ZIKA PANIC

Is Zika panic over? The question has been posed by Dominic Wilkinson, consultant Neonatologist and Director of Medical Ethics at Oxford University. Mr. Wilkinson explains with great clarity and intellectual honesty why the Zika alert in Brazil was probably overestimated. This does not imply that there is no risk at all, yet the shift in the public opinion from a “standard” epidemics of a dengue-like virus, to a global, impeding, catastrophe, was not probably dictated only by evidence. This shift was threatening to cause a cascade effect: suspending Brazil 2016 Olympic games had caused an economic disaster much more dangerous (also in public health terms) than the same Zika infection. If one wished to make a criticism to Mr. Wilkinson, one could just note that he failed to examine more in depth the various political implications of the emphasis on Zika infection in Brazil, which range from abortion legislation, to the Brazilian presidential crisis. Infectious outbreaks and epidemics have always been used also to do politics. Today they are used in a peculiar way, connected to globalization. I refer the reader to the seminal paper “SARS: Political Pathology of the First Post-Westphalian Pathogen, that David Fidler published in 2003 on The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics. 

This story remind us an important aspect of risk communication.  To explain it, I will use an example. I happened to have a friend who once decided to set himself up as an  arbiter elegentiarum. Actually, he had not that great taste for beauty, and most of his preferences were definitely a bit trivial. Yet, he discovered a perfect method to deceive his social environment: he became the “court cynic”.  Admiration, wonder, amazement, disappeared from his vocabulary. He started constantly laughing at anything. He became known for his sharp puns on virtually every artistic matter, and, admittedly, his mundane conversation was really brilliant. At the end, people accepted him as a recognized authority on matters of social behavior and taste. This is the same event that usually happens in risk communication. People use to considering negative predictions more accurate than positive ones. Pessimistic statements are easily seen as more “intelligent” and trustworthy, while overly optimistic statements are often perceived as they were a bit naïve and chiefly dictated by ignorance or by self-interest. Experts, including public health experts, are influenced by this phenomenon, and often they overstate negative facts because such an overstatement promise to give them some extra allure. Beware too pessimistic experts!