Rio is not some city in the middle of nowhere from which no flights are coming in and out of, and now suddenly this massive international influx of visitors will come in -- it is a world-class city, a financial hub of the largest country in the continent.
If we take London 2012 as a benchmark, estimates there are that the olympics yielded a 13% increase in foreign visitors from the previous summer. And that is London, a place where access from other destinations is cheaper, the infrastructure better, and a lot more appealing to U.S. visitors (due to some of the things cited above). It is completely reasonable to expect that the delta in Rio should be roughly the same, if not smaller.
The fact is that the"impact" on travel due to the Olympics will be negligible in a city like Rio -- and the economic impact is CERTAINLY negative, unless you are drinking the Kool-Aid of organizers.
I'm fine with cancelling the games, but claiming that not doing so will lead to a much riskier global health situation than the one we are already living is hogwash.
Instead,the article does some of the worst things we'd expect from scientists with sentences like "All it takes is one infected traveler" -- this is fear-mongering and irresponsible and the author should be ashamed of that comment.
I maintain that it is not a careful, reasoned argument about the issue.
I'm sorry, but there seems to be a bit of a logical disconnect here. This looks like a knee-jerk pattern match on the "all it takes" phrase. My understanding is that this is factual in this case. That is how it works with a lot of diseases -- with many kinds of self-replicators -- all it takes is one. That is how it works with various insect and fungal blights that have ravaged California forests. A public awareness of the relative risks is a public good.
Single patients flown to the US from the Ebola stricken regions did not spread infection, because of the particulars of infection mechanisms. Zika can be spread by mosquito. If the Olympics increase the traffic to resource-thin countries with populations of the right kind of mosquito, this should be considered carefully.
source (see page 97): http://www.dadosefatos.turismo.gov.br/export/sites/default/d...
No, it's not the same.
But, I think in Rio there is also an argument to be made of how many of those "estimated" visitors are actually simply displacing people who would otherwise have travelled to Rio. To your point, if Rio is in fact no set-up to accommodate as many people as London, then a lot of the effect of the games will simply be substituting regular travelers with Olympics watchers.
Either way -- the only point I guess I was really trying to make was that the variable of interest is the delta in the actual visitors to Rio -- you want an economist making this argument, not a health expert
Nevertheless, the 500,000 figure cited would represent a ~25% bump in the number of visitors (if we use 2012 figures). If you consider the area in Brazil most affected by Zika (which would include São Paulo), then this drops to 10%. You then also have to realize that a lot of those visitors displaced people who did not travel to Rio because of the olympics, which is an effect that is widely documented. Taken into account, I think it is plausible to suggest that the real impact of travel that we'd be seeing would be in the low teens or single digits.
But I think it is certainly debatable, and I guess this is the only point I really wanted to make in my comment -- that THIS is really the focus if you wanted to argue that the games ought to be suspended, but that the article doesn't address it in the least.
Clearly you have to inspect that 500,000 number carefully, and that's all that matters for this argument. That would've been an honest discussion on this issue, but it is not what the authors chose to concentrate on.
Olympics tourism will be much more widespread, including many from vulnerable areas in Africa and Asia.
And the OP does not say that it will prevent the spread of Zika, only slow it. Even a few extra months could be valuable -- lots of effort is currently being spent looking for a vaccine.
As the article says, sending tourists into an outbreak of a new virus does not seem prudent.
Watch it on TV, from far away.
Seriously, it's like any other city in the world. If you walk around a dodgy area talking on an iPhone, by yourself, especially late at night, then you're asking for trouble. Be sensible and cautious, and Rio is a lovely place to go on holiday.
EDIT: I guess I'm attracted to cities with higher crime rates.
Not that incidents like this don't occur in other cities in the world, but it shows that avoiding dodgy areas at night might not be enough.
I generally espouse this view ... that being sensible and street smart are the important parts to visiting different cities and that, in general, they are all fairly safe.
However, I also would describe Rio and Sao Paulo as a little further along the danger/risk meter.
You know all those warnings and rules of thumb that people pass on about pickpocketing and scams and tricksters and so on ? And they never really pan out or materialize ? In Rio, they do.
I would feel more safe (than Rio) in Shanghai or Shenzhen, less safe (than Rio) in Tijuana.
Never had anything remotely look like violence, robbery or even weirdos like that in Shanghai/Suzhou.
The time before this US thing (where nothing happened but it made the hairs on my neck stand up and we did realize we were close to getting robbed) was about 10 years ago when I got robbed at knife point in a small town under Barcelona. While feeling completely fine walking through weird neighborhoods in Belize. So you never know...
When I was around 8 my teacher in school said 'if you go to Amsterdam, you die; this city is so dangerous that when you go there, you will most surely get robbed, raped and murdered'. Apparently in a certain part of the Netherlands this idea was prevalent as when, 10 odd years later, I went to the university of Amsterdam my grandparents had something like 'Ok, this is it, this is the last time we saw him. He dead.'. Then I lived there and I actually lived in the neighborhood which was 'known' to 'everyone' that you will die there; de Bijlmer. Ofcourse, it was great; all these murderers and thieves offered me beer and food before going to uni in the morning; they invited me to the bars under the flats at night. I walked through that place (and other 'you'll die' places) in the middle of night and never felt anything resembling fear.
I want to go to Brazil and I will because of a client soon, but he, born and raised in Sao Paulo, says even he doesn't like it because of the crime. And he knows this city well. I'm not sure what to believe but we'll see... Not bringing any iPhone that's for sure.
Please don't apply your standards other cities of the world. What you described does not happen in my (capital) city. In fact if you drop something, you will likely get it back.
Pray tell what is this magical city you live in that does not have a single dodgy area.
There are obviously many factors that come into play. The biggest ones are not what you expect: how "gringo" (foreigner) you look, and are you walking around with Brazilian friends? Negatives on both counts will increase your odds of "bad stuff" happening to you dramatically. Also, if you come from a safer place where people do stuff such as routinely leave cars and homes unlocked, casually hail any cab anywhere and walk around with expensive phones(or cameras), you're in for a big surprise.
The best safety advice I can give is: assume there is no police whatsoever in the country and act accordingly, even if you do happen to see police around. They are unlikely to do anything to help you. May not even investigate if you die.
You should still be mostly OK, statistically speaking. The problem is that, when bad things happen, they tend to be really bad. You are very very lucky that if if is something simple as a purse snatching (as I have seen in other comments). Still very lucky if there's a knife involved. Expect multiple armed thugs in motorcycles, even if you can't see everyone involved, assume there's backup for the criminals.
One thing that many have overlooked in the comments is that for Rio and Sao Paulo, the crime trend is down. In São Paulo particularly, I've even seen people casually browsing on their iPads while sitting at bar tables next to a busy road, or people talking on their iphones in barely lit streets near the city center. That was unthinkable a few years ago.
However, the trend for other regions is that crime rates are rising dramatically. Some regions, in the Northeast particularly, are worse than some war zones. Avoid, specially if you have no Brazilian friends.
Disclaimer: I am Brazilian, lived for 30+ years in the northeast. Fled to the very south, to a very good neighborhood, wife witnessed a drug-related execution in front of our building the week we arrived. Nothing came out of it btw, didn't even make the news. Where I used to live, 20+ violent deaths in a weekend are not worth newspaper pages anymore. Then fled to the Bay Area.
Please note I am not arguing that the Olympics should continue in Rio. We should do what is best for world health, even if that negatively impacts Rio financially.
You're right that it isn't a question that should be determined by finances, but that's a different issue.
>It would be sad if the games were cancelled, but at the risk of a global pandemic it's hard to see how people can argue in favor anymore.
Tough call...
Yes, it's likely that someone of them will contract Zika and bring that home with them to spread - but it's more likely that it will not happen, and the effect is dwarfed by the chances that the spread will be caused by the ordinary flow of people, and cancelling the Olympics will have no effect on that.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Cancelled_Olympic_Gam...
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/may/11/tokyo-olympics...
What's the worst-case scenario for letting Aedis Aegypti live? Is it better than the worst-case scenario for exterminating the species?
So it is a very serious concern at the moment, but it is not any sort of existential problem. It will likely not even be a medium term problem (there is early research towards vaccines).
It is way too early to make that claim.
You're also ignoring the Guillain–Barré cases that are suspected to have been caused by Zika.
The CDC has weighed in:
http://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2016/s0413-zika-microcepha...
I have yet to see a study that links it to microcephaly for anyone who has not been in brazil for a long time. I realize the mosquito isn't common, but brazil also does things like: "secretly spray tons and tons of pesticide on their populus", etc.
Given these are all correlative studies, i'd love to see something from a country where there aren't a ton of possible other variables.
(especially given zika has been around and even common forever and it's only now that this seems to be an issue)
You know, before the tourism economies of all of these other countries are completely destroyed.
It's the fat cats who don't want to move/postpone the Olympics most. They have the most to lose.
Why are there hardly any cases in Colombia?
Most of the other islands are remarkably small.
Note also that the methodology used in that study (http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-67...) is a retrospective analysis of data that uses somewhat ... almost laughable assumptions-
Modelling assumptions for estimation of risk of microcephaly associated with Zika virus infection: ...
<this is just some of them>
•All microcephaly cases in the study period have been identified
•The birth rate is constant during the study period and can be estimated from official statistics
•The number of Zika virus infections in a given week is proportional to the number of consultations for suspected infection in the same week
Note the last one: They are estimating actual zika infections not from zika infections, but from consultations of people suspected to have zika and the percent who were later found to have zika.
So how accurate is such a "suspicion based consultation"?
By the end of the outbreak, public health officials had recorded 8750 suspected infections with Zika virus, of which 383 (4.4%) were confirmed in the laboratory.
At this point, i'm going to suggest maybe their assumptions are not quite as strong as they think they are.
....
Overall though, think given the fact the facilities have not been fully constructed, the Brazilian government is on the verge of collapse, and the risks of being a major disease vector is plausible...
Should definitely consider delay or moving
Don't believe those news. The government will change today, nothing will collapse. There will be some roads closed (until the police gets there), and some brave discourses on the media, and that's all.
The government attempt a coup Monday - everybody just carried on.
You can say "This brought a twofold increase in clientele", "We saw a threefold weight increase in affected mammals". I've never seen it used passed "fourfold" though.
Come to Brazil if you wish, but take care. The Aedes Aegypti mosquito is all around and can spread not only Zika, but Chikungunya (kindly named "chico cunha") and Dengue.
Make good use of insect repellent, watch your stuff when walking on beaches (don't forget robbers and thieves) and think twice about trusting someone.
As someone said before, every city in the world has its problems and brazilian cities have them also.
Personally, I will not go to Olympics just because hotel prices on Rio skyrocketed and are almost impractical.
At the same magnitude?
Considering the political forces that need to be involved in moving (or not) the games it seems foolish to not have a safety net if "please move the games" doesn't work.
Some airlines have been allowing passengers to refund tickets to areas affected by Zika [1].
I think every decent travel agency should worry its customers that traveling to Brazil at this time is not a good idea.
Besides the health issues, Brazil is ousting its president today and most leftist parties and unions have vouched to stop the country with strikes, blockades and protests. You may get stuck in a 2-hour traffic jam on your way to the games.
1 - http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/zika-virus-m...
Despite all the hype, Zika is not the end of the world. Most people who get it hardly notice and get over it in rather short order just as one gets over a cold.
If so, could spread the world at lightning speed.
I think there is also concern for the athletes in that the water is absolutely filthy there.
It's the spread of the virus that's scaring everybody.
The autumn in Rio is the coldest and driest in a long time http://g1.globo.com/rio-de-janeiro/noticia/2016/03/outono-no... When the Olympics arrive, the mosquito will be in their lowest population count.
If you consider that the Olympics tourists are rich ones, that will spend most of their times in air conditioned environments, the risk is really very low.
At most they'll spray and fumigate the skeeters for the few weeks the activities take place and then go back to "normal".
Best to all, Signed: The mosquito killer! :p