How Much Do You Really Know About Yellow Fever?
Spring is almost here, which means the mosquitos that are currently spreading an absurd number of illnesses to humans, are going to be coming out in full swing. This is also when they mate, which means those females will be looking for tasty human blood for their precious little eggs that are probably chilling out in a watering can or shallow puddle in your very own yard. Now, while most of the 200,000 cases of yellow fever that crop up each year, 90% of them occur in Africa. Out of those cases approximately 30,000 end in death.
However, the mosquito that transmits yellow fever is the same one that has been passing along the Zika virus for the past year, the Aedes aegypti mosquito. The number of aedes mosquitos in the U.S. has been growing steadily every year, as has the number of yellow fever cases, so don’t fool yourself into thinking it couldn’t possibly happen to you. Now, a vaccine was developed, but most people don’t get it unless they are taking a trip to a country like Africa where the threat of contracting it is much greater. The biggest problem with a mosquito-borne disease like yellow fever is that one person can be bitten by a mosquito abroad and contract the illness, but then once they return home local mosquitos then contract it by drinking that person’s blood and then pass it on to other humans. So, it’s not difficult for this disease to travel vast distances.
So, how do you know if you’ve caught yellow fever? Symptoms tend to appear around 3 to 6 days after a person has been infected. Initial symptoms include dizziness, headache, nausea, vomiting, fever, loss of appetite, and muscle aches. These will generally go away in just a few days. However, there is a second stage called the toxic stage that around 15% of patients also develop. These more severe symptoms such as recurring fever, abdominal pain, bloody vomit, kidney failure, liver failure, jaundice, delirium, and number of other that, along with the ones I mentioned, can turn fatal for 20% to 50% of those that enter the toxic stage. And treatment doesn’t include much more than simply trying to keep the patient hydrated, in a stable condition, and as comfortable as they can be.
The lesson here is to not even chance getting bitten by mosquitos in this world, because God knows, yellow fever is just one of the many prizes you could get. I’d definitely rather deal with an icky smell and sticky skin than any of those symptoms I described above.
Have you or anyone you know ever gotten yellow fever? What was it like and how did they or you come out the other side?