Public Relations of Zika Pregnancies

It has taken just two weeks for public health officials to run up a world record-shattering number of PR gaffes on the Zika virus and the birth defects it is thought to cause.

The U.S. State Department has advised that American women who plan to get pregnant avoid most Latin American countries.

Meanwhile, at the World Health Organization, the same woman who hopelessly botched last year’s Ebola outbreak in west Africa has been put in charge of the Zika case.

The Latin American countries themselves, where birth control and abortion are unavailable, advise women not to get pregnant for two years.

Women don’t get pregnant. They are impregnated.

No one has yet had any advise for men.

We now learn that men who have been bitten by the Zika vector can pass the virus to a sex partner. This is apparently not new information. It was just hushed up in the opening days of the story because of some devilishly complicated sociology in that part of the world.

In Latin America, a headache is not a good reason for temporary marital reluctance. The accepted cure is something we would call rape.

Solve for that, CDC.

Thus did birth control come to Latin America.