Zika and Rio Games

By Justin Fendos

With the Rio Summer Olympics just a few weeks away, people are not talking about the unfinished facilities, lack of power, the polluted water, or questionable security. They are talking about Zika virus.

To put things in perspective, we must first consider the state of Brazil's economy: it's bad, really bad. In fact, Brazil is in the middle of its worst recession since the 1930s. The country's industrial output has been falling steadily the last few years, dropping a whopping 9 percent in the past 12 months. To make matters worse, Brazil's economy decreased in size by 3.8 percent last year. Oh, and they recently voted to impeach their president.

In many respects, the impeachment drama has masked many of the fundamental issues plaguing the country. Petrobras, the partially state-owned oil giant, is in the middle of a nationwide corruption scandal. Falling oil and commodity prices have taken their toll, resulting in a roughly 50% devaluation of the Brazilian currency against the US dollar in the last five years. With such a strong currency advantage, foreigners should be salivating to book their trips for the Games... but they aren't.

In 2009, when Brazil was declared the host for the 2016 Olympics, the country couldn't feel luckier: they had just snagged the great honor of hosting the two largest global sporting events ― the World Cup and Summer Olympics ― back-to-back. Only now do we realize the cost of this honor. Financing the World Cup alone was already a challenge. Although this keynote event netted the FIFA world football federation about $2.6 billion in profits, the country of Brazil spent an estimated $11.3 billion dollars in preparations. Estimates for how much value is recovered from an event of this size are typically measured across 10- or 15-year periods because the new infrastructure and facilities bring added value over time. Given the 2006 German World Cup only returned about $5 billion and the 2010 South Africa World Cup has thus far only returned about a half billion, it seems exceedingly unlikely the Brazilian people will ever be compensated for their investment.

The lack of profit, however, is not the issue. What's of greater importance is what was NOT paid for. Healthcare, education reform, environmental protection and a slew of other social and economic programs were gutted or tightened to generate the necessary funds. This has created a slow-brewing crisis, as class divisions and income disparity have been exacerbated.

And then there's Zika. First, let's review the basics. It's a virus. In adults, infection is usually mild, lasting for a few days or a week. Symptoms include headaches, fever, rash, red eyes, and joint or muscle pain. Nothing too terrible, really. The problem arises when pregnant women get infected. The babies of these mothers are at risk for developing severe brain defects, the most pronounced being microcephaly (abnormally small brain size). At the moment, it appears only infections during pregnancy give this risk. The main issue is transmission of the virus occurs through both sexual activity and mosquitos, common elements of the Brazilian climate.

Crowds have a way of accentuating the spread of diseases.During the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, a measles virus spread across 82 people. During the 2006 World Cup, a norovirus infected 65. Both were spread without the help of mosquitos. The recent London Olympics were a rarity, avoiding any major outbreak by making use of the most sophisticated visitor-monitoring systems in the world, systems the Brazilian authorities are sure to be studying.

Despite these efforts, the flat truth is no one can really predict what will happen. Mosquitoes are a year-around nuisance in Brazil, as is sexual activity. The safest thing for a woman with any possibility or desire of getting pregnant is to just stay the heck away. Any husband or boyfriend of such a person should also stay the heck away since he can transmit the virus to his significant other without knowing it.

Several billion reasons will keep the games on schedule, regardless.

The writer is a Ph.D. from Yale and a professor at Dongseo University in Busan. He is also the associate director of the Tan School of Genetics at Fudan University, Shanghai. His e-mail address is jfendos@aya.yale.edu.