HOW SCARED SHOULD YOU BE OF SLOTH FEVER, AND WHAT IS IT REALLY?
As you may have heard, there’s another malady during mosquito season for everyone in the United States to be afraid of: sloth fever. But the most important question is, how scared of this malady should you be? And unfortunately, yet again, the answer to this question is pretty elusive. The sloth fever’s actual non-slang name is Oropouche virus disease. And so far, America has 21 confirmed cases, 20 in Florida and one in New York. “Most” of these cases involve people who were traveling returning to the U.S. from Cuba and Brazil. It’s that “most” that makes the danger of this virus hard to understand.
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SLOTH FEVER SPREADS FROM MOSQUITO BITES, AND SPREADS IN THE WILD BETWEEN INSECTS AND ANIMALS
People catch sloth fever from getting bitten by midges and certain kinds of mosquitos. It can spread between mosquitos themselves, but also among animals like sloths, primates, rodents and wild birds. In other words, it spreads in the wild, and humans can join the party from insect bites. Our current understanding so far is that roughly 60% of infected people become symptomatic. And those symptoms can include sudden fever, severe headache, chills, muscle and joint pain, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, fatigue, and a skin rash. In other words, it’s yet another sickness someone might assume is the flu, covid, or just getting old.
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SLOTH FEVER DOESN’T GET EVERYONE SICK, BUT IT CAN LEAD TO MAJOR MEDICAL PROBLEMS
But in rarer cases, sloth fever can turn into something more dangerous, like meningitis and encephalitis. And more disturbing, pregnant women are particularly at risk, as Oropouche virus disease can cause major harm to fetal development, which can lead to microcephaly and miscarriage. And last but not least, there’s no vaccine or any specific kind of treatment for sloth fever. So the only way to be safe is to not get it at all. So if this spreads more in the U.S., be sure to do all you can to keep mosquitos off your skin.
