Hope Solo’s Tweets About Zika Lead To Some Bizarre Heckling During A Game

Olha aí a torcida mineira pegando no pé da Hope Solo. pic.twitter.com/0kJtGWhdPK

— Uai Tevê (@uaiteve) August 3, 2016

Hope Solo is in Rio for the Olympics as a member of the U.S. women’s soccer team. Like many of the athletes at these Games, she has concerns about the Zika virus, which is transmitted via mosquitos and can affect women who are pregnant or trying to conceive a child. Solo posted a picture on Twitter about this that didn’t sit well with the people of Brazil.

Since this happened on Twitter, of course, people got mad online and at the women’s team’s match against New Zealand. The goalkeeper was booed throughout, and fans chanted “Zika!” at her when she put a ball back into play, as the above video shows. Solo didn’t seem to care about the negative reaction.

Zika is a problem in Brazil and threatens to become a worldwide issue with athletes from nearly every country on the ground there eventually returning home.

This is a typical human reaction to a scary thing. Zika is bad. Holding the Games there is worse, as it opens the door for exposing the world to it. Taking a picture with a mask and bug spray is not bad. Yet Solo is the one who sits in the crosshairs, not the IOC or the government officials that let it come to this.

Try to picture this the other way around. A Brazilian soccer player comes to the United States for the Olympics. She posts a picture to Twitter in which she’s wearing a bulletproof vest with the caption, “Going outside. Hope I don’t get shot! #bulletproof #USGames.” Is she the bad person, or is the bad person the people that sit on their hands in a country where gun violence is rampant?

Zika is serious business. If Solo was able to shed some light on it through a Twitter joke, good for her. You can boo her from now until she wins the gold in a couple weeks.

(SB Nation)