Zika is here, folks, and it doesn’t look like it’s going away anytime soon.
The fact that it’s starting to impact our sex lives means that it’s officially becoming a real problem. (Okay, perhaps that’s not the best gauge, but still, not good.)
One person who knows firsthand just how nasty Zika can be is apparently Detroit Tigers closer Francisco Rodriguez. Rodriguez says he contracted the virus in the offseason and totally understands why Olympians headed to Rio are concerned.
Why? Because it sounds like having Zika really sucks balls.
“I wouldn’t blame them,” Rodriguez told ESPN.com of any athletes having second thoughts about competing. “If they have plans to have kids in the future, you’ve got to think about it. You have to be aware of that as well. You have to do some homework, some research about it.”
For Rodriguez, who spends his offseason back home in Venezuela, what began as something similar to a cold quickly devolved into something much worse. Once the symptoms persisted, he knew he wasn’t dealing with any garden-variety ailment.
“It wasn’t a cold, trust me,” he said. “It wasn’t a cold. A cold, you have a sneeze, have a headache, take a couple Tylenol and you’re done. You don’t have a cold for two weeks, you don’t have a bodyache for two weeks, you don’t have headaches, throwing up, weaknesses for two weeks.”
He also said that it took around two months for him to start to feel normal again, so yeah, Zika being here in America now? Awesome.
Related: What You Need To Know About The Zika Virus
[ESPN]