Dumb Zika virus question

Last updated on: February 2, 2016 at 9:38 pm by Jane the Actuary

Dumb Zika virus question 2016-02-02T21:38:47-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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I’m putting this out there not because I think I’m right, but because I’m pretty sure I’m wrong, and I’m hoping readers can step in and correct me.

This is what I — and likely you — have read about the Zika virus so far: when an individual is infected, 3 times out of 4, you’re asymptomatic. When you do have symptoms, they’re comparable to having a mild and short-lasting flu, for a week or even as few as several days. And I presume that, as with any virus, once you’ve been infected, you’ve got immunity. The only real trouble is when a pregnant woman gets infected, because, with unknown frequency, her baby is at risk of microcephaly.

Now, again, I don’t know what I’m talking about, but remember chicken pox? In the old days, when you and I were kids (yes, I date myself), it was a routine childhood illness, and a given that you’d get it at some point or another, and some moms, in the hope of their kids catching it at a more convenient, preschool age, would deliberately expose them to another sick child. Heck, I remember when the chicken pox vaccine first came out, and there was some dispute about whether it was really needed, because it was only an inconvenience to parents, nothing particularly serious for the kids, except for a small number of cases where the children experienced more serious complications.

Which leads to wonder whether, for the time being, until a vaccine is developed, a woman in the at-risk areas, who wants to get pregnant or even, intentionally or not, may well end up pregnant, would actually be better off being intentionally infected with the virus prior to conception, in order to become immune afterwards. Wouldn’t it be a sort of vaccination, except with the illness itself so mild that you don’t wait around for someone to come up with any other sort of weakened or killed form of the virus, but just suffer through a few days of the illness itself?

Now, I’m going to guess that most of the time, the illness is non-existent or super-mild, but that there are enough cases of more severe or more lasting forms (though the internet isn’t any help here) that the trade-off — Zika now, to protect future offspring later — isn’t worth it, because I think that’s more likely to be the case than it is for this to be a genius idea that only I, and no one else, not any of the WHO experts, have thought of.

But I’m still curious.

(Image from http://www.freestockphotos.biz/stockphoto/16735)

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