By Thuy Luu
Google searches can be a proxy representing a person’s interest on a certain topic. Google trends is a freely available search engine that can quantify a country’s interest in a certain topic over time. This tool for example can be used to identify interest in the Zika epidemic occurring in North America individually or in the world as a whole.
Zika is a virus that has gained widespread attention starting in 2014 when Brazilian officials began reporting cases in humans presenting with mild illness. Initially the virus was thought to cause fever, rash, fatigue, joint pains and red eyes however, it was soon determined that the downstream ramifications included neurological disorders including Guillain-Barre Syndrome and microcephaly in newborns linked to maternal infection with Zika. Furthermore it was also determined that Zika could also be sexually transmitted rather than by mosquito bites alone. A disease that is so easily transmittable with such initial mild effects that has affected an international center for travel, leading to more widespread infection, and has such debilitating outcomes has resulted in massive spending to further control infection. The World Bank has estimated that the economic impact of Zika is approximately $3.5 billion since its outbreak in 2014. It is also estimated that care for a single child with microcephaly in the United States can cost $10 million.
The image above is from an article in Science magazine titled Zika has all but disappeared in the Americas. Why? The image represents the number of suspected and confirmed cases of Zika in the Caribbean, Central America, and South America from October 2015 to July 2017. Superimposed on this image is a yellow line [which was added on for the purposes of this article and not part of the original article] representing Google searches for Zika from the entire world during the same time period. It is unclear why Zika cases “have disappeared” as the article claims however, it is clear that the world’s interest in Zika, as represented by Google searches for Zika, mostly paralleled Zika cases. Individual counties also mirrored similar trends.