Today the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published Interim Guidelines for Pregnant Women During a Zika Virus Outbreak — United States, 2016. They make eminently good sense, and they are going to cause considerable economic misery across Latin America and the Pacific islands where Zika is now well established.
I was reminded of this earlier today when I got an email from a friend. Her daughter, Brazilian son-in-law, and their baby daughter are planning a trip to Bahia state in Brazil, but were getting worried. What did I think?
I did not encourage them, but not because of Bahia's dubious status as #3 in microcephaly cases. I don't think my friend's daughter is planning to become pregnant soon.
What worries me is Guillain-Barré syndrome, which could (in theory) affect everyone in the family. Not all Zika patients suffer GBS, but then almost no one in Brazil has contracted Zika, whatever the sequelae. Yet the country, with a population of 200 million, is at battle stations.
I have no idea how many young couples and families were planning to attend the 2016 Olympics in Brazil, but I'm sure the number is lower now. And as Zika's association with GBS begins to sink in, travellers will stay away in ever-larger droves from Brazil in particular and Latin America in general.
This will have economic consequences affecting scores of millions of people. Tourist destinations in Mexico and the Caribbean will be shunned. Business travel will dwindle. Just as Cuba begins to open up to US tourism, Zika may slam the door shut again.
Zika has at least reminded me of what an amazingly mobile species we have become in the age of cheap air travel. Who knew that a traveller from Colombia would carry Zika to Israel? Go to NewsNow: Zika virus and you'll glimpse how rapidly it's spreading, like its cousin chikungunya before it.
But chikungunya and dengue, as nasty as they are, don't threaten pregnant women or leave their victims paralyzed by Guillain-Barré. So people are taking Zika very seriously, and the economic and political consequences will be serious as well.
