Ten New Zika Cases Reported In Florida And Our Congress Is On Vacation.....

[global1]

Obama asked for money to combat Zika and the Repug controlled Congress turned its nose up to him.

Now Zika has landed in Florida and new cases reported today.

Florida is a vacation destination state with a Repug Gov.

Heaven forbid that they don't discover some Zika cases in Orlando - home of Disney.

People will stop going there in a heartbeat.

Thanks Repugs - now look what you've done.

They need to have an emergency session. Call all of Congress back so they can appropriate the funds necessary to do battle with Zika. Hope it won't be too little - too late.

[Warpy]

1. They've known it was moving north for months

but the anti science Republican Clown Congress won't act until they're forced to by the folks back home.

Even if they rushed back into session no, they'd be split into regional factions again the way they were when they tried to deny emergency funding for the Sandy aftermath.

The only hope we ever have of dealing with things like emerging new diseases is to get the Republicans out of Congress and back into their storefront churches where their magical thinking won't hurt anyone who doesn't want to be hurt.

[Igel]

4. The NIH and CDC have unrestricted funds.

Just for such things.

They've allocated the money for other purposes, and won't change those priorities. In other words, zika is less important than things like ebola, and the only way they'll add anti-zika initiatives (most of which would take years to come to fruition, by which time the disease will be past epidemic and simply be endemic) is to get more money. Those agencies knew this over a year ago and did little. However, I will say at the time there was that horrible "immigrants bringing in diseases from south of the border" rhetoric, with so many saying that there weren't such diseases and pointing to measles vaccination programs.


The other fun fact is that the zika funding would have been forthcoming but for two things. (1) the (R) required that the funding be deficit neutral, i.e., that funding be shifted from some other source, and (2) all current programs were too important to lose the funds. Planned Parenthood was the (R)'s preferred funding source, but the (D) refused to allow its funding to be shifted. And, yes, (R) considered their pet programs to be more important and wouldn't allow those programs to undergo budget cuts.

Not that it matters. Until very recently government scientists couldn't get good virus samples because the Brazilians (etc.) wouldn't release them. Private researchers hired people to go to the countries and collect samples or get unofficial samples from researchers in those countries, but the government couldn't use them because they weren't properly acquired. Moreover, it's unlikely that in the last 4 months the CDC would have developed a vaccination and put it through clinical trials by the end of this year.

[pnwmom]

5. They don't have adequate funds -- that's why they need to approve more. Both Ebola and Zika need to

be addressed. We shouldn't have to pick.

And we shouldn't be taking the funds away from Planned Parenthood or the ACA,, as the Rethugs wanted to do. They just wanted to use the Zika emergency as an excuse to go after PP and the ACA.

[tonyt53]

2. My son and his wife canceled a planned trip to Orlando for next week, this past Friday.

When the first case in the Orlando area is announced. Disney will be hammered. Maybe then Congress will act.

[NightWatcher]

3. Disney will just put deet in those misting fans they roll out every summer

I'm going at the end of next week.