Some
people will go home with the Zika and spread it to others as crowds at
similar celebrations give the virus new opportunities to propagate — by
mosquito but also potentially through sexual contact.
- CDC: Avoid sex with anyone who has been in areas with Zika
- Three D.C. residents have the Zika virus
In Zika-stricken Brazil, a Carnival of flesh and feasting — for the mosquitoes
RIO DE JANEIRO — For the next few nights, Tuane Rocha, a tall, radiant samba queen, will be dancing naked in the streets of this city, wearing only body paint.
Giselle Ribeiro, 27, plays the saxophone during a “bloco,” a street party, in downtown Rio de Janeiro. (Lianne Milton/Panos Pictures for The Washington Post)
Mind you, she will take precautions. “First I’m going to put on a layer of repellent,” she said. “Then makeup. Then the paint.”
Rocha dances fast — really fast. She figures she can keep the mosquitoes at bay if she keeps moving.
Because nothing stops Carnival in this country. Not the government, nor a lousy economy, nor the Zika pandemic.
Millions of Brazilians will be in the streets this coming week for one of the world’s biggest bacchanals, a dancing and drinking binge that draws revelers from all over the world. No doubt some of them will go home with Zika and spread it even more. Huge crowds at Carnival celebrations across the Americas will give the virus new opportunities to propagate — by mosquito but also potentially through sexual contact.
The arrival of Carnival points to one of the inherent challenges in fighting the Zika outbreak. The World Health Organization has declared the outbreak a “global emergency.” But it doesn’t quite feel like one. At least not here, despite the terrifying possibility that it is bringing into the world a wave of babies born with small heads.
From left: Fernanda Morais, 22, Tuane Rocha, 35, and Thais Avella, 31, discuss an upcoming Carnival routine during a meeting at a samba school in Rio de Janeiro. (Lianne Milton/Panos Pictures for The Washington Post)
Pregnant women and their families are petrified. But unlike Ebola, cholera or AIDS at its advent, the Zika virus doesn’t present an immediate, lethal threat to the broader population. As many as 80 percent of those infected have no symptoms. And the best — really the only — way to fight it is for people to do something that they should have been doing anyway: eliminating the mosquito breeding pools in their homes and yards.
The mosquitoes that carry Zika flourish, too, in places that belong to no one. Rio de Janeiro’s spectacular urban rain forests and lush mountainsides teem with them. So do the city’s vacant lots and roadsides, strewn with garbage where water collects. Carnival, which began Friday, will probably bring even more trash.
Just as authorities here have bristled at calls to cancel the Summer Olympics scheduled for August, there was never any question in Brazilian minds that Carnival would go on despite Zika. Canceling it would be similar to the U.S. government trying to cancel Christmas. It is the country’s most sacred holiday, said Brazilian sociologist and columnist Luiz Simas. Its very purpose is to help people forget about their problems.
“People abroad might find this a little strange,” he said. “But in the history of Rio, at the most difficult moments, Carnival is even more intense.”
“You don’t party at Carnival because life is good,” Simas said. “You party at Carnival because life is difficult.”
In addition to its main parade, a massive, corporate-sponsored procession with thousands of dancers gyrating in elaborate costumes, Carnival also consists of hundreds of neighborhood-level street parties known as “blocos,” where the drumming and drinking last long into the hot nights of the Southern Hemisphere’s summer. It’s hard to think of a better place for mosquitoes and for promiscuity.
Images of Carnival revelry here may contribute to international perceptions that Brazil isn’t doing enough to contain the outbreak or sound alarms, for fear of losing much-needed tourism revenue for Carnival and the Olympics.
This week, the country’s Health Ministry also fired back at complaints from scientists and researchers in the United States and Europe who say they are unable to properly study Zika because Brazil isn’t sharing enough test samples.Revelers at a bloco in Rio’s Centro neighborhood. (Lianne Milton/Panos Pictures for The Washington Post)Fernanda Franca, 33, dances at a street party. (Lianne Milton/Panos Pictures for The Washington Post)
Authorities reject claims that they aren’t taking the pandemic seriously or should cancel the Summer Games. President Dilma Rousseff has urged Brazilians to mobilize against the virus, and she promised expectant mothers that the government “will do everything, absolutely everything in our power to protect you.”
In a speech this past week, Rousseff declared “war” on Aedes aegypti, the mosquito that is the primary vector for the virus. She has ordered more than 220,000 soldiers to fan out across the country to hand out leaflets at 3 million homes. About 50,000 will hunt for pools of standing water where the insects breed.
COPY https://www.washingtonpost.com/world
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