Rainbow Six (1998)

http://www.e-reading.org.ua/bookreader.php/71211/Clancy_-_Rainbow_Six.html


Rainbow Six (1998)

Tom Clancy


CHAPTER 33

THE GAMES BEGIN


The facility was filling rapidly. He'd been alone on the fourth floor the first day, Popov reflected, but not now. At least six of the nearby rooms were occupied, and looking outside he could see that the parking lot was filling up with private cars that had been driven in that day. He figured it was a two- or three-day drive from New York, and so the order to bring people out had been given recently-but where were the moving vans? Did the people intend to live here indefinitely? The hotel building was comfortable for a hotel, but that was not the same as comfort in a place of permanent residence. Those people with small children might quickly go mad with their little ones in such close proximity all the time. He saw a young couple talking with another, and caught part of the conversation as he walked past. They were evidently excited about the wild game they'd seen driving in. Yes, deer and such animals were pretty, Popov thought in mute agreement, but hardly worth so animated a conversation on the subject. Weren't these trained scientists who worked for Horizon Corporation? They spoke like Young Pioneers out of Moscow for the first time, goggling at the wonders of a state farm. Better to see the grand opera house in Vienna or Paris, the former KGB officer thought, as he entered his room. But then he had another thought. These people were all lovers of nature. Perhaps he would examine their interests himself. Weren't there videotapes in his room?… Yes, he found them and slipped one into his VCR, hitting the PLAY button and switching on his TV.

Ah, he saw, the ozone layer, something people in the West seemed remarkably exercised about. Popov thought he would begin to show concern when the Antarctic penguins who lived under the ozone hole started dying of sunburn. But he watched and listened anyway. It turned out that the tape had been produced by some group called Earth First, and the content, he soon saw, was as polemic in content as anything ever produced by the USSR's state run film companies. These people were indeed very exercised about the subject, calling for the end of various industrial chemicals and how would air-conditioning work without them? Give up air-conditioning to save penguins from too much ultraviolet radiation? What was this rubbish? That tape lasted fifty-two minutes by his watch. The next one he selected, produced by the same group, was concerned with dams. It started off by castigating the "environmental criminals" who'd commissioned and built Hoover Dam on the Colorado River. But that was a power dam, wasn't it? Didn't people need electricity? Wasn't the electricity generated by power dams the cleanest there was? Wasn't this very videotape produced in Hollywood using the very electricity that this dam produced? Who were these people-

–and why were their tapes here in his hotel room? Popov wondered. Druids? The word came to him again. Sacrificers of virgins, worshipers of trees-if that, then they'd come to a strange place. There were precious few trees to be seen on the wheat covered plains of western Kansas.

Druids? Worshipers of nature? He let the tape rewind and checked out some of the periodicals and found one published by this Earth First group.

What sort of name was that? Earth First-ahead of what? Its articles screamed in outrage over various insults to the planet. Well, strip mining was an ugly thing, he had to admit. The planet was supposed to be beautiful and appreciated. He enjoyed the sight of a green forest as much as the next man, and the same was true of the purple rock of treeless mountains. If there were a God, then He was a fine artist, but… what was this?

Humankind, the second article said, was a parasitic species on the surface of the planet, destroying rather than nurturing. People had killed off numerous species of animals and plants, and in doing so, people had forfeited their right to be here… he read on into the polemic.

This was errant rubbish, Popov thought. Did a gazelle faced with an attacking lion call for the police or a lawyer to plead his right to be alive? Did a salmon swimming upstream to spawn protest against the jaws of the bear that plucked it from the water and then stripped it apart to feed its own needs? Was a cow the equal of a man? In whose eyes?

It had been a matter of almost religious faith in the Soviet Union that as formidable and as rich as Americans were, they were mad, cultureless, unpredictable people. They were greedy, they stole wealth from others, and they exploited such people for their own selfish gain. He'd learned the falsehood of that propaganda on his first field assignment abroad, but he'd also learned that the Western Europeans, as well, thought Americans to be slightly mad-and if this Earth First group were representative of America, then surely they were right. But Britain had people who spray-painted those who wore fur coats. Mink had a right to live, they said. A mink? It was a well-insulated rodent, a tubular rat with a fine coat of fur. This rodent had a right to be alive? Under whose law?

That very morning they'd objected to his suggestion to kill the - what was it? Prairie dogs, yet another tubular rat, and one whose holes could break the legs of the horses they rode-but what was it they'd said? They- belonged there, and the horses and people did not? Why such solicitude for a rat? The noble animals, the hawks and bears, the deer, and those strange-looking antelope, they were pretty, but rats? He'd had similar talks with Brightling and Henriksen, who also seemed unusually loving of the things that lived and crawled outside. He wondered how they felt about mosquitoes and fire ants.

Was this druidic rubbish the key to his large question?










http://harvardpublichealthreview.org/off-the-podium-why-rios-2016-olympic-games-must-not-proceed/

HARVARD PUBLIC HEALTH REVIEW


Off the Podium: Why Public Health Concerns for Global Spread of Zika Virus Means That Rio de Janeiro’s 2016 Olympic Games Must Not Proceed

Amir Attaran, DPhil, LLB, MS. Faculty of Medicine and Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa

Brazil’s Zika problem is inconveniently not ending. The outbreak that began in the country’s northeast has reached Rio de Janeiro, where it is flourishing. Clinical studies are also mounting that Zika infection is associated not just with pediatric microcephaly and brain damage, but also adult conditions such as Guillain-Barré syndrome and acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, which are debilitating and sometimes fatal.

Simply put, Zika infection is more dangerous, and Brazil’s outbreak more extensive, than scientists reckoned a short time ago. Which leads to a bitter truth: the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games must be postponed, moved, or both, as a precautionary concession. There are five reasons.

First, Rio de Janeiro is more affected by Zika than anyone expected, rendering earlier assumptions of safety obsolete. When in January the International Olympic Committee declared Rio a “safe environment” for the Games, it was speculating, because Brazil’s Ministry of Health temporized until February to declare Zika a notifiable disease and begin counting cases. Now with those data finally available, the situation seems not so safe: Rio de Janeiro’s suspected Zika cases are the highest of any state in in Brazil (26,000), and its Zika incidence rate is the fourth worst (157 per 100,000). Or in other words: according to the Brazil’s official data, Rio is not on the fringes of the outbreak, but inside its heart.

Many have suggested that Zika will follow the pattern of other mosquito-borne diseases and decline during Rio’s winter months of July to September. While that is probably true, nobody actually knows because Rio has never experienced a winter with Zika before. If one assumes, reasonably, that Zika will behave like dengue fever, because they are caused by related viruses and transmitted by the same Aedes aegypti mosquito, then Zika transmission will ebb but not vanish in Rio’s winter, just as dengue did in winters past.

However, nobody knows how deep winter’s ebb will be, especially this year, because Rio is undergoing a surprising and unexplained disease surge: in Rio de Janeiro city, dengue cases in the first quarter of 2016 are a shocking six fold higher than a year ago (8,133 cases, compared to 1,285 cases). That vertiginous rise is very worrisome, because it roughly coincides with the biggest military mobilization in Brazil’s history, aimed at intensifying mosquito-killing efforts. It would appear that those impressive efforts did not work as well as hoped in Rio, and with the starting baseline of Aedes-borne disease so much higher this year than last, it is far from guaranteed that the coming winter’s ebb will make a “safe environment” for the Games.

Second, although Zika virus was discovered nearly seventy years ago, the viral strain that recently entered Brazil is clearly new, different, and vastly more dangerous than “old” Zika. Phylogenetic mapping demonstrates that this particular virus arrived in Brazil from French Polynesia in 2013. Although the danger went unnoticed in French Polynesia at first, retrospective analyses now show that the risk of microcephaly increased by 23 to 53 fold.

Later studies from Brazil now powerfully argue that the relationship is truly causal. For example, in Rio de Janeiro—where the Games will take place—a very recent study shows that among women with confirmed Zika infections during pregnancy, fully 29% had fetal abnormalities on ultrasound. Further, the Brazilian microcephaly cases have an unusual constellation of congenital defects severer than classical microcephaly, and suggestive of “fetal brain disruption sequence” in which the developing brain and skull collapse while other anatomical features like the scalp skin keep growing.

The effects on the adult nervous system are only beginning to be studied, but the preliminary findings are not good, and suggest that exposure to the virus is linked to Guillain-Barré disease, increasing the odds 60 fold. Science cannot yet explain what makes this new Polynesian/Brazilian viral clade exceptionally neuropathological, so the assumption must be that if it spreads to other places, harm to human health will too. Would that we knew for sure, but we don’t, so precaution is called for.

Third, while Brazil’s Zika inevitably will spread globally — given enough time, viruses always do — it helps nobody to speed that up. In particular, it cannot possibly help when an estimated 500,000 foreign tourists flock into Rio for the Games, potentially becoming infected, and returning to their homes where both local Aedes mosquitoes and sexual transmission can establish new outbreaks.

All it takes is one infected traveler: indeed phylogenetic and molecular clock analyses establish that Brazil’s cataclysmic outbreak stems from a single viral introduction event likely between May and December 2013. A few viral introductions of that kind, in a few countries, or maybe continents, would make a full-blown global health disaster. Scientists can disagree on how much the mass migration of 500,000 foreigners will accelerate the virus’s global spread and make the pandemic worse—but none can possibly argue that it will slow it down or make things better.

Fourth, when (not if) the Games speed up Zika’s spread, the already-urgent job of inventing new technologies to stop it becomes harder. Basic Zika research is already on the fast track, and with time, the odds are excellent that scientists can develop, test and prove an effective Zika vaccine, antiviral drug, insecticide, or genetically-engineered mosquito. But by spreading the virus faster and farther, the Games steal away the very thing – time – that scientists and public health professionals need to build such defenses.

Fifth, proceeding with the Games violates what the Olympics stand for. The International Olympic Committee writes that “Olympism seeks to create … social responsibility and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles”. But how socially responsible or ethical is it to spread disease? Sports fans who are wealthy enough to visit Rio’s Games choose Zika’s risks for themselves, but when some of them return home infected, their fellow citizens bear the risk too—meaning that the upside is for the elite, but the downside is for the masses. This equity problem takes on added meaning in poorer, weaker countries like Nigeria, India or Indonesia, which haven’t got the resources to fight Zika that Brazil does—and which anyway are proving insufficient. Putting them at risk for Games that are, essentially, bread and circuses seems ethically questionable.

Which leads to a simple question: But for the Games, would anyone recommend sending an extra half a million visitors into Brazil right now? Of course not: mass migration into the heart of an outbreak is a public health no-brainer. And given the choice between accelerating a dangerous new disease or not—for it is impossible that Games will slow Zika down—the answer should be a no-brainer for the Olympic organizers too. Putting sentimentality aside, clearly the Rio 2016 Games must not proceed.

There is precedent for flexibility. Recently, America’s baseball leagues rescheduled and moved games out of Puerto Rico because of Zika. Historically, the 1976 Winter Olympics were moved, and the 1994 Winter Olympics broke with the regular schedule. London, Beijing, Athens and Sydney still possess useable Olympic facilities to take over from Rio. Since the IOC decided in 2014 that the Olympics could be shared between countries, sporting events could even be parceled out between them, turning Zika’s negative into an unprecedented positive: the first transcontinental, truly Global Olympics.

Any of these alternatives will cost money of course. But unless those with a financial stake in the Games planned poorly, they will have cancellation insurance, legal escape clauses for force majeure, and an exit strategy. Nothing of the sort can be said for the world’s population whose health is at stake. For while the financial victims can recover their losses or even go bankrupt and rebuild, for the global health victims there is no such thing as going “bankrupt” on a virus or pandemic.

Regrettably, instead of discussing the alternatives, both the International Olympic Committee and the World Health Organization seem to be in deep denial. Asked about Zika, the most senior member of the IOC, Dick Pound, mocked it as “a manufactured crisis” for anyone but pregnant women (manufactured by whom?). With the most recent epidemiological evidence out of Rio, and new clinical studies all but proving that Zika causes microcephaly and, maybe, Guillain-Barré disease, the IOC’s sanguine, official statement on Zika and the Games from January 2016 is hopelessly obsolete—that organization must now break its months-long silence.

Even worse is WHO, which has never issued an official statement on Zika and the Olympics. When I pressed WHO about that in April, through a spokesperson it “agreed with” the IOC’s obsolete statement, but refused to answer the direct question of whether WHO has confidence in Rio’s Games being safe. It is deplorable, incompetent and dangerous that WHO, which has both public health expertise and the duty of health protection, is speechlessly deferring to the IOC, which has neither. WHO’s hesitancy is reminiscent of its mistakes with Ebola, all over again.

None of this is meant to deny that the Games are a much-loved event. But where is the love for the possible victims of a foreseeable global catastrophe: the damaged or dead adults, and the babies for whom—and mark these coldly clinical words carefully—fetal brain disruption sequence is as terrible as it sounds, and extinguishes the hope of a normal life even before it has begun? With stakes like that, bluntly put, these Olympics are no game at all.










http://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-zika-usa-idUSKCN0XE0UV

REUTERS


World Sun Apr 17, 2016 12:26pm EDT Related: U.S., HEALTH

Local Zika outbreaks in United States 'likely': U.S. official

WASHINGTON BY DIANE BARTZ

The United States is likely to see outbreaks of the Zika virus, with perhaps dozens or scores of people affected, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, on Sunday.

The United States has seen more than 350 cases of people who were infected abroad and then returned to the country but has yet to confirm a case where someone was infected within its borders. That is likely to change, said Fauci.

"It is likely we will have what is called a local outbreak," he said on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace.

The Zika outbreak was first detected in Brazil last year and is spreading through the Americas. It has been linked to thousands of cases of microcephaly, a typically rare birth defect marked by unusually small head size which often indicates poor brain development. The World Health Organization declared a global health emergency in February.

Zika, which is spread by mosquitoes and through sexual contact, can give adults the paralyzing Guillain-Barre syndrome. The Aedes aegypti mosquito, which primarily transmits disease, is present in about 30 U.S. states.

Fauci said he expected to see someone bitten by a mosquito here contract Zika but did not expect a large number of people to fall ill.

"It would not be surprising at all - if not likely - that we're going to see a bit of that," he said. "We're talking about scores of cases, dozens of cases, at most."

He also raised the prospect that other neurological ailments could be eventually linked to Zika, which he called "disturbing."

"There are only individual case reports of significant neurological damage to people not just the fetuses but an adult that would get infected. Things that they call meningoencephalitis, which is an inflammation of the brain and the covering around the brain, spinal cord damage due to what we call myelitis," he said. "So far they look unusual, but at least we've seen them and that's concerning."

Fauci also pressed the administration's case for budgeting $1.9 billion dollars in emergency funds to fight the virus. Some Republicans have agreed.

"We have to act now," he said. "I can't wait to start developing a vaccine."

Still, Fauci refrained from recommending that U.S. women avoid becoming pregnant because of fear of giving birth to a baby with microcephaly.

"Right now in the United States they should not be that concerned. We do not have local outbreaks," he said.










http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/zika-is-extremely-good-at-mutating-heres-what-you-need-to-know_us_57153223e4b0018f9cbabd9b

The Huffington Post


Zika Is Extremely Good At Mutating. Here’s What You Need To Know.

The virus is extremely good at mutating.

04/19/2016 02:26 pm ET Updated Apr 19, 2016

As a disease, Zika virus caught the world’s doctors and scientists off-guard. It appears to cause severe harm in a variety of different ways, including birth defects and neurological disorders, yet the symptoms are mild or negligible for most people who contract it. It can be passed both from mother to fetus and through sex — a first in the realm of mosquito-borne diseases. Finally, despite the fact that Zika virus has been around since 1947, it has only inflicted widespread injury in the current 2015-2016 outbreak, centered mostly in Latin America and the Caribbean.

That final aspect of Zika virus is what’s most intriguing to scientists like Stephanie Valderramos, co-author of a new study on the way Zika virus has mutated over time and across different host species.Valderramos and her colleagues have found that the virus is extremely good at mutating, and the way the disease has changed over the decades may help explain how it’s been able to seriously hurt some people who get it.

This research, published in the journal Cell Host and Microbe, may also play a preliminary role in broadening our understanding of how the virus is transmitted. According to Valderramos, mosquitoes may not even be the primary mode of Zika virus transmission in this current outbreak.

“The fundamental question I think everyone wants to know is, how has this virus that has been around for almost 70 years not really caused such clinical problems until the past two years?” said Valderramos, a clinical research fellow in obstetrics and gynecology at UCLA.

In the hope of further understanding Zika’s spread, Valderramos and her team traced the virus’ genetic makeup over several decades, countries and organisms, using samples from both humans and mosquitoes. They hope to one day determine if a constellation of diseases and syndromes, from the birth defect microcephaly to the autoimmune disorders Guillain-Barré Syndrome and acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, can be attributed to genetic mutations in the virus itself. The mutations could also one day clue scientists in on how the virus has managed to spread so fast within the past two years, after only sporadically popping up in handfuls of people since its discovery in 1947.

The team, made up of researchers from both UCLA and the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College in Beijing, analyzed 41 different strains of Zika in samples drawn from people, mosquitoes and monkeys.

Most significantly, they found that there were substantial genetic differences in the viruses taken from human and mosquito blood samples. The Zika virus isolated from mosquitoes has different genetic sequencing than any strain isolated from human beings.

The research team did not investigate why this might be. Valderramos says the explanation could be purely methodological; her team, and scientists before her, have not sampled enough mosquitoes to have a comprehensive picture of all the possible Zika virus strains in the world. Sampling could also be biased; Zika was previously primarily thought of as a mosquito-borne virus with little clinical consequence for people, so scientists had not been sampling the insects with an eye toward matching them up with human strains.

Another possibility could be that the virus has mutated to the point where mosquitoes may play a smaller role — and sexual transmission plays a bigger one — than previously thought. Indeed, the study notes that other researchers were unable to detect Zika virus in any mosquitoes during a 2007 outbreak in Micronesia, despite widespread “active surveillance.”

While Valderramos concedes that mosquitos are “probably” the main mode of transmission, as most scientists around the world agree, the mismatch in virus strains between mosquitoes and humans hints at a remote possibility that other modes of transmission may be more dominant in this current outbreak.

“It raises the questions of whether or not mosquitos are necessarily the primary mode of transmission,” said Valderramos. “Since it’s now shown to be transmitted other ways, we scientifically need to broaden our thinking and not make assumptions about that.”

Other findings include the fact that current Zika strains found in humans are more genetically similar to a 1966 Malaysian strain compared to a 1968 Nigerian strain. This could mean that recent outbreaks are descended from an “Asian lineage” of the virus.

Zika virus prevention is about more than mosquito control

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concluded last week that the totality of evidence indicates that Zika virus can cause microcephaly and other severe birth defects in babies whose mothers contract the disease during pregnancy.

The CDC’s new scientific clarity allows health officials to be more direct about communicating with the public about the risk of Zika virus as mosquito season approaches in the U.S., but analyses like Valderramos’, as well as the growing evidence that Zika virus can be easily spread through both vaginal and anal intercourse, suggests that public health warnings are going to have to cover a lot more than just mosquito bite prevention.

“Zika virus has definitely changed the paradigm of how we think about... viruses that are transmitted by mosquitos,” Valderramos concluded. “There’s other viruses that are transmitted sexually and there’s other viruses that are transmitted from mother to fetus. But this is the first [mosquito-borne] virus that has been able to be transmitted in so many different ways.”










http://www.e-reading.org.ua/bookreader.php/71211/Clancy_-_Rainbow_Six.html


Rainbow Six (1998)

Tom Clancy


CHAPTER 39

HARMONY


"They hired Dmitriy Popov to interface with terrorists to set up incidents throughout Europe. That was to increase the fear of terrorism, to get Global Security the consulting contract for the Australians, and-"

"Bill Henriksen?" Colonel Byron asked. "Hell, I know that guy!"

"Yeah? Well, his people were supposed to deliver the bug through the fogging-cooling system at the Olympic stadium in Sydney, Willie. Chavez was there in the control room when this Wil Gearing guy showed up with the container, and the contents were checked out by the USAMRIID guys at Fort Detrick. You know, the FBI could almost make a criminal case out of this. But not quite," Clark added.

"So, you're heading down there to…"










http://www.e-reading.org.ua/bookreader.php/71211/Clancy_-_Rainbow_Six.html


Rainbow Six (1998)

Tom Clancy


EPILOGUE

NEWS


"John, has anybody gone back to Brazil to-"

"Not that I know of. Satellite overheads show that nobody's cutting the grass next to their airport."

"So, you figure the jungle killed them?"

"Nature isn't real sentimental, Domingo. She doesn't distinguish between friends and enemies."

"I suppose not, Mr. C." Even terrorists could do that. Chavez thought, but not the jungle. So, who was the real enemy of mankind? Himself, mostly, Ding decided










http://www.e-reading.org.ua/bookreader.php/71211/Clancy_-_Rainbow_Six.html


Rainbow Six (1998)

Tom Clancy


EPILOGUE

NEWS

The International Trib landed on Chavez's desk after the usual morning exercise routine, and he leaned back comfortably to read it. Life had become boring at Hereford. They still trained and practiced all their skills, but they hadn't been called away from the base since returning from South America six months earlier.

Gold Mine in the Rockies, a front-page story started. A place in Montana, the article read, owned by a Russian national, had been found to contain a sizable gold deposit. The place had been bought as a ranch by Dmitriy A. Popov, a Russian entrepreneur, as an investment and vacation site and then he'd made the accidental discovery, the story read. Mining operations would begin in the coming months. Local environmentalists had objected and tried to block the development in court, but the federal district court judge had decided in summary judgment that laws from the 1800s governing mineral exploration and exploitation were the governing legal authority, and tossed the objections out of court. "You see this?" Ding asked Clark.

"Greedy bastard," John replied



- posted by H.V.O.M - Kerry Wayne Burgess 10:06 PM Pacific Time Spokane Valley Washington USA Saturday 14 May 2016