I mistakenly sent this draft out before finishing it on Sunday. Maybe it’s the heat that makes me so incompetent a n d  cranky. Add to that reading about nasty viruses here to stay. Add to that selected phrases on the history of the virus penned in the World Health Organization’s report  – in its entirety here:

http://www.portal.pmnch.org/emergencies/zika-virus/articles/one-year-outbreak/en/

And I quote: “One year into the Zika outbreak: how an obscure disease became a global health emergency.” One year? That thing has been around – documented – since 1947. True outbreaks, when hopping from Africa to Micronesia and then French Polynesia, occurred around 2013/14, with 70% of the population of some islands infected. Guillain-Barré syndrome, a debilitating neurological disorder caused by the – now probably mutated virus – already documented. (Microcephaly, the birth defect, also found in retrospective research – nobody associated it with Zika at the times.) But now it hits countries we travel to or live in….it reached Brazil in 2014 with the World Sprint championship canoe races.

Late 2014 we have an explosion of cases all across Brazil. Within a year, the virus had been detected in nearly every country or territory infested with Aedes aegypti, the principal mosquito species that transmits Zika, dengue, and chikungunya. People’s lack of immunity and the behavior of the day-feeding, water breeding mosquito contribute. And I quote: “The mosquitos flourish in the litter, open ditches, clogged drains, containers for water storage, old tyre dumps, and crowded flimsy dwellings typically seen in urban and periurban areas where population growth has outstripped the capacity to construct essential infrastructure, like piped water and sanitation.” Population growth outstripped capacity for infrastructure? Hello? What about lack of funding and political will for emptying shantytowns and building safe environments?

Ok, let’s be fair. After the report prominently mentions that caring for a child with microcephaly costs $10,000.000 for a lifetime it acknowledges that in most countries this burden falls on the poor who have no access to healthcare in the first place and need to store water in containers, the ideal breeding grounds for mosquitos.

And here we see it in Puerto Rico and Florida, http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/zika-virus-outbreak/u-s-declares-health-emergency-puerto-rico-due-zika-virus-n630131 – states, incidentally, that rely economically on a tourist industry. Any bets on travel plan changes?