, it could be any time during the pregnancy. And he, the NPR correspondent was,

he couched the whole thing and saying like, he wasn't raising public fears. I think he did it in the right way. He said, we don't know what this one's gonna look like. He said, it could just die out again and be a medium-sized outbreak that goes away. He said, or it could be worse. We just gotta like be responsible and see what happens.

Yeah, and they were saying also, Chuck, that the estimates of the incidents of microcephaly that come from Zika so far is between like one and 13%. Right. Which is an enormous increase in the incidents of microcephaly because it's apparently a fairly uncommon disorder and something like two to 12 babies per 10,000 births

in the United States are born with microcephaly normally. Under normal circumstances between two and 12 per 10,000 births, if 1%, just 1% of women who contract Zika give birth to a baby with microcephaly, that's like 10 times the normal rate. And that's the low end of the estimate. So again, like, yeah, if you're just some dude, some bachelor who's like, you know,

hanging around Margaritaville at the bar, and you get stung by a mosquito, and you contract Zika and you don't even have symptoms, who cares? Well, the idea that somebody else could have a baby with microcephaly, that's who cares. That's just making this a public health emergency. All right, well, let's take a quick break

and we'll get back and talk a little bit about how it is spread. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64?

Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia comes back.

Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to, hey dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast,

Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation?

If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man.

And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy.

You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Oh, just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

All right, Josh, you mentioned mosquitoes. I did. We've kind of danced around it, or maybe we already said, but we'll go and say it now. Yellow fever mosquitoes. The, uh... Aedes aegypti. There you go.

That's the little bugger responsible. Yeah. Uh, they're responsible not just for yellow fever and zika, but also dengue, and, um, uh, chicken gunya, too. Which is delicious. Again, you're thinking of chicken tonight. And only certain chicken tonight, too.

Um, did we talk... We did a really good podcast, I remember, on mosquitoes. It was great. But did we talk about... I know we talked a little bit, but I can't remember when we landed on the idea of eradicating them outright. Eradicator. And are they one of those that we can get rid of

and it doesn't have some big ripple effect? We can't say that we could get rid of anything, any species of anything, wholesale, and not have really detrimental effects. But isn't the mosquito one of those that people, like, researchers think we might? Well, yeah. Get rid of without losing, you know?

It's not like losing the honeybee. There are some serious proposals to get rid of mosquitoes as part of treating Zika. I just hope that's the case. I hate them, I hate them, I hate them. Oh, that we get rid of them? Yeah, I think it would be great. They carry, I mean, beyond the stupid nuisance that, you know,

I, you know, my privilege self feels at my house. I'm talking about, you know, in countries where they spread serious disease. Right. It's a real, real problem. It is a real problem. And so I guess we might as well talk about this. There's a couple of proposals

that the World Health Organization... Who? Right. That was good, though. You almost got me. They're looking into and are planning on deploying and are actually, there's some pilot projects. One of them we talked about in the Mosquito episode,

which was releasing transgenic mosquitoes into the wild. Right. And so these things carry a genetic, artificially inserted genetic mutation that prevents their offspring from surviving to maturity and therefore they're unable to reproduce. Right. So you release these genetically altered mosquitoes

into the wild and after several generations, the mosquito population starts to die off. Wonderful. There's one, there's a test pilot by this company called Oxitec working out of England, I believe. I'm not quite sure exactly where. But they created a genetically modified mosquito back in 2002. And part of the project, part of the proving test experiment...

Sure. That's what they call it. There's ellipses in everything to indicate the pauses. But they released some in Sao Paulo, Brazil as part of a pilot project in April last year. Yeah. But in January of this year, there'd been an 82% reduction in wild mosquito larva.

Let's do it. So it works. The problem is, is I think that is the pinnacle of human hubris. The idea that we can just get rid of an entire species and there not be some sort of ripple effect that we couldn't foresee that we're going to be like, oh, we shouldn't have done that. There's an alternative one.

So yes, you're inconvenienced, right? Yeah. There's a mosquito and it sucks. See? That was an accident. All right. I'll buy that. But the bigger problem is for people who are suffering

and dying from diseases like malaria or dengue fever, something like that. Well, there's an alternative to getting rid of mosquitoes. And it's actually treating mosquitoes with something called wallbachia, which is a bacteria that infects the gut of a mosquito and actually prevents the Zika virus from living there. Okay.

So you've still got the mosquito. Yes. So you're not completely altering the ecosystem. I'm still inconvenienced, but lives are being saved. But you're getting right. Which is what really matters. Exactly. Yeah.

So that one seems to me like a little smarter. And they're working on that too. They've released a bunch in Brazil. And so these artificially infected mosquitoes go out and they infect other mosquitoes out in the wild. And pretty soon all of a sudden Zika is like, oh man, I remember the good times and they're gone. Well, it seems like the mosquito is one that they could probably

research enough to see if it would have an impact if it left us. Yeah. But off the top of my head, I'm thinking, well, bats eat mosquitoes. And all of a sudden you're taking away a food source from an animal that we love. That's just off the top of your head. But then you think like, but do they need mosquitoes or they

just like, well, they're there. Or would they just move on to something else? But then do they decimate some other thing that might be useful? You know, I get the ripple effect. Like they start going after house cats. They never know while they already do that. Yes. There's a real possibility for a ripple effect that would have

catastrophic unforeseen consequences. And also, I mean, I am totally for getting rid of mosquitoes. Yeah. If we know for certain that there wouldn't be that ripple effect, I'd be on board 100%. I'd go out there and start squashing them myself. Yeah. But I think what you're saying is that there's no way to know

for certain. Right. Which, you know, is valid. Yeah. So one thing about this mosquito, and I know you know a bit more than me about how it's transmitted, but looking at this guy, this particular yellow fever mosquito, it has white markings on the leg.

And like all mosquitoes, they're active in the morning and the evening, tend to die down a bit in the heat of the day. And then at night, you know, go off and hide. Right. But how does it actually transmit beyond just sticking that needle in? So I guess some mosquito got a hold of Rhesus 766 one day. Yeah.

Or something, some other carrier like that. And the mosquito itself becomes infected, although it doesn't have, as far as we know, any symptoms from Zika. Oh, interesting. So it's not just that it's carrying the infected blood. They're actually sick. Yeah. And that's a big point because if a mosquito comes and sucks

your blood, it's not transmitting any of its own blood in there. So when it sucks your blood and you have Zika, right? The mosquito puts its, what is it? Proboscis. Thank you, man. That one, that and deleterious always elude me. When it puts its proboscis in your skin to suck out your

blood, it also salivates in there, which is like it anesthetizes you. Yeah. And if you have Zika, that Zika goes from your blood into the mosquito's gut, where the Zika begins to colonize the mosquito, infect the mosquito, and ultimately it makes it into its salivary glands. So when that mosquito inserts its proboscis into the next

person's arm, it uses the saliva, I should say she, because it's always a female mosquito that bites you. She uses saliva to anesthetize your arm and that's where the Zika gets into you. Okay, because they have found that the virus lives in saliva. Yeah, that's a big deal, but they're not, you know, they're still trying to figure out like exactly all the

ways it could be transmitted. They found it in saliva, they know it can be transmitted through, well, through sexy time. Right. It can live in semen for seemingly longer than in blood. Yeah, so when it's in your blood, it stays there for like a week and then they're like, okay, where does it go?

Obviously, it stays in the body because they did find it in some guy's semen. Was it like 10 weeks after he was infected with Zika? Yeah. And they know that you can get it sexually and through mosquitoes, but they've also found it in saliva, vaginal secretions. I think you're in definitely breast milk.

Yeah. Which is another fear among mothers too. The one, the sexual transmission, I think the first couple of cases, one was in Texas and a man was infected after having sex with someone who came back from Venezuela that was infected. So, you know, a little scary, right? And here's one of the rubs is in 2011, as far as

intercourse. There was a guy named, a researcher named Brian Foy who published a paper. This was five years ago in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, which is a great read at a dinner party. Yeah. I'll tell you.

Just pull that out and get the conversation going. Right. But he argued that there was evidence that you could transmit Zika sexually through intercourse and he said, we need to study this more. And it basically was denied. And they said, you know what, this is too obscure disease to give funding, which, you know, may have

been the case. It's sort of a tough thing. You can't throw money at everything, but it is frustrating when this guy was on this five years ago. Right. And it could be a lot further along as far as learning more about the sexual transmission.

Yep. You know? Yep. Zika just wasn't hot enough back then. People are saying like, how do we stop this? For love of God, think of the children. Yeah. Well, the mosquito part is a big part of it.

And we talked a little bit about eradicating mosquitoes, but, you know, all the normal safe things, safe measures you can take with mosquitoes, you should obviously do if you're in a place where Zika might be more rampant. And listen to our mosquito podcast for that. But, you know, insect repellent, long sleeve shirts and pants, try to not be outside during

those times of day where they're around more. Yeah. So all that stuff. But a vaccine is what we're really looking for. Yeah. You know? There's apparently a few companies who are really trying to race a vaccine to market and

get fast tracked. I think a company in India is the top contender right now. And then you found one that seems pretty legit too. So as best I can figure, the NIH has a division called the NIAID. Right.

The National Institute for Allergic and Infectious Diseases, I think. That sounds right. But they are working on a vaccine and they're using a similar approach to what they have been successful with with West Nile. And right now it is safe in the phase one of the clinical trials and they're trying to

push forward. And what they're doing is, and I don't fully understand this. So I'm just going to kind of read this part. But they said their vaccine has a small circular piece of DNA called a plasmid that they've engineered to contain genes that code for the proteins of the virus.

Then when you inject that, the cells read those genes and make those virus proteins. And then they self-assemble into the virus-like particles. Then that gets that immune system kicked into gear. Right. So you're putting in basically an

artificial version that's not infectious. Yeah, that's the key, I think. Yeah. Because I mean like you couldn't possibly transmit that artificial Zika virus to anybody else. But it will still get your body to mountain immune response.

And that would mean that when you actually do come in contact with the actual Zika virus, it'd be toast. Yeah. And this is just one of the vaccines that they're continuing in a trial run. But I think, I mean, there are several that they're, like you said, a couple in India

they're trying to get through. Like a lot of people are hard at work trying to conquer this thing via vaccinations. Yeah. And again, there's a real tremendous fear that the public will and public funding will dry up when this makes it out of the news cycle, when it's dropped from

the news cycle, you know? Yeah. And speaking of funding, well, should we take a break? That's a good little tease. Speaking of funding. Speaking of, the stage coach is about to go off the cliff.

All right. We'll be right back. We're going to use Hey Dude as our starting off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends

to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal?

No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? You know, you're going to be on the road on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of

taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass.

The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right

place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael.

Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Uh-huh. Kids, relationships, life in general

can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Oh, just stop now. If so, tell everybody, ya everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. Okay, we're back and Chuck, we're talking about funding. Yes. Uh, and not only do, is funding possibly gonna be a problem when the Zika, um,

outbreak goes away, which it inevitably will, we hope. Yeah. Um, there's actually a huge problem with funding right now. Yeah. The, the CDC head, uh, Thomas Frieden set his name.

Yeah, I think that's it. Um, he took to the airwaves and said, uh, guys, we're running out of money and we need Congress to come back in session and give us some ASAP. Yeah, for Zika. Yeah. Uh, so the timeline on this is last

year, early last year, uh, President Obama, uh, said Congress, can we have 1.9 billion, uh, in emergency funds for Zika to help fight Zika? And, uh, Congress said no. Um, they said, wait, wait, Obama, are you asking? Well, yeah, I'm asking.

They said no. Yeah. The, uh, controlling, uh, Republican said that they said we want more accountability for the money, uh, where it's going. And why don't you take some of the money left over from Ebola and other projects and use that instead?

Or they said, or we could do this. We could take money away from Planned Parenthood if you want money for Zika. And then the Democrats were like, well, that's not very nice. And, uh, it turned political, no surprise. But, um, they, uh, CDC did, in fact, end up taking money from Ebola.

I think, um, how much was it? $38 million from Ebola funding and $44 million from emergency response funding, which is really scary. Yeah. Because that means if something really happened here in the U.S. Uh, in terms of Zika, they may not,

literally may not have the money to send teams of people to wherever that is. Yeah. So they're nicking money from these other programs. They're saying we really need this to be seriously funded. And, uh, right now, uh, politics

is getting in the way. Yeah. Which is pretty sad. Of course. Because again, think of the children. Yeah. And hopefully this will change and they'll get the funding they need.

But right now, I mean, Fried, I don't know if he's crying wolf too much to try and get the public worked up, but he seems to think that it's pretty dire and that they need these resources. So I'm just, I'm taking the man at his word at this point.

He said that of the $220 million that they had allocated for Zika, $20 million is already out the door. And if they've already used another, um, you know, $44 million from, uh, emergency response funding, $38 million from Ebola, uh, I would, I would guess that,

yes, there's some problems coming. Yeah. Um, the CDs, speaking of the CDC, they actually, um, did something as a result of the Zika outbreak that they've never done before. They issued a travel warning, advisory against travel to a place

in America. Yeah. They've never done that before. It's always been somewhere else outside of the country. Uh-huh. But, um, when I think in, uh, August, the beginning of August,

when there was an outbreak of Zika, including a local, uh, transmission, which means that it wasn't, uh, up to that point, there were a couple thousand cases of Zika in the United States, but all of them were people who went to the Caribbean or to Africa

or to the Americas or to Southeast Asia, got bit by an egetis, Egypti mosquito, and then came back. And then we're at risk of possibly transmitting it sexually or of a mosquito biting them and spreading it. Well, that apparently finally happened because someone in Miami was bit by

a mosquito and contracted Zika. Yeah. So that means that it is, it had entered the mosquito, the wild mosquito population. And that's what really started to get, um, the CDC and others worried. Yeah, Florida is, uh,

Florida's tough right now. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's not like rampant or anything, but there, the cases are, are accumulating to the point where people are getting a little worried. Yeah. And, and again, if you go to, uh,

the Caribbean and come back with Zika, they, they weren't too worried about that. What was worrying them is, is the, the idea of mosquitoes getting it because they've said humans are not the vectors of transmission that we need to be worried about. It's the mosquitoes. Yeah.

Well, and Puerto Rico is a big problem right now. Um, in fact, the name of this article I got was Puerto Rico is ground zero. Uh, it's not literally ground zero, but as far as the U S is concerned, it probably, you know, they're American citizens and at this rate, 2000 people a week

are getting infected in Puerto Rico. And they said, if this holds 25% of their entire population by the end of the year, could be infected with Zika. Uh, more than 1300 pregnant women. Wait, wait, I'm sorry. Did you see 25%?

Yeah. It says a quarter of their 3.5 million, uh, population could get it by the end of this year. And, you know, we're in almost September. Wow. So, uh, more than 1300 women, pregnant women have tested positive. And, um...

Man, I feel so bad for those women. Yeah. I'll bet they are losing their minds with just fear right now. Sure. That is so sad. As if it, you know, pregnancy isn't, you know, worse than enough. Right, right.

Yeah. Uh, and there are a lot of problems in Puerto Rico or a lot of challenges at least. Um, it rains a lot. There are a lot of puddles, a lot of mosquitoes. Um, one of the big, they're in a financial crisis and one of their main sources of income is tourism. And this is not helping their tourism in any way.

Yeah. So, uh, they need funding for real. And, um, they were gonna do some mass spraying, but the people said no. Uh, it's dangerous. There was... Well, apparently also mosquitoes have developed a lot of, uh, tolerance to that over the decades too.

Well, yeah. It nearly is effective. They found, uh, one certain insecticide that they said is working a lot better, but, uh, there's a lot of resistance to it. So, um, right now the CDC says if you're pregnant, don't go to Puerto Rico and, uh, wait at least two months before trying to get pregnant after you come home. Right.

If that's in your plans. Uh-huh. And, uh, I've even seen some people say if you go to Puerto Rico, you know, don't have sex or make sure you practice safe sex. Yeah. But none of that bodes well for their tourism industry. No. Which is where a lot of their dough comes from.

Come to Puerto Rico and don't have sex afterward. Yeah. That's not a good slogan. It's definitely not. Um, so I want to specify the CDC didn't say that you should not go to Florida. They said that you should not go to this particular spot in North Miami. Right. Or just north of downtown Miami.

There's a neighborhood that was kind of ground zero for this outbreak. But Florida in and of itself is suffering, uh, as far as tourism goes. Sure. Um, or on the precipice of really suffering, depending on how this outbreak goes down there. Um, and as a result, like Walt Disney World and Universal Florida and SeaWorld all now are just kind of casually giving you a, uh, small aerosol can of complimentary, um, mosquito spray. Yeah.

Uh, whenever you come into the park. Yeah. They're not, um, and probably rightfully so they're not putting up signs that say Zika because that would be a PR disaster. Right. But I think it's pretty clear what's going on is there. Yeah. Like here's your ticket and here's your stub and here's your deep.

Deep. Mickey Mouse brand deep. Yeah. Probably so. So Chuck, how do you, uh, get diagnosed with Zika if you are worried about it? Well, one of the, um, like a lot of these, uh, diseases that you might catch abroad, one of the first things they do is say, where have you been lately? Have you traveled?

And if you say, yeah, if you say, well, I was in Brazil and that's another thing too. Let's have the Olympics. So the whole world comes together at ground zero for the current Zika outbreak. That was a big worry, but apparently no one associated with the Olympics has tested positive for Zika. I was wondering about it. It's been over for a couple of weeks now. That's good.

It's been over for an erupting. Oh, no, I was actually, I was wondering about that because I knew it was a big fear going in. Sure. Um, yeah. So they're going to say, where have you been traveling? Uh, ask what kind of symptoms and we already went over those and then they're going to just basically give you blood in urine tests and, uh, that'll let them know pretty quick

what's going on. Yeah. I think they can actually detect the virus itself in your blood, but again, it leaves the blood after a week and starts going other places. And once that's, um, the case, I think they can do saliva tests and detect antibodies in your saliva and urine. Yeah. They should just do all those tests.

Like, don't even ask me where I've been. Just take some blood and right now or maybe ask where I've been cause that doesn't take long. Yeah. But do it as you're drawing my blood. Well, these days, I mean, I mean, it doesn't really matter where you've been increasingly because it's starting to creep up and Chuck, actually we have to say this is really important. Before you, um, take anything, if you think you have Zika, you have to be diagnosed with

Zika before you can take NSAIDs, right? Like Advil or a leave or a Motrin, something like that. Yeah. Because it's possible you actually have dengue fever, right? In which case, because the symptoms are very similar. And if you do have dengue and you cannot take NSAIDs because, uh, dengue, um, blocks the action of platelets, which are clotting that will help with clotting, right? Right.

And so to do NSAIDs. So you put NSAIDs and dengue together and you can hemorrhage pretty easily. Yeah. That's not good. Yeah. Now, if you're worried about this and you're in, uh, Michigan, you probably don't need to unless you get it through sexual transmission or Canada. Totally out of the question again, except through sexual transmission because this is very much

out of the range of the agitas, the gypti, and mosquito. Yeah. Um, it's just, uh, parts of the South, the American South, Southeast, um, a little bit, it creeps up a little bit into the Midwest. Um, and then all basically of South America, Africa, Southeast Asia, um, California, yeah, parts of California, there's a really, um, helpful map. If you're just panicking right now, uh, on the World Health Organization website, which you shouldn't do.

Don't panic. Yeah. Don't panic. There's, uh, no cause to panic. No. Uh, please don't panic. No. I think the best practice is to educate yourself by listening to this and, um, then spreading

fear to everyone you know, just kidding. Great advice. That was a top, top notch way to end this one. Yeah, be very, uh, calm and everything and just spread fear. Right. Like we just did. Uh, you got anything else? No.

Um, how much of this is out of date already? Do you think? Probably 15%. That's not too bad. I can live with that. Yeah. We get 15% wrong anyway. Okay.

Uh, if you want to know more about Zika, well, to surf the web, man, there's plenty out there. And since I said surf the web, it's time for listener mail. Uh, I'm going to call this bacon buddy. Remember, we were talking about bacon buddy. Yeah. The B T T Y. Yep.

Uh, which I didn't know what it was. I didn't either. But now we do. Cause our good friends in the United Kingdom have written this. Yeah. I wish somebody would have brought this up before we went cause I would have been on the lookout for one of these. Well, well, I'll get to it.

Uh, hey guys, can't believe you have never heard of the amazing bacon buddy. Just that name sounds great. A little bacon buddy, even though it's spelled differently, especially if you've recently been to England, home of the buddy. The word buddy is a UK British shorthand for buttered sandwich or roll. Uh, like, uh, like, you know, remember when I was saying chippy for fish and chips? Yeah. They just have cute ways of shortening things.

So a bacon buddy is essentially a bacon sandwich, uh, or roll with a, on a roll with a lovely helping of butter. Uh, or if you're me, you let it with HP sauce. Yeah. That could be good too. They love their HP sauce. Uh-huh. HP.

Is that what you say? Uh, another cracking buddy you might have heard of in the past are chip buddies as you call French fries. So the next time you're in the UK, pop into any fish and chip shop, uh, ask for a chip buddy. You get a crusty roll loaded with, uh, chips covered in vinegar and salt. So bad for you, but so tasty on a slightly separate note, Chuck's hearing Chuck's love for mayonnaise makes me so happy as I am also slightly addicted to the stuff.

When I was younger, I would eat what I called a cheesy dunkers. I love this dude. Uh, this was essentially cheddar cheese cut into long, thick strips, which I would then dunk into my pot of helmets, mayonnaise, man. Fancy dunk them all. Uh, great show as usual, guys. Keep doing what you're doing. That's from Kyle Chandler from Kent, England, but right now in South Korea and two things

I would add. I was totally wrong about aioli. It is garlic based by definition. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I thought. I didn't know that. I didn't stand up for myself.

You were fine. Okay. And two, I've had a bacon buddy. I didn't know it. No. I was at the Sky Lounge at, uh, at, uh, Heathrow. Stop rubbing that in my face. What?

The Sky Lounge membership you have. It can be yours. But I want it for free. Well, here's the thing, dude. You eat and drink well over $450 in a year worth of free stuff in these Sky Lounge's. Oh yeah, I could. I could probably do that in a visit. I was at one the other day.

I just went to Cleveland, had two Bloody Marys and a buffet meal for free. It's like $35. Yeah. And an airport? Yeah. I'm telling you, I'm keeping tally. Like, I'm going to make my money back on this. You have a little ledger.

I do. Yeah. You put on your little, uh, banker's visor with the green bill. One bacon buddy, one whiskey. How was the bacon buddy? Well, it was delicious. And, um, someone else wrote in the bacon that they have over there is different than what we have over here.

Yeah. It's like a fatback or something. Yeah. They call it streaky bacon. That's a big wide, hammy chunks. Oh man. And I got, it wasn't called a bacon buddy on the menu, it was just called bacon on a roll.

Cause nobody would know what you're talking about if they call it bacon buddy. Yeah. And, uh, so I did, I had a bacon buddy and I loaded it with butter and it was, oh man. See in America we have that with egg and cheese all wrapped up, but just the bacon is enough for them. Sure. And it was delicious. Yeah, we call that the Ignormous Sandwich.

Oh yeah. Burger King. I haven't had that one. Oh, you haven't. It's basically everything you could possibly eat for breakfast on like a hoagie roll. You say. Yeah. Yeah.

Uh, if you want to get in touch with Chuck or me, you can hang out with us on Twitter at S-Y-S-K podcast. You can look me up at Josh M. Clark. You can hang out with Chuck at Charles W. Chuck Bryant on Facebook or our official page is facebook.com slash stuff you should know. Send us an email to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com and as always join us at our home on the web, the slightly klugey stuff you should know.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com.

On the podcast, Hey Dude the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever

you listen to podcasts.