Every day hundreds of thousands of people fly in and out of Brazil to and from all corners of the world. Rio Galeão alone handles 17m passengers per year, much more than the total number of Olympic tickets available (most of which are sold to Brazilians, and most of the attendees buy more than just one).
Nobody I can find is giving credible numbers that show the olympics will constitute a significant increase to affected areas over the year as a whole (edit: as adevine points out, below, the article puts the increase at c 0.0025), nor that travel is currently only from a handful of places worldwide.
If international travel to Rio is a public health problem, then focussing on the olympics is pure tokenism.
What percent of current travel comes from areas where Zika could exist, but doesn't? And what amount of travel from such places will the Olympics bring?
Total volume isn't the right consideration if almost all visitors are from places that Zika already exists or can't exist.
Update: I checked the stats: 93% of visitors to Brazil come from places where Zika already is or can't go:
5% are from Asia. Africa isn't mentioned, but it must be less than 2%, part of which would be from North African countries that can't get Zika.
The olympics will bring visitors from every country. It should increase the speed with which the virus reaches sub Saharan African, and Southern Asia.
I don't think your information actually allays any of the concerns, as the total stats refer to visitors from different countries than those who will be visiting during the olympics.
I spent a few minutes on it and it looks like, if Zika did not exist, the Olympics would add 10% of extra total yearly tourism to Rio. Some complications:
* tourism to Rio this year is presumably lower than the baseline I'm using because it is presently the site of a Zika outbreak.
* the tourism into Rio for the Olympics is especially international, so it may be reasonable to be especially concerned about its effect on global transmission of the virus.
I think the people advocating for canceling the Olympics understand that it's only 10% extra tourism, but still think that small percentage of extra tourism is a bad outcome.
> "There’s been some claims that if the Olympics happen, it’s going to disseminate the virus everywhere, it’s going to amplify it," Frieden said. "Well, we looked at the numbers. The Olympics account for less than one quarter of 1 percent of all travel to Zika-affected areas."
If Olympics increase annual tourism by 10% as I have seen elsewhere and in this thread, then that effectively doubles the tourism to Rio for the duration of the Olympics.
As others have pointed out, there are poor countries that have trouble eradicating mosquito borne disease (think malaria, which is transmitted via the same species as zika) that do not currently have zika. Increasing the speed of the spread of the disease does not seem logical given that we do not even have a vaccine.
Moreover, this is a rapidly evolving disease which is also sexually transmitted.
I would not recommend traveling to Rio or other Zika-invested countries right now. You can't just get vaccinated before travelling.
Doubling the tourism to Brazil for a month seems like a bad idea at best, hazardous at worst.
There are a couple of factors that could make Olympic travelers much more likely than the general non-Olympic traveler to contract or spread the virus.
1. The Olympics venues are in places that have been particularly hard hit by the virus.
2. Much of those non-Olympic travelers are business travelers on short visits. Olympic visitors will typically visit for longer. Risk of infection should go up as length of stay goes up.
3. The virus can be sexually transmitted between humans. I'd expect that Olympic visitors have a higher probability than the average visitor of engaging in sex during their stay.
It's not the full set of hundreds of thousands of people that fly in and out of Brazil each day that you should be comparing against, but rather the subset of those that are there for vacations lasting at least a week or two.
Maybe there should be an Olympic nation. Some country just gives up the land, their claim of sovereignty over it, hand it over the U.N. (certainly not the IOC) and wealth redistribute without all of this stupid waste. Billions of dollars spent with a moving olympics and all the infrastructure ends up not being used for pretty much anything ever again. It's one of the most idiotic things on the planet. I like the olympics, sorta, but how we make them work is immensely wasteful. The very possibility it would be canceled and the infrastructure never used for its intended purpose even once makes that all the more apparent.
Or just hand it to states/cities that can manage it - I.e. has ALL arenas already built, has enough hotels and so on.
It would then pretty much be the last 5 mega-venues (Beijing, London, ...) that could tanke turns re-doing it. Which would be a good thing.
Next option is not having it in one place. It can be a global event. It wouldn't matter if athletics is in Berlin while all the cycling is in Madrid. Would only be worse for on-site fans.
The wastefulness is a designed feature, not a bug. The IOC is a corrupt organization, working hand-in-hand with corrupt governments, to put public money into private pockets in a plausibly deniable way.
As such, any proposal based upon rational analysis and sound engineering must be rejected out of hand, because it does not account for kickbacks, baksheesh, palm-greasing, boondoggles, junkets, tribute, or straight bribery.
Once you adopt this view, the Olympics work perfectly, year after year, without fail. The public still benefits, because ordinarily corruption and profiteering of that magnitude requires a war, which can at times get out of hand.
Good idea, but good lucking finding wide enough support for it. I think national and commercial interest will fight fiercely to keep the event moving because otherwise how would they "keep fostering investment" (producing lots of waste)?
It's not viewed as waste, though. It's viewed as investment. The infrastructure being built employs a lot of people in the lead-up, the public transport of the host city gets upgraded, it's an opportunity for the host city to become more well-known internationally and boost tourism for years afterward. Local businesses ought to do quite well out of it.
I'm not particularly a fan of the Olympics, but I can see why cities bid against each other to host it.
Arguably, the appeal is how much money it brings in, and the economic benefits of people being paid to build all this and all of the tourists traveling in? Beyond the general prestige, of course.
> "Billions of dollars spent with a moving olympics and all the infrastructure ends up not being used for pretty much anything ever again."
I disagree. Most of the stadiums built for olympics are bringing kids to sports and introducing them to sport activities that nobody even heard before. And every national championship is held at those venues for many years after olympics.
As a spectator and not a competitor, I'd be far more concerned about the crime in Rio.
It's tough to know what's really going on with their crime (given our sensationalist media and my not living there)... but you couldn't pay me enough money to go to the 2016 Olympics.
Rio can be a bad place. When I went to Rio for the world Cup, my taxi driver from the airport told me that at night we would not stop at red lights for fear of being robbed. The ticket he would get would be less money would be less than the money he made that night.
That being said, I stayed on the boardwalk of copacabana Beach at a hotel and there was never a problem day or night. If you stay in the tourist sections, the post guards and the area is very safe
I find it interesting that James Burke, in an interview some years after his Connections series, discussing how he'd continue the series, said of the jet airline that he'd explore its role as a vector of international disease transmission.
Imagine athletes from poorer states take it back to their countries which don't have good healthcare infrastructure and it becomes an uncontrollable epidemic there.
A very real possibility of Half a Million people taking the virus back to every city on the planet and all they are saying is we'll use mosquito repellents near the stadiums and hotels and everything will be fine.
I understand that there's a lot of money and sunk cost at stake for Brazil and IOC but their adamance over this is dangerous.
It's amazing that neither the article nor the 100+ comments take into account that the Olympics will occur in August, which is winter in Brazil. Truly Rio doesn't freeze but historical numbers of dengue infections for example are the lowest during that month. By a factor of 300 in some data.
Of course 1 infection is one too much, but if weather comes in as it usually does, August won't see many mosquitoes attending the olympics.
It seems like there are a laundry list of reasons not to have the Olympics in Brazil this year:
* Zika
* President was impeached, rampant corruption farther down
* Crime and social unrest arising from the massive amount of money spent on Olympics vs social programs
* Reports of pollution making watersports unsafe
But the Olympics will definitely happen there, of course. Too much money already spent or planned to be spent.
113 of the 149 experts are from the US and Canada. 3 are from South America. Dunno, but it seems that a large portion of the rest of the world's experts doesn't care or doesn't see it this way.
Also, the Olympics are a billion dollar business. Billions of dollars VS faster spreading of Zika. Billions. They aren't going to postpone it.
Can anything really stop the worldwide spread at this point? Even without the olympics, it's already throughout Latin America, which sees plenty of travelers on aggregate
Through mosquito bites,
From mother to child,
Through sexual contact,
Through blood transfusion.
"... Anyone who lives in or travels to an area where Zika virus is found and has not already been infected with Zika virus can get it from mosquito bites. Once a person has been infected, he or she is likely to be protected from future infections. ..."
I'd like to know how reliable the data on Rio is. Are there more Zika infections than in the poor north eastern part of Brazil or are (suspected) cases just much more like to be reported due to easier access to qualified medical care? Is distribution in Rio uniform or does it mostly concern very poor areas which are very unlikely to be visited by tourists anyway?
NB: The dengue data they refer to[1] shows a sharp decline in infections from May on, at the end of the wet season (obviously inferring from 2015 data).
Too much money is at stake (advertisers, networks, etc) for the Olympics to be postponed, but if they move it, I wonder if there is anywhere in the world that could be ready to host it at that time. London deconstructed much of their infrastructure, so they're out. Beijing perhaps? Honestly, Los Angeles could probably handle it by housing the athletes at UCLA and USC and expanding the geographic range of events down to San Diego and up towards Santa Barbara.
I have no problem with the Olympics as long as we realize that it is a party, a festival, a celebration. I don't expect my parties to turn a profit. If people can agree to it while understanding the cost, fine; but I am tired of demagogues telling democracies that everything they propose will "bend the cost curve down" and result in lower taxes, higher revenues, and cheaper everything.
[+] [-] sago|9 years ago|reply
Nobody I can find is giving credible numbers that show the olympics will constitute a significant increase to affected areas over the year as a whole (edit: as adevine points out, below, the article puts the increase at c 0.0025), nor that travel is currently only from a handful of places worldwide.
If international travel to Rio is a public health problem, then focussing on the olympics is pure tokenism.
[+] [-] graeme|9 years ago|reply
Total volume isn't the right consideration if almost all visitors are from places that Zika already exists or can't exist.
Update: I checked the stats: 93% of visitors to Brazil come from places where Zika already is or can't go:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_Brazil
5% are from Asia. Africa isn't mentioned, but it must be less than 2%, part of which would be from North African countries that can't get Zika.
The olympics will bring visitors from every country. It should increase the speed with which the virus reaches sub Saharan African, and Southern Asia.
I don't think your information actually allays any of the concerns, as the total stats refer to visitors from different countries than those who will be visiting during the olympics.
[+] [-] cjbprime|9 years ago|reply
* tourism to Rio this year is presumably lower than the baseline I'm using because it is presently the site of a Zika outbreak.
* the tourism into Rio for the Olympics is especially international, so it may be reasonable to be especially concerned about its effect on global transmission of the virus.
I think the people advocating for canceling the Olympics understand that it's only 10% extra tourism, but still think that small percentage of extra tourism is a bad outcome.
[+] [-] adevine|9 years ago|reply
> "There’s been some claims that if the Olympics happen, it’s going to disseminate the virus everywhere, it’s going to amplify it," Frieden said. "Well, we looked at the numbers. The Olympics account for less than one quarter of 1 percent of all travel to Zika-affected areas."
[+] [-] wrsh07|9 years ago|reply
As others have pointed out, there are poor countries that have trouble eradicating mosquito borne disease (think malaria, which is transmitted via the same species as zika) that do not currently have zika. Increasing the speed of the spread of the disease does not seem logical given that we do not even have a vaccine.
Moreover, this is a rapidly evolving disease which is also sexually transmitted.
I would not recommend traveling to Rio or other Zika-invested countries right now. You can't just get vaccinated before travelling.
Doubling the tourism to Brazil for a month seems like a bad idea at best, hazardous at worst.
[+] [-] sgnelson|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tzs|9 years ago|reply
1. The Olympics venues are in places that have been particularly hard hit by the virus.
2. Much of those non-Olympic travelers are business travelers on short visits. Olympic visitors will typically visit for longer. Risk of infection should go up as length of stay goes up.
3. The virus can be sexually transmitted between humans. I'd expect that Olympic visitors have a higher probability than the average visitor of engaging in sex during their stay.
It's not the full set of hundreds of thousands of people that fly in and out of Brazil each day that you should be comparing against, but rather the subset of those that are there for vacations lasting at least a week or two.
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] wrsh07|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] cmurf|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alkonaut|9 years ago|reply
It would then pretty much be the last 5 mega-venues (Beijing, London, ...) that could tanke turns re-doing it. Which would be a good thing.
Next option is not having it in one place. It can be a global event. It wouldn't matter if athletics is in Berlin while all the cycling is in Madrid. Would only be worse for on-site fans.
[+] [-] hodder|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] logfromblammo|9 years ago|reply
As such, any proposal based upon rational analysis and sound engineering must be rejected out of hand, because it does not account for kickbacks, baksheesh, palm-greasing, boondoggles, junkets, tribute, or straight bribery.
Once you adopt this view, the Olympics work perfectly, year after year, without fail. The public still benefits, because ordinarily corruption and profiteering of that magnitude requires a war, which can at times get out of hand.
[+] [-] adamnemecek|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wrsh07|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mathattack|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] julienchastang|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] slizard|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jfoster|9 years ago|reply
I'm not particularly a fan of the Olympics, but I can see why cities bid against each other to host it.
[+] [-] ArkyBeagle|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ocdtrekkie|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] transfire|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] harigov|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] daodedickinson|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] godzillabrennus|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] usaphp|9 years ago|reply
I disagree. Most of the stadiums built for olympics are bringing kids to sports and introducing them to sport activities that nobody even heard before. And every national championship is held at those venues for many years after olympics.
[+] [-] MicroBerto|9 years ago|reply
It's tough to know what's really going on with their crime (given our sensationalist media and my not living there)... but you couldn't pay me enough money to go to the 2016 Olympics.
[+] [-] DanGarcia595|9 years ago|reply
That being said, I stayed on the boardwalk of copacabana Beach at a hotel and there was never a problem day or night. If you stay in the tourist sections, the post guards and the area is very safe
[+] [-] ars|9 years ago|reply
Weelllll, with enough money you could hire body guards, or just not worry about how much is stolen from you :)
[+] [-] nommm-nommm|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tssva|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dredmorbius|9 years ago|reply
https://archive.org/details/JamesBurkeReConnections_0
[+] [-] dave2000|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abhi3|9 years ago|reply
I understand that there's a lot of money and sunk cost at stake for Brazil and IOC but their adamance over this is dangerous.
[+] [-] persona|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] habosa|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nomercy400|9 years ago|reply
Also, the Olympics are a billion dollar business. Billions of dollars VS faster spreading of Zika. Billions. They aren't going to postpone it.
[+] [-] dave2000|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] corybrown|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wrsh07|9 years ago|reply
Time is important, here, because scientists are racing the spread of Zika to develop eg vaccines.
[1] http://harvardpublichealthreview.org/off-the-podium-why-rios...
[+] [-] gyakovlev|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] belzebub|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SCAQTony|9 years ago|reply
Through mosquito bites, From mother to child, Through sexual contact, Through blood transfusion.
"... Anyone who lives in or travels to an area where Zika virus is found and has not already been infected with Zika virus can get it from mosquito bites. Once a person has been infected, he or she is likely to be protected from future infections. ..."
http://www.cdc.gov/zika/transmission/
[+] [-] jlg23|9 years ago|reply
NB: The dengue data they refer to[1] shows a sharp decline in infections from May on, at the end of the wet season (obviously inferring from 2015 data).
[1] http://www.rio.rj.gov.br/dlstatic/10112/5880996/4153672/deng...
[+] [-] the_watcher|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] daodedickinson|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] codecamper|9 years ago|reply
Looks like this is leading to a slow rise in Zika in portugal. http://www.reuters.com/article/health-zika-portugal-idUSKCN0...
Great.... I'm in Portugal! Dammit.
[+] [-] ck2|9 years ago|reply
They will hype it in such a way that a serious threat becomes a joke and ignored by those that see the topic being treated as clickbait.
[+] [-] bernardom|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] OrthoMetaPara|9 years ago|reply
I don't really see the issue, here.