Let’s keep our eye on the ball. Don’t use the Zika virus to promote dubious and controversial social agendas. Focus our fire on those blood-sucking creatures that carry the disease
Oh Zika, Where Is Thy Sting? (Not in the US or Canada)
The buzz is that everyone is at risk for contracting the mosquito-borne Zika virus. Why not? Since the successful effort to “democratize” HIV/AIDS in the 1980s as a threat to everyone, everywhere, every major disease outbreak has been presented as a worldwide threat. (Ebola’s gotten that treatment three times now.)
But no. Despite admonitions from the public health agencies and headlines like the Washington Post’s “Why The United States Is So Vulnerable to the Alarming Spread of Zika Virus,” and despite President Obama’s request to Congress for $1.8 billion to fight the disease, Zika has little chance of spreading from person to person in the U.S. And even in countries where it is a real concern the threat has been exaggerated.
Zika was actually discovered almost 70 years ago, but only recently hit Latin America where it’s been sweeping through the tropical areas. Symptoms are usually so mild that most people don’t ever know they’ve been infected, and they’re only contagious for a week. But recently Zika has been associated with microcephaly, a neurological disorder in which babies are born with abnormally small heads, as well as Guillain-Barré, a rare syndrome in which the immune system attacks the nerves.
Still, we can be confident that Zika will inflict at worst a small sting in the U.S. Here’s why.
The only mosquito known to spread Zika is Aedes aegytpi, which won’t roam outside tropical and sub-tropical areas. Further, its population in the Americas has been dropping dramatically since 1985 when another mosquito, the Asian Tiger, invaded and began outcompeting it. Hence, we can expect Zika to remain confined to areas where Ae. aegypti flies sorties. In the U.S. that means the Gulf Coast states (Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and southeastern Texas) and occasionally some adjoining states.
Consider that Ae aegypti carries both yellow fever and dengue fever. Yet yellow fever is no longer transmitted in the U.S.; indeed, it barely reaches Central America. Dengue, a rarely lethal but cruel virus also called “breakback fever,” afflicts just a handful of people each year in the Deep South and sometimes Hawaii. (Puerto Rico and other U.S. territories get more serious outbreaks.) Why the wider range? Because dengue is also spread by the Asian Tiger, which is a bit more tolerant of chilly weather. Chikungunya virus, carried both by Ae. aegypti and yet another mosquito species, quickly became established in much of Latin America in 2014; yet there have been no outbreaks in the U.S.
West Nile and other encephalitis viruses do range throughout much of the U.S. Why? Not only are they carried by a wide range of mosquitos, but rather than sticking (or sticking it, as it were) just to primates, these mosquitos infect the “infection reservoirs” there are--birds. Thus at worst we can expect Zika to hold a tiny beach head in the southernmost U.S.
True, yellow fever and malaria once cut a swathe across North America. Those, however, were carried by mosquitos that don’t mind the cold so much. These diseases disappeared after a massive campaign to eliminate breeding grounds and remain held at bay by such First World things as screen doors and windows and central air conditioning.
It’s the lack of those things we take for granted that explains why Zika does spread in places like Latin America. I’ve seen it firsthand.
I spent the last four years in Colombia and Mexico, and I don’t believe I ever saw a screen or was in a home with central air. What I did see a lot of in Colombia is something mosquitoes like as much as heat – trash. Colombians are litter bugs, and litter bugs give rise to bugs. One water-filled paper cup or discarded plastic bag can incubate hundreds of mosquito larvae. And residents of the Carnival city of Barranquilla are the worst. It’s the city that produced Sofia Vergara, Shakira, last year’s Miss Universe, and countless trash piles. This while public waste cans stand empty and forlorn. I lived there seven months, unwillingly donating liters of gringo blood to what Colombians call “zancudos.” Then I moved to a vastly cleaner (if duller) Colombian city and, magically, the insect air strikes were called off.
Yet, even in Latin America, there’s no reason to panic. Countries like Brazil have long been plagued by malaria, yellow fever, and other truly deadly diseases; which is why talk of cancelling the Olympics in August is ignorant idiocy. While they can’t control the climate outside, and most are too poor to control it inside, they can act on both a personal and government level act to eliminate mosquito breeding grounds simply by removing breeding areas and spraying. (Unfortunately, Ae Aegypti is now essentially immune to DDT.) Brazil is even starting to use genetically engineered mosquitos that interfere with the breeding cycle.
Regrettably, some groups are spreading panic—and, in some cases, promoting their ideological goals while they’re at it. Population-control advocates are urging women to delay pregnancies for fear of a disease that’s probably a permanent resident in the region—which means, “don’t have babies. Ever.” And they’re urging abortions on women at risk for infection—which is to say virtually all pregnant women in many countries. That’s downright ghoulish, and amounts to a scheme to unravel abortion laws in Catholic countries they consider “repressive.”
Let’s keep our eye on the ball. Don’t use the Zika virus to promote dubious and controversial social agendas. Focus our fire on those blood-sucking creatures that carry the disease.
The buzz is that everyone is at risk for contracting the mosquito-borne Zika virus. Why not? Since the successful effort to “democratize” HIV/AIDS in the 1980s as a threat to everyone, everywhere, every major disease outbreak has been presented as a worldwide threat. (Ebola’s gotten that treatment three times now.)
But no. Despite admonitions from the public health agencies and headlines like the Washington Post’s “Why The United States Is So Vulnerable to the Alarming Spread of Zika Virus,” and despite President Obama’s request to Congress for $1.8 billion to fight the disease, Zika has little chance of spreading from person to person in the U.S. And even in countries where it is a real concern the threat has been exaggerated. 
Yet, even in Latin America, there’s no reason to panic. Countries like Brazil have long been plagued by malaria, yellow fever, and other truly deadly diseases; which is why talk of cancelling the Olympics in August is ignorant idiocy. While they can’t control the climate outside, and most are too poor to control it inside, they can act on both a personal and government level act to eliminate mosquito breeding grounds simply by removing breeding areas and spraying. (Unfortunately, Ae Aegypti is now essentially immune to DDT.) Brazil is even starting to use genetically engineered mosquitos that interfere with the breeding cycle.
Regrettably, some groups are spreading panic—and, in some cases, promoting their ideological goals while they’re at it. Population-control advocates are urging women to delay pregnancies for fear of a disease that’s probably a permanent resident in the region—which means, “don’t have babies. Ever.” And they’re urging abortions on women at risk for infection—which is to say virtually all pregnant women in many countries. That’s downright ghoulish, and amounts to a scheme to unravel abortion laws in Catholic countries they consider “repressive.”
Let’s keep our eye on the ball. Don’t use the Zika virus to promote dubious and controversial social agendas. Focus our fire on those blood-sucking creatures that carry the disease.
