Bustling arts district became the center of a politicized mosquito control debate when more than a dozen cases of locally transmitted cases were diagnosed

At the front lines of the US’s battle against Zika, residents of Miami’s Wynwood worry that “the scare” is already impacting commerce in the photogenic neighborhood.

Florida mobilizes to control mosquitos causing 'unprecedented' Zika outbreak Read more

The bustling arts district once known primarily for murals and gentrification, seemingly overnight became the epicenter of a politicized mosquito control debate when more than a dozen locally transmitted Zika cases were diagnosed. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a travel warning for only the one-mile radius around Wynwood; 10 square miles have already been sprayed twice by planes carrying insecticide called Naled.

Big Bus tours still rolled through the neighborhood in early August, and galleries and cafes were open. But after cases of locally acquired Zika were reported, local media dubbed the neighborhood a “ghost town”. Photos of empty clubs and line-less restaurants appeared in the Miami New Times.

“I would say the weekend, compared to the previous weekend, was markedly slower,” said Mellina Fortunato, a barista at the MIAM Cafe, a coffee shop with industrial stylings and a playlist of hipster classics (Velvet Underground, 13th Floor Elevators).

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Graffiti adorns a warehouse apparently under construction. Photograph: Jessica Glenza/The Guardian

“I know some people who don’t care, and I know some people who care a lot,” she said. Specifically, she said two of her friends who were trying to get pregnant had stopped coming to Wynwood. “The people that live here, I would say, are a lot more concerned than even the tourists.”

Workers in Wynwood describe it as “booming” and “up-and-coming”. It’s the sort of neighborhood where laptops are carried to lunch, and office workers appear in tone-conscious shift dresses or office-edgy sneakers. Models teeter by in stilettos, on their way to shoots.

But in the neighborhood, sentiments are genuinely mixed about the Zika warnings. Awareness is good, many said. Scaring people isn’t.

“I don’t know how much of it is genuine, or we’re doing this to create awareness, or they’re doing it to get funding for Zika,” said Neville Burde, the manager of the Miami Underground (MUG) coffee shop.

MUG was one of the shops visited by Florida governor Rick Scott, a Republican who toured the neighborhood in the first week of August before holding a press conference to repeatedly emphasize that Florida is “safe” despite the increasing number of locally transmitted cases.

Burde said after Scott left he felt politicked, as if Scott had only visited so he could later say he had spoken to business owners.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Visitors take pictures of a mural in Wynwood. Photograph: Joe Skipper/Reuters

“I think it’s a good thing they’re doing something, but it’s tricky,” he said; the recent media attention was “freaking everyone out”. The hair salon attached to MUG, which teaches stylists how to use very high-end products, even had a couple of stylists cancel lessons upon the news.

Cindy Blandon, 23, who lives about a 10-minute drive from Wynwood, said she sprayed on insect repellent before leaving the house.

“You never know,” she said, whether a mosquito that lands on you has the virus, though she conceded she felt the virus was “everywhere”. She used repellant even though she is not trying to get pregnant.

For Christina Madison, a 28-year-old transplant from Ohio who recently opened the Art & Sol gallery, the real test will be art walk, an open-gallery event that usually draws hundreds to the neighborhood.

“It’s definitely slowed down,” she said. “The test of time is art walk.” Two bottles of organic mosquito repellant sat on her desk.

“Even just driving here, I look around and I’m like, ‘Wow, where are all the people?’” Madison said. But, she said, the US has had previous “scares”, such as the spread of H1N1 flu, Ebola and the mosquito-transmitted West Nile virus. “People just need to protect themselves … Come out, don’t be a hermit.”

Wynwood is just west of the famous shorelines of Miami Beach (think South Beach), just far enough north of downtown Miami to still spy cranes assembling new high-rises.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Christina Madison, 28, recently opened Art & Sol gallery in Wynwood. She hopes that crowds will return for an upcoming art walk. Photograph: Jessica Glenza/The Guardian

About 22,000 people live in Wynwood and neighboring Edgewater, and both are growing. The population has increased nearly 6% between 2000 and 2010 and represents about one-third of people living in the downtown Miami area, according to a 2011 demographic profile conducted by real estate group Goodkin Consulting.

Workers are targeting the Aedes aegypti mosquito, Zika’s primary vector and a notoriously difficult-to-kill bug that prefers to live in or near homes and around people. It can live in closets, in living rooms, or under leaves in the yard.

The sheer volume of places the Aedes aegypti mosquito can breed is stunning. Researchers often reference the bottle cap as evidence of how little water it takes for eggs to hatch – which makes the volume of overturned sofas, styrofoam cups and piles of plastic around Wynwood seem overwhelming.

City infrastructure alone, left untreated, provides 150,000 storm drains that collect water, and potential mosquito breeding habitat, for Aedes aegypti in Miami-Dade County. County workers, including not just mosquito control but also cleaners, have since been enlisted to put larvicide tablets into the drains.

Until the “Zika situation”, a county spokesperson said, the strapped budget of the Miami-Dade mosquito control division allowed for only 12 full-time mosquito control workers. Those workers were supposed to cover all of the approximately 1,800 square miles of Miami-Dade County, including the roughly 1,315 people that live in each mile. All told, about 2.6 million people live in Miami-Dade, encompassing a vast, water-covered south-eastern tip of Florida.

With a budget controlled by county politics, though, the mosquito control division’s funding was regularly cut through 2012. According to a presentation by the division, funding for mosquito control in Miami-Dade peaked in 2006 with $3.7m, and by 2012 dropped to just $1.5m.

Scott’s visit to the neighborhood was used in part to lobby Congress for funding, despite his record for slashing local mosquito funding so sharply that the Florida Mosquito Control Association warned there could be disastrous consequences.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Big Bus tours still rolled through the neighborhood in early August, and galleries and cafes were open. Photograph: Alan Diaz/AP

Nearly one-third of the state’s mosquito scientists left the state when it shut down a pesticide research lab in Panama City. Another 20% left when the Florida Medical Entomology Lab saw its funding slashed. State funds for mosquito control have been slashed by 50%, much of it personally vetoed by Scott, according to the director of entomology at the University of Florida.

As this took place, the number of West Nile virus cases transmitted in Florida grew from zero in 2006 to 69 in 2012, the most recent year for which data is available.

Now, as the state battles Zika, the little-understood African virus that has country-hopped through Latin America and the Caribbean, Miami-Dade has hired dozens more mosquito control workers and contracted expensive aerial spraying, despite its debated effectiveness.

In Florida, there are hundreds of travel associated cases of Zika. By the second week in August, 16 cases of Zika were confirmed in Wynwood, and another in Palm Beach county is believed to be connected. Three more case investigations are pending.

However, the exactitude of that number conveys a deceiving precision.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still recommends testing only pregnant women who have traveled to areas known to have Zika for the virus, or whose partners have the virus (Zika can be sexually transmitted). In other words, places that are vulnerable to the disease, but where local transmission hasn’t been proven, may face difficulty getting a test.

For example, in Puerto Rico, where the CDC has estimated as much as 26% of the 3.5 million people who live there could be infected with Zika, only about 5,400 cases have been confirmed. In part, this is because four out of five people show no symptoms at all, so they have no reason to seek treatment.

“Until we had our first locally transmitted cases, that the message was out there ... I just don’t think people were focused on it,” said Gayle Love, a spokeswoman for the Miami-Dade mosquito control division.

“Now with all of this awareness, all of the attention that’s been brought to Miami-Dade because we have the first locally transmitted, cases people are clearly more interested in the message,” she said.

“They’re understanding that they are the first line of defense in mosquito control… They have to be the ones to go out and inspect the yards, and turn over those kiddy pools from the summer,” she said. “This has been a bringing together of the community, getting everyone to recognize every citizen needs to do their part.”