181–190 of 213 posts
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> You then also have to realize that a lot of those visitors displaced people who did not travel to Rio because of the olympics If, as seems to be the case, you're looking at the anticipated percent increase in travel, then you've already included this displacement.
True, but how do you know how they reached their 500,000 figure?
Ever since the news of Zika causing microcephaly came up I have been wondering whether it's a net benefit to humanity/homeostasis if we were to exterminate Aedis Aegypti. Can Zika spread among humans already? It would seem like a huge risk to the future of humanity if this infectious disease interferes with reproduction. What's the worst-case scenario for letting Aedis Aegypti live? Is it better than the worst-case s…
Zika is a big threat to fetuses that are gestating while the mother is infected. After a woman gains immunity, there is little threat to any babies she might carry. So it is a very serious concern at the moment, but it is not any sort of existential problem. It will likely not even be a medium term problem (there is early research towards vaccines).
It is way too early to make that claim.
You're also ignoring the Guillain–Barré cases that are suspected to have been caused by Zika.
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That video is pretty bad. One, it looks like the same kids over and over so the cops clearly do not care. Two, I was wondering what the gun laws were there until some guy chased them with a hand gun. If someone is looking to go have some fun fighting it seems like walking around with a cardboard iPhone might be the ticket. I'm only sort of kidding. I know if some kid grabbed my wife while we were walking down the str…
My colleague had his phone stolen as he was talking on it by two guys on a moped - that was in Bond Street, London.
I've had a phone pickpocketed from me too.
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Source? The WHO information about it doesn't sounds like it has to feel all that bad http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/zika/en/ People with Zika virus disease can have symptoms that can include mild fever, skin rash, conjunctivitis, muscle and joint pain, malaise or headache. […] Treatment Zika virus disease is usually relatively mild and requires no specific treatment. People sick with Zika virus should get…
Just replying to one for all of the above: Zika symptoms has nothing to do with Dengue, it's really awful, the person cannot even walk right, the person stays bad in bed then they get better slowly, it's a lot different from Dengue, but also depends because there's a type 3 of Dengue which is almost the same as Zika.
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Yep, N-fold = N times http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tenfold http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/twofold
I guess I got confused since it seems to be used for emphasis, as though tenfold really meant more than 10x. Anyway, glad to get that straight.
Come to Rio - watch the Olympians swim in the very dirty water they promised to clean but didn't! Catch zika, then fill out the police and insurance forms after you get robbed! Seriously though, Rio is a very very dangerous place to visit even for brasileros, let alone tourists, and the zika and chinkungya virus outbreaks are not helping either. Watch it on TV, from far away.
There are obviously many factors that come into play. The biggest ones are not what you expect: how "gringo" (foreigner) you look, and are you walking around with Brazilian friends? Negatives on both counts will increase your odds of "bad stuff" happening to you dramatically. Also, if you come from a safer place where people do stuff such as routinely leave cars and homes unlocked, casually hail any cab anywhere and walk around with expensive phones(or cameras), you're in for a big surprise.
The best safety advice I can give is: assume there is no police whatsoever in the country and act accordingly, even if you do happen to see police around. They are unlikely to do anything to help you. May not even investigate if you die.
You should still be mostly OK, statistically speaking. The problem is that, when bad things happen, they tend to be really bad. You are very very lucky that if if is something simple as a purse snatching (as I have seen in other comments). Still very lucky if there's a knife involved. Expect multiple armed thugs in motorcycles, even if you can't see everyone involved, assume there's backup for the criminals.
One thing that many have overlooked in the comments is that for Rio and Sao Paulo, the crime trend is down. In São Paulo particularly, I've even seen people casually browsing on their iPads while sitting at bar tables next to a busy road, or people talking on their iphones in barely lit streets near the city center. That was unthinkable a few years ago.
However, the trend for other regions is that crime rates are rising dramatically. Some regions, in the Northeast particularly, are worse than some war zones. Avoid, specially if you have no Brazilian friends.
Disclaimer: I am Brazilian, lived for 30+ years in the northeast. Fled to the very south, to a very good neighborhood, wife witnessed a drug-related execution in front of our building the week we arrived. Nothing came out of it btw, didn't even make the news. Where I used to live, 20+ violent deaths in a weekend are not worth newspaper pages anymore. Then fled to the Bay Area.
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Just replying to one for all of the above: Zika symptoms has nothing to do with Dengue, it's really awful, the person cannot even walk right, the person stays bad in bed then they get better slowly, it's a lot different from Dengue, but also depends because there's a type 3 of Dengue which is almost the same as Zika.
Both of the linked sources talk explicitly about Zika and not Dengue. What is the source/basis for your claim that they are wrong?
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Yes, Rio sees many visitors regularly. What Rio does not see is an influx of visitors from nearly every country on earth. It's that spread that is the problem. The financial impact on hosting the games is already negative for host cities. That's no longer debatable without ignoring fact. Your argument that all the experts studying the Zika epidemic and drawing the ever more cemented conclusion that this is a very ser…
But will you at least concede that THIS is what should have been the focus of the article? While perfectly valid, all of the scientific discussion around Zika is mostly irrelevant to the point the author was trying to make -- the true variable of interest is how the games shape the quantity of visitors and the distribution of those visitors around the world. But there's hardly a line in the article about that -- just…
I'm sorry, but there seems to be a bit of a logical disconnect here. This looks like a knee-jerk pattern match on the "all it takes" phrase. My understanding is that this is factual in this case. That is how it works with a lot of diseases -- with many kinds of self-replicators -- all it takes is one. That is how it works with various insect and fungal blights that have ravaged California forests. A public awareness of the relative risks is a public good.
Single patients flown to the US from the Ebola stricken regions did not spread infection, because of the particulars of infection mechanisms. Zika can be spread by mosquito. If the Olympics increase the traffic to resource-thin countries with populations of the right kind of mosquito, this should be considered carefully.
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This is a statement from someone that doesn't know Zika really, Zika the person feels really sick and feels their joints hurt a lot, is not like this is something that can go by without noticing! This is a really a statement from someone that doesn't understand what's Zika, people that don't understand what it's and what are the symptoms.
If Zika is similar to dengue, then only some people get those symptoms. Other people just feel something like they have influenza without the sneezes and the runny nose. Those diseases spread easily precisely because many people have it and don't stay home with mosquito net and repellents. They just go on with their lives, transmitting the disease to other people who may be more vulnerable and have worse symptoms.