"Thirst was made for water; inquiry for truth." C.S. Lewis
To Caesar's "I came, I saw, I conquered", Zika might add, "I disappeared, - but nobody noticed," ... until now.
Overturning Zika investigates (now-overshadowed) pandemic Zika-microcephaly: from improbable but terrifying arrival -- to immediate disappearance. Overturning Zika illuminates facts ignored at the time: for instance, in 2015 Brazil clinical Zika-testing didn't exist; none were performed on "mild dengue" patients reclassified as novel "Zika"; nor during or after the microcephaly-birth pregnancies. These unfortunate moms were diagnosed through later telephone questionnaires.
Zika-microcephaly, the world's largest medical news story in 2016, brought shock, fear, and panic throughout the tropics - coincident with Brazilian assertions' casting the eternally harmless Zika-virus as the ultimate danger to pregnancy: potentially rendering hundreds of millions of women in pregnancy but one mosquito-bite away from irrevocable damage to the cherished life within. The WHO acknowledged and aggrandized this worldwide threat, uniquely amongst all the many mosquito-borne illnesses, as a "public health emergency of international concern".
Public health officials immediately took center stage, issuing travel advisories and recommending indefinite abstinence from pregnancy for certain populations. The relief of a vaccine was promised but never delivered. The WHO predicted four million cases of Zika in the Americas and numbers worldwide that would add one million cases of microcephaly per year.
It's a complete blessing that none of this occurred: not in 2016, nor any year subsequently. As soon as stricter measurements for both Zika and microcephaly came into existence, neither was found to show medical significance or mutual association. Zika and microcephaly have long existed independently of each other: the one harmless, the other tragic but rare - and they will continue to do so.
Why has the "good news" of both Zika's and microcephaly's disappearance been buried? Overturning Zika is no conspiracy-tale, but elucidates secondary interests and forces that keep narratives (however flimsily constructed) active, when serving political or institutional goals.
"Overturning Zika shows, with great clarity, the scientific negligence used for economic and political ends and perhaps to create careers for researchers not interested in scientific truth as much as fame and recognition through "discoveries". " -- Robin Kaczmarczyk
"Although the Zika panic was confined largely to Brazil, many, if not most of the signs were there for spiraling panic.
- Identification of a novel virus without legitimate scientific proof of its novelty? "Check"
- Sound-bite promotion of a narrative without legitimate and independent verification? "Check"
- Use of the public square as a means of promotion of a specific hypothesis? "Check"
- The use of the panic to enhance the careers of specific scientists? "Check"
-- Wilton Alston
"With Overturning Zika, physician Randy Bock lights a fuse under a powder keg of questions that threaten to blow up the entire official narrative of the Zika pandemic, from the unknown number of Zika cases to their unsubstantiated role in microcephaly, while exposing the politicized and sloppy science that provoked unnecessary fear and suffering in millions of expectant mothers in tropical regions worldwide." Steve Templeton, Ph.D.,
Prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association JAMA's chief editors were given a shorter version, early 2020 -- without disputing the facts presented here; nonetheless, they demurred, not wanting to undercut the public health establishment's credibility, pending COVID. Read here what they wish you can't, while yo
