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Yes, Rio sees many visitors regularly. What Rio does not see is an influx of visitors from nearly every country on earth. It's that spread that is the problem. The financial impact on hosting the games is already negative for host cities. That's no longer debatable without ignoring fact. Your argument that all the experts studying the Zika epidemic and drawing the ever more cemented conclusion that this is a very serious problem are wrong is what is hogwash.

But will you at least concede that THIS is what should have been the focus of the article? While perfectly valid, all of the scientific discussion around Zika is mostly irrelevant to the point the author was trying to make -- the true variable of interest is how the games shape the quantity of visitors and the distribution of those visitors around the world. But there's hardly a line in the article about that -- just the 500,000 number is thrown around with absolutely no citation.

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.

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'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.

Actually RJ does have an influx of visitors from nearly every country on earth.

source (see page 97): http://www.dadosefatos.turismo.gov.br/export/sites/default/d...

Those numbers aren't particularly compelling, especially for the countries the author listed as not having the resources to deal with an outbreak:

Nigeria: 265

India: 4,522

Indonesia: 0

Considering the number of olympic athletes from these countries, what evidence there is that these numbers will increase?

As an Indian I can tell you even a few infected people can come into the country and cause an outbreak here.

Its not like in US, the sewage infrastructure in India is very bad. There are open air sewage drains, mosquito infestation is every day life and in cities people live in very densely crowded homes. All of this contributes to a rapid spread in case of a outbreak.

In fact dengue outbreaks are common in India every summer, or a few months.

There's a good point. The number of visitors from those countries actually remained typical or declined in London for 2012. It is conceivable that the increased hotel and airfare costs actually deter travel from poorer countries.

http://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/number-international-visit...

So sending an even larger influx into an outbreak is good... why exactly?

Its like arguing that some subset of people drive drunk right now, therefore it would be a great idea if more people would drive drunk this summer.

No, it's like arguing that some people get into car accidents, so more people driving is a bad idea.

That’s a pretty reasonable argument. Building better train networks between economically linked cities, getting people to choose other forms of transportation for their commutes, giving buses/light rail their own lanes, designing infrastructure to better segregate drivers from pedestrians/cyclists, encouraging car-pooling and use of smaller lighter cars wherever practical, and in general trying to slow down the speed of automobile traffic (ideally all urban driving would be <30 mph if not slower) would save a lot of lives.

Automobiles, while often convenient, are one of the leading causes of death, and we should try to organize public policy around reducing their use and the deaths they cause to the extent possible without overly compromising their convenience.

Reducing the number of automobiles would also have a big positive environmental impact, and reducing the number and widths of roads and parking lots would free up a lot of space which could be used for other purposes. Other forms of transportation also scale a lot better with population density, and denser cities use a lot less other infrastructure per capita.

Once self-driving cars become effective, I have high hopes that they will replace a large proportion of current human drivers, something else which should save many lives.

On the surface that's not a bad argument. It becomes a bad argument at certain scales though -- the difference between a 1% and a 100% increase matters. The point at which it matters depends in part on the transmissibility of the disease, which is low for zika.

Yes. It's why that argument is made about airport security all the time, for instance by BloomBerg: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-11-18/airport-se...

Yes, yes it is.

Devil's advocate: I think the argument is that the damage of the disease is disproportional to the people exposed, because the increased pairs of interactions are what can make it spread fast.

So doubling the number of people congregated in Rio won't just double the danger, but quadruple it. If car accidents obeyed a similar dynamic -- where they increase (much) more than proportionally to the number of vehicle-miles driven, we should be similarly more cautious about additional drivers.

Aren't those pairs composed of a foreigner and a contaminated native? One of those populations is staying constant.

Well, it's a matter of cost vs benefit - while it may be valuable to take some costly, unpopular measures if that would have a meaningful change in spread of Zika, I'm not convinced if it's worth doing such things only to achieve, say, a 8% reduction (some of estimates here on impact of Olympics to tourist traffic) in risk of spreading the disease.

The negative financial impact of the games comes mostly from building and maintaining the Olympic infrastructure. Cancelling the games doesn't solve this problem, on the contrary as it denies the country the income and touristic reputation boost. Public health concerns go first of course, but it's not gonna be a financial win.

sorry but no, Rio sees visitors from most countries out there. it's not an even spread like it would be in case of olympics, but not that far from it.

London has the most tourists of any city in the world.

No, it's not the same.

I looked up the actual figures after posting -- seems London has about 5x as many international visitors, so you are absolutely right.

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

"you want an economist making this argument, not a health expert"

You probably want both.

Most people are probably going to stay at Air BnBs. There literally aren't enough hotels there to support the influx of people there. It was a mess during the world cup and that was held throughout the entire country. The only place I could find to stay during the world cup there was an overpriced AirBnb.

It was totally worth it, but I've been wondering since how the hell the city is going to handle that many people there at once.

I would expect the differences you mention to result in a higher delta for Rio, they would contribute to a lower base rate of travel making the event travel relatively larger.

When I wrote my original comment I certainly had a model that the base rate of travel was pretty comparable to LDN, but I looked at actual figures from a few years ago and saw that it is in fact 5x smaller.

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.

Open water swimmers will be swimming in dirty water, sailors all ready have been. The Guardian wrote: Rio 2016: 'Chance of infection very likely' after tests show extent of pollution...

Maybe the tourists won't swimming in stagnant water where mosquitoes breed but tourists will be attending nearby while athletes swim in it.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/dec/02/rio-olympics-2...

>You then also have to realize that a lot of those visitors displaced people who did not travel to Rio because of the olympics

If, as seems to be the case, you're looking at the anticipated percent increase in travel, then you've already included this displacement.

True, but how do you know how they reached their 500,000 figure?

I suppose neither of us can assume.

Agreed - I really wish they had made it the focus of their article.

This is the claim: Scientists can disagree on how much the mass migration of 500,000 foreigners will accelerate the virus’s global spread and make the pandemic worse—but none can possibly argue that it will slow it down or make things better.

Agreed -- but this should have been the focus of the article, which it wasn't, and that's why I think it was irresponsible and poorly written. How much is 500k compared to normal travel to Rio, or to areas of Brazil and the rest of LatAm affected by Zika? What is the geographic distribution of Olympic visitors compared to regular tourists to Rio? What measures has the city taken to curb the impact of Zika that it may not take if the Olympics aren't held? etc.

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.

I think claims as strong and vehement as yours ("hogwash") should be backed up more and better than in your post.

Good point. I agreed with the author until I looked up Brazil's tourism. 5.6 Million people per year in 2015 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_Brazil).

The bulk of the tourism to Brazil is either from Central & South America, which already has the virulent strain of Zika, or it's from Europe and northern North America, which does not have the Aedes Aegypta mosquita.

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.

If you're looking at the chart, that's 2012, not 2015.

I'm surprised that people need to look up such a thing. Brazil is a hot tourism destination, especially from other South American countries. It's also has a huge economy and has excellent manufacturing capabilities.

5,677,000 tourists to Brazil in 2012. So 500,000 is an 8% increase, correct?

Well you have to be fair that that is taking ALL of Brazil into account, and some regions are unaffected by this virus -- but the largest builk of it (I think around 80%) are the cities of São Paulo and Rio, which are affected by the virus.

> the largest builk of it (I think around 80%) are the cities of São Paulo and Rio

That's only slightly more than the share of the population their region concentrates.

Yes, there are places where the disease wasn't identified yet. (Is it because of lack of cases? Who knows?) But those are mostly empty places insulated by bad transportation networks.

Right, over the whole year not so substantial. Assuming an even distribution of tourism per month (false, but I lack a better model), that's about 500,000 per month. This is essentially doubling the tourism during the events.

As the article says, sending tourists into an outbreak of a new virus does not seem prudent.

Ill panic once Madaagascar closes its ports.

port

It is only idiotic if you ignore the emotional response. The author is very afraid of this strain of Zika, they recognize that world wide distribution is inevitable but they seek to address their fear by advocating an action they know "could" be taken, to cancel the games.