To the editor:

I think your editorial this weekend was reasonable, but I think you need to be careful about comparing Zika to Ebola. The spread of Ebola involves direct contact with body fluids, so if you control this aspect, transmission is prevented. In the rare cases (U.S., U.K.) where infected health care workers were brought back to their home countries for treatment, this was easily achieved.

Zika is completely different in that it is transmitted by mosquitos. This is far harder to control, hence the need for better methods of prevention and research into vaccines and antiviral therapies. Above all, we need to avoid complacency, as well as the silly games our politicians have become so adept at playing. One major aspect we should not avoid is the changing climate; only small increases in air temperatures can dramatically change the movement of virus-carrying mosquitos. A good example are mosquitos carrying dengue or (even worse) malaria, which have moved recently from New Guinea to the northern coast of Australia.

Admittedly, Zika isn’t going to kill anybody once it arrives in our southern border states, but the effects of the virus on pregnant females are too horrible to contemplate.

Ian Orme

Onchiota