Virus threat tests nobility of the Olympics

The “too big to fail” label is not just for political and financial institutions. With increasing frequency from now on, we will be hearing the term spoken in association with sports. 

The summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, due in a few months, is threatening to generate a major controversy after more than 100 prominent doctors and professors openly called for its relocation or postponement due to the widening Zika outbreak in Brazil.

In an open letter to the World Health Organisation a few days ago, the worried group indicated a global health crisis might follow the sporting event that is expected to draw tens of thousands of foreigners. 

“We make this call despite the widespread fatalism that the Rio 2016 Games are inevitable or too big to fail,” the writers said in the letter to WHO Director-General Margaret Chan. “Our greater concern is for global health. The Brazilian strain of Zika virus harms health in ways that science has not observed before.”

But if anything, the letter shows a growing gap within the medical field regarding the Zika threat and what to do about the Games. Just before it was written, the director of the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, emerged to rule out any reason to cancel or delay the Olympics. The CDC only warned pregnant women to avoid travelling to areas where the virus is spreading, and men with the virus and pregnant partners to use condoms when having sex throughout the pregnancy.

The Zika virus has been shown to cause microcephaly, a rare birth defect in which babies develop abnormally small heads and other neurological problems. This is why pregnant women have been the main focus of warnings. A health scare related to Zika has been relatively contained, but the letter to the WHO could change the situation, as it is the most serious warning by a most credible group.

The WHO is either reluctant to be responsible for a major Olympics panic or confident that the Games won’t make any difference to the situation. The organisation’s apparent stance is that Brazil is one of almost 60 countries that have reported continuing transmission of Zika by mosquitoes, so a major outbreak was unlikely to be caused by a rise in the number of visitors to Rio de Janeiro. The WHO has only asked travellers to strictly follow health advice.

The Olympics will run from August 5 to August 21. More than 500,000 people are expected to travel to Brazil from around the world, but that pales in comparison with the 40 million travellers travelling between America and countries where the Zika virus is circulating, according to the CDC. While these numbers may somehow support the no-relocation argument, some concerned experts are decrying the belittling of a genuine health risk – no matter how big or small.

According to CNN, the letter was written by four prominent professors and had the backing of more than 100 well-known doctors and professors. Among the co-writers is Lee Igel, who sent an email to the international news network deploring how the need to protect a mega-sports event and its host came to overshadow the real possibility of a major virus outbreak.

That is hitting the nail on the head. We may grit our teeth and accept actions to protect banks or religious institutions, but the authorities taking their chances with people’s health does bring it to a new level. As of now, it seems nothing will stop the Games, and we may never know whether letting the show go on is the right decision.