Georgians Worry About Zika -- ATR in the News

Atlanta journalist Aaron Bauer is in Brazil reporting on the build-up to the games. He's written a half dozen pieces targeting Zika. Then Zika targeted him.

Weeks ago, he felt a sore throat coming on. Then came the headache behind the eyes, the chills, and the inability to either rise from bed or go to sleep. When the itchy rash broke out on his stomach, Bauer knew he had the Zika bug.

"I curled up with every blanket I have," Bauer said.

Ed Hula had hired Bauer to head down to Rio. Hula is the editor of the Atlanta-based online news site called Around the Rings, which focuses on Olympics-related news. He believes the majority of people who planned to attend the games will do so.

"People are probably going regardless of Zika," Hula said.

Still, Hula emphasized that the games are six months away, and that Zika remains an evolving issue. Health officials say that for the great majority of people, the illness is no worse than the flu. For now, Olympic ticket sales remain steady and ticket agents say they see little indication that the virus is dissuading people, he said.

"Much depends on what health professionals tell us in the next couple of months," Hula said. "There's so much we don't know about Zika."

For Bauer, 24, some Gatorade and Advil got him through the worst of Zika, which lasted two days.

Some worries, though, remain. He's reading a lot about Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare condition that may be linked to Zika and can cause temporary paralysis and death.

His wife is set to visit him in Brazil in the coming months. She's not pregnant, but the couple say they will probably want children down the line. They're looking for more information about how long Zika stays in a person's system.

For the record, the CDC says the Zika virus usually remains in a person's blood for about a week. There is no evidence that suggests that a previous Zika infection poses a risk for future pregnancies, said CDC spokesman Tom Skinner.

"That's what we've heard," Bauer said. "But new information keeps coming out."

He insists he is not overly concerned.

"I'm in a heightened sense of awareness."

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Loved and Loathed, a ‘Cynical Optimist’ Keeps Up the Fight

Richard W. Pound never won an Olympic medal, and he finished a distant third in his only campaign for president of the International Olympic Committee.

But when the histories of this tumultuous sports era are written, Pound will most likely play a significant role.

He has had quite a journey for a Canadian tax lawyer, one that has included views of both sides of the fence. He once defended the about-to-be-disgraced Ben Johnson and later served as the first president of the World Anti-Doping Agency, which he helped found.

Love him or loathe him, but please always quote him. Pound became a pivotal figure at a time when the running and the jumping, the shooting and the scoring, have so often been overshadowed by the scheming and the cheating.

This latest period has provided little relief, and Pound, 73, is still in the fray. His sound bites still bite, and as chairman of the WADA independent commission that delivered a damning two-part report on Russia’s widespread doping problems, he is still charging hard at big issues, be they international track and field’s allegedly corrupt former leadership or Maria Sharapova’s credibility.

A self-described "cynical optimist," Pound surveys the landscape — or is it a wasteland? — and sees material to suit the duality within.

"It is good in the sense that a lot of things are being exposed, and people are being forced to deal with them," he said in a recent interview.

So is this positive momentum at last?

"I think it could be," he said. "I’ve been kind of naïve. I thought Ben Johnson could have been a tipping point, but it wasn’t.

"I thought Festina could have been a tipping point, but it wasn’t," he added, referring to the 1998 Tour de France doping scandal. "But I think this is more broadly serious, and even some of the idiots that run international federations are starting, starting to get the point that this could all dry up if they don’t deal with the issue. The public is getting pretty inured to the fact that competitions are fixed, and they will stop watching and then sponsors will stop sponsoring and then it could all go down the tubes."

Pound, president of WADA from 1999 to 2007, concluded long ago that bons mots were a necessary complement to back-room diplomacy. His double-barreled approach has sometimes misfired, but it did generate the requisite sense of urgency at a critical moment for antidoping.

"It became apparent pretty quickly that I needed to be provocative," Pound once said. "I’ve always said I’m happy to be known by the enemies I make in this."

He has made plenty. Hein Verbruggen, the former president of the International Cycling Union, was once one of Pound’s prime targets. He wrote last week on the website Around the Rings that Pound was interfering with due process with his public statements, needed to be checked and had "used/abused his position in WADA — and therefore WADA itself — for his own political position and for settling personal accounts."

Pound’s legacy looks a great deal more secure than Verbruggen’s at this stage, but Verbruggen raised another important point. With WADA’s influence and role expanding, there needs to be a watchdog keeping WADA in check, too.

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