This week, the Senate did something. It passed Zika prevention and research funding, but it passed it as an amendment to a larger spending bill. An effort by Senate Democrats to pass stand-alone Zika funding was blocked by Republicans, who point to the amendments in the spending bill they passed as adequate. Never mind that this spending bill will likely never make it through the House, which doesn't really want to do anything about Zika at all. The Republican House is content to basically say it approves of the Ebola funding that the administration has raided to start the Zika fight—and wants to replace—and there won't be any more money. This, they say, is funding Zika.
Meanwhile, this is getting deadly serious.
(CNN)The number of pregnant women with the Zika virus in the United States has more than tripled, increasing from 48 to 157, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday.
It's unclear whether the increase is because there are more pregnant women with the virus or if officials are now keeping track of them in a different way—or a combination of the two.
That's 157 cases "with any laboratory evidence of possible Zika virus infection." But it's only those reported through May 12, so it's a week behind. There's an additional 122 pregnant women showing possible infection in American territories. At this point, all of the cases in the US—544 of them, total—are travel related. One has resulted in Guillain-Barré syndrome.
Mosquitoes, though, don't have any respect for the borders of the U.S. They are coming and very soon there will be locally acquired cases. And there will be babies born with terrible birth defects. Which Republicans don't seem to give a shit about.