An article form the Infectious Diseases Study Group in Queensland, Australia on April 19 2016 [Gyawali, Narayan; Bradbury, Richard S
; Taylor-Robinson, Andrew W; NLM. Infectious diseases of poverty
5.1: 37.] seeks to balance media reports of '2.1 billion people at risk' with the recent experience of Dengue, with no vaccine, theoretically also capable of spread to the United States and Australia. Their discussion reads:
"Despite understandable concern among the general public that has been fuelled by the media, in regions where Zika is not present, such as North America, Europe and Australia, at this time any outbreak (initiated by an infected traveler returning from an endemic area) would very probably be contained locally."
The main reasons they cite are the limited distribution of mosquitoes and less dense centres of population. Well developed infrastructure, covered drains and improved nutritional status may also contribute.
It is possible to find apparently scientific papers making dire predictions of numbers of people at risk:
; Taylor-Robinson, Andrew W; NLM. Infectious diseases of poverty5.1: 37.] seeks to balance media reports of '2.1 billion people at risk' with the recent experience of Dengue, with no vaccine, theoretically also capable of spread to the United States and Australia. Their discussion reads: "Despite understandable concern among the general public that has been fuelled by the media, in regions where Zika is not present, such as North America, Europe and Australia, at this time any outbreak (initiated by an infected traveler returning from an endemic area) would very probably be contained locally."
The main reasons they cite are the limited distribution of mosquitoes and less dense centres of population. Well developed infrastructure, covered drains and improved nutritional status may also contribute.
It is possible to find apparently scientific papers making dire predictions of numbers of people at risk:
Messina, Jane P; Kraemer, Moritz Ug; Brady, Oliver J; Pigott, David M; Shearer, Freya M; et al. eLife 5 (Apr 19, 2016)
So the media hype is understandable. But this creates difficulties for reporters who fail to distinguish peer-reviewed papers from internet publications which lack thorough critique.
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