Zika Virus: Lessons in Fear

Africa acts as Earth’s petri dish.  The equatorial area of Africa is warm, wet, thick with vegetation and dense with animal life (monkeys and apes) that, unfortunately, share over 90% of their DNA with human beings.  What nature creates in this naturally occurring biological warfare lab may start as a virus peculiar only to one biological sector, only to evolve into one peculiar to primates and at that point it is transferable to humans—we are primates.  Many nasty diseases, both viral and microbial, got their start in the upper story plants of Africa, adapted to monkeys and then were shared with humans: AIDS, Ebola, Hanta virus, Marburg…Zika.  This list literally goes from A to Z. 

            Zika was first identified in Uganda in 1947 (though it may have developed during the late 1800’s) at which time it was confined to monkeys.  By 1952 the first human infection was reported.  The disease then marched across the African continent from east to west along the hot zone: The Central African Republic, Nigeria, The Ivory Coast (Côte D’iviore), Burkina Faso, Sierra Leon, Senegal and the islands of Cabo Verde.  From Africa the disease was spread to Asia and Micronesia.

The first massive human outbreak occurred on Yap Island in 2007.  A few months ago we were worried about the disease showing up in South America, spurred by concerns for athletes competing in the international venue that is the Olympics, now we have multiple incidents of Zika occurring in Florida among people who have not traveled beyond our shores and who were infected by home grown mosquitos.  Zika is here.  It will spread. 

            This disease is a virus spread my both mosquitoes and the victims it infects.  Once you are bitten by a Zika-bearing mosquito you will be infected.  At best you will feel like you have a mild cold, and worse you could be afflicted with Gullian-Barre´ syndrome.  If you are pregnant the virus will attack your unborn child producing microcephaly, that is, the skull will be truncated, the brain unable to develop and the child permanently and fatally impaired.  Less discussed, but known for some time, is the fact that infected men will have the virus alive and transmissible in their sperm for close to a year.   

            Right now, Zika can be transmitted in three different ways.  (1) A traveler to a Zika heavy area (like Central America) can be bitten by a mosquito and becomes infected.  (2) That person returns to the United States and then is bitten by a local mosquito who acquires the virus and then passes it on to people in this country.  (3) A person who is infected has unprotected sex and passes on the virus to their partner. 

            Zika is not the germ that wakes me up at night in a cold sweat.  That position is occupied by the eventual evolution of bird flu to an airborne, human to human, contagion.  That one will most certainly thin the herd and none of us will escape its sorrow.  But Zika does remind all of us that, like the invading Martians of H. G. Wells War of the Worlds who eventually succumb to microbes of Earth’s atmosphere, we are always at risk from the smallest life forms on this planet. 

            Living things constantly change, not by plan but by accident.   Changes for the worse cause early death.  But some of those changes (like allowing a virus to live in multiple living things) help an organism live longer and stronger.  That organism will flourish.  This is called survival of the fittest.  It is an example of evolution.   

            Respect evolution and keep the faith.