AMERICANS ARE FREAKING OUT A LITTLE BIT about the Zika virus. Last week, South Carolina officials were spraying insecticides to kill Zika-bearing mosquitos, and inadvertently killed millions of honeybees. As a species, we kinda really need honeybees to, you know, survive, so in retrospect, the move kind of feels like treating a finger splinter by cutting your arm off.
It’s not that Zika isn’t scary — a disease that attacks and deforms unborn babies is frightening in a particularly visceral way — it’s just that the disease is poorly understood, and the hubbub is somewhat overblown.
But the disease is spreading into the United States, to the point where, for many people, it’s no longer an option to say simply, “Oh, I’ll just avoid places where Zika’s a thing until this all blows over.” So here’s what you need to know about traveling in a Zika world.