Opinion: Brazil’s Zikalympics?

Opinion, by Michael Royster

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Residents of Rio, relax! The Olympic and Paralympic Games are safe, and there is no need whatsoever to worry about them becoming the Zikalympics. At least, that’s what Brazil’s Ministry of Health, the International Olympic Committee and Rio’s Municipal Government are now telling people.

Skeptics and other naysayers worry that none of these entities have any knowledge whatsoever of medicine and public health, but we all know worrywarts never win gold medals! Sure, the Minister of Health is a political hack with an engineering degree, but why shouldn’t we trust him? After all, Engineering is science, just like Medicine.

Don’t forget that the IOC is about to ban Russia’s track team because chemists analyzed urine samples. After all, Chemistry is science, just like Medicine, so not to worry. Rio’s municipal government runs a lot of public hospitals, and public health is only a subset of public administration. Rio’s public administration knows how to build safe elevated highways and bicycle paths and tunnels, don’t they? So what’s to worry?

Even the World Health Organization has said there’s no reason to postpone or transfer the Olympics, because Zika isn’t worth worrying about in cold dry August — except maybe to people who are planning on having sex and/or babies, or unless it warms up and rains a lot.

Even though the press in the U.S. is baying for blood about Zika, we all know that’s mostly because Rio beat out President Obama’s home town Chicago to host the games, and the Yankee Imperialists have never lost hope that Rio will be disqualified. Moreover, the U.S. press is really trying to divert attention from Puerto Rico, which has as much Zika as Rio de Janeiro, not to mention being an even worse economic basket case.

So, in the immortal words of Mad Magazine’s Alfred E. Neuman: “What, me worry?”

The Curmudgeon will have lived in Rio de Janeiro for 39 years during the Zikalympics and he refuses to worry about anything at all except politics.