It is hard to find anything positive to say about an
epidemic of an emerging virus that infects pregnant
women, targets developing fetuses’ neural progenitor
cells, and disrupts the sequence of neural development
to cause a devastating syndrome resulting in lifelong
disabilities. Infants with microcephaly became the
faces of the Zika virus epidemic in the Americas, which
affected almost all countries in the western hemisphere
in 2014–17. By the end of 2017, Zika virus has nearly
disappeared from the Americas as quickly as it emerged.
Now that the dust is settling, what have the scientific
and public health communities learned? Is there a silver
lining to Zika’s devastation
