The growing threat of the Zika virus means that the 2016 Summer Olympics should not happen as planned in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, argues University of Ottawa professor Amir Attaran in the May edition of the Harvard Public Health Review.
"Zika infection is more dangerous, and Brazil's outbreak more extensive, than scientists reckoned a short time ago," he writes, "which leads to a bitter truth: the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games must be postponed, moved, or both, as a precautionary concession."
Attaran makes five main arguments to support his idea, which we first heard about from journalist Joe Weisenthal on Twitter:
- Zika has become more prevalent. When the International Olympic Committee determined that Rio de Janeiro was a "safe environment" for the Olympics, it was in January. That declaration, Attaran writes, is now "hopelessly obsolete." Since then, the Zika virus has become much more widespread in the area, which is worrisome even if infection rates fall — as they typically do for mosquito-borne viruses — in July and August, which is Brazil's winter.
- Zika has become more dangerous. The strain of Zika virus that is fueling the current outbreak seems more virulent than the much milder form that circulated for decades out of the spotlight. One small study of 88 women in Rio found that there were abnormalities in the fetuses of almost a third of those pregnant and infected with Zika. A suspected link between it and Guillain-Barré syndrome, a condition that can cause temporary paralysis in adults, is also worrisome — though still very preliminary and, so far, quite rare.
- The Olympics will fuel the global spread of Zika. While the virus is already spreading quickly, "it helps nobody to speed that up," Attaran writes. Some researchers think that Zika first came to Brazil during the 2014 World Cup. Now the half a million foreigners expected to flood Rio for the Olympics could help land the virus in new, faraway places.
- Scientists can't stay ahead of a quickly spreading virus. If the spread of Zika is accelerated, then the research to find ways to stop it — which is already proceeding at an intense clip — will lag even further behind the growing need. "The Games [would] steal away the very thing — time — that scientists and public health professionals need," Attaran argues.
- Proceeding as planned at this point would violate the values of the Olympics. Wealthy citizens who travel to Brazil for the Olympics risk bringing Zika back with them when they return home — where poorer residents might end up bearing the brunt of the disease burden. Attaran argues that helping spread Zika to countries that are ill-equipped to combat it would be socially irresponsible and ethically suspect.
Attaran is not a Zika expert, but most of his points are sound.
There's no reason for panic — not all countries, for example, will be equally hospitable to the virus — and more research is still needed to help us understand this disease that we're still very much learning about.
Still, much of what we've learned so far about Zika has suggested that it requires the urgent attention of the public-health community.
And even with the high levels of uncertainty about Zika, do we really want the athletes and attendees of the Olympics to serve as unwitting guinea pigs?
"Given the choice between accelerating a dangerous new disease or not — for it is impossible that Games will slow Zika down — the answer should be a no-brainer for the Olympic organizers," Attaran writes. "Putting sentimentality aside, clearly the Rio 2016 Games must not proceed."
You can read his full essay in the Harvard Public Health Review.
