Less than a week since the first suspected case of locally acquired Zika was noted in Florida, the count is growing quickly.
A Zika outbreak in Miami has led to ten more local cases spread by mosquitoes in the same neighborhood north of downtown and identified last week as having been the source of the nation’s first locally transmitted cases, Florida Gov. Rick Scott announced on Monday.
Republicans stalled for months before finally producing an underfunded Zika bill purposely loaded with poison pills, so they could scurry away for summer vacation while blaming Democrats for not voting for their Obamacare-ending, Planned Parenthood-defunding, contraceptive-blocking bill.
Because, when threatened by a virus whose most fearful effect is terrible, life-altering birth defects that can cost $10 million per victim to treat, nothing makes as much sense as blocking contraception and cutting off access to women’s health services.
The Republican bill specifically affected funding for services in Puerto Rico, where Zika has become a full scale epidemic.
The Zika epidemic that has spread from Brazil to the rest of Latin America is now raging in Puerto Rico — and the island’s response is in chaos. …
There are only about 5,500 confirmed infections on the island, including of 672 pregnant women. But experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say they believe that is a radical undercount.
Just four cases of infection were confirmed last week in Florida. But in Puerto Rico, officials believe thousands of residents — including up to 50 pregnant women — are infected each day.
The range of effects produced by Zika is constantly growing, and even some of the babies born with no obvious problems are likely to turn out to have been affected in ways that are not immediately visible. Right now, in Puerto Rico alone, the cost of Zika may top half a billion a day when it comes to the future treatment that will be required by the children affected—and that doesn’t begin to touch the lifelong tragedy for their families, or the loss of income generated by the need for additional care.
There has been no disease like Zika in the United States in over fifty years. There’s no reason it should be here now, except that Republicans would rather have a talking point at fundraisers than actually protect American children and families.