Everyone by now is aware of the aquatic cataclysm that has besotted Flint, MI. Corrosive chemicals – in the guise of drinking water – siphoned from the Flint River are leaching lead from the city’s ageing pipes and delivering their pernicious admixture more efficaciously to consumers than could a phalanx of Chipotle employees. While residents are far from dismissive regarding the long-term risks caused by ingesting decades of industrial waste the governor has sluiced into their spigots, most attention understandably centers on the debilitating and irreversible effects of lead poisoning that had, scholars posit, the wherewithal to topple the mighty Roman Empire.

And still the pollution in Rio’s Guanabara Bay (sailing), Olympic lagoon (rowing) and Copacabana beach (marathon swimming) seems even more parlous if not self-inflicted. Alarming quantities of human detritus (read: trash and feces) are bobbing along the surface carrying pathogens at 1.7 million times what would be considered pandemic in the developed world. Virologist Kristina Mena cautioned that none of the venues are fit for swimmers or boaters, adding athletes who ingest merely three teaspoons of water have a 99 percent chance of being infected by viruses. This summer, in fact, one in sixteen participants in both the junior rowing championships and a pre-Olympic sailing event fell ill, including Olympic sailor Erik Heil who contracted the flesh-eating MRSA bacteria. Predictably, International Sailing Federation Chief Executive Peter Sowrey was shit-canned after suggesting television producers eschew the iconic imagery of Christ the Redeemer overlooking the races and move them 100 miles up the coast to Búzios. The show, after all, must go on.

Nonetheless, Olympic spectators and participants alike have a still greater problem on their hands, namely the mosquito-borne Zika virus that has overrun the continent faster than a Roman Legion. The specter of worldwide infection is quite real, given the hundreds of thousands of international visitors soon to set upon Rio de Janeiro, certain to contract the virus and then vector it back across the globe. Pregnant women are of particular concern what with the thousands of babies recently born with microcephaly.   Yet it gets worse: Only weeks after medical personnel in Brazil claimed the virus cannot be conveyed via direct human contact, the Center for Disease Control has confirmed a sexually transmitted case in Texas. Truthfully, I could handle the thought of never seeing Venezuela again. A complete pussy ban, on the other hand, might be a tougher pill to swallow. In such a fluid and uncertain situation, the bottom line is this: With rapid diagnostics and vaccines years away, I’d advise you, until the by-and-by, to just keep swiping left.

ALERT: only moments after the last paragraph was completed, the CDC reported 14 more sexually transmitted cases, positioning Zika as the next STD to be featured in those high school pamphlets dissuading students from pre-marital coitus.

Between the shrunken heads and large-scale contagion, one might think this a clumsy mash up of Hollywood tropes (recall: Outbreak, The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake). Yet the Brazilian government is trying to flip the script, blaming the infestation on hordes of disease-ridden Africans who attended the 2014 World Cup soccer tournament. But with millions now infected, the etiology has become moot. Circumstances dictate we rather focus on prevention; in other words, Donald Trump can’t build that wall fast enough.

That the Donald has been adopted into the KKK for his vicious attacks on Mexicans and Muslims, has only sharpened the complaint that he need be far more socialistic (think: Bernie Sanders) or humanistic (think: the EU) were he to lead this great nation. And yet, dare I say, the criticism is both unfounded and unfair. To wit: After hundreds of women were nearly simultaneously assaulted in Cologne, Germany by swarthy immigrants in what can only described as a New Year’s flash mob wilding blitzkrieg, Chancellor Angela Merkel caved in to demands to tighten the country’s immigration policies. Once Denmark passed a draconian law allowing the seizure of refugees’ assets, Sweden and Finland announced the summary deportation of tens of thousands of asylum seekers. Prime Ministers across the continent are calling for Greece to be either cordoned off or tossed from the federation altogether, while, at the same time, EU interior ministers clamber to suspend the Schengen agreement that eliminates border controls among member countries.

In the final analysis, Europe has decayed into a shit show we care not to recreate. And while our founding fathers are often given credit for limiting government’s reach by setting Congress against the Presidency, their prescience extends far beyond that. We are, for whatever reason, better than the rest of the world, and now it’s to us to continue their efforts to keep it that way.