the.com/dengue
Dengue is a mosquito-borne illness that can cause severe pain and dangerously low platelet counts.
means A mosquito-borne viral fever that causes high fever, severe joint and muscle pain, and a sharp drop in platelet count.
from The word's path is genuinely murky. One leading theory traces it to Swahili 'kidinga pepo,' describing a cramping seizure caused by an evil spirit, which Spanish speakers in the Caribbean may have reshaped into 'dengue.' In Spanish, 'dengue' also meant a kind of fastidious, prim affectation — possibly linked because sufferers walked stiffly, stooped from the bone-deep joint pain, earning dengue its old nickname 'breakbone fever.' No single account is confirmed; etymologists treat the origin as unsettled rather than fully solved.
- transmission
- Daytime mosquito, unlike its nocturnal malaria cousin
- nickname
- Called breakbone fever for the joint pain
- second infection
- Can be worse than the first, immunologically speaking
- no cure
- Treatment is just fluids, rest, and hope