Zika: women who are or may become pregnant have actually been told by the CDC

[pnwmom]

to avoid being in a certain area of an American city.

A district of Miami where multiple cases of locally transmitted Zika have been discovered.

Where many women already live!


And yet Congress went on vacation without funding the money needed to address this crisis. At the last minute, after the funds had been agreed upon, the Rethugs attached an amendment -- taking the money from Planned Parenthood and the ACA.



http://www.cdc.gov/zika/intheus/florida-update.html

The Florida Department of Health has identified an area in one neighborhood of Miami where Zika is being spread by mosquitoes. This guidance is for people who live in or traveled to this area any time after June 15 (based on the earliest time symptoms can start and the maximum 2-week incubation period for Zika virus).

Pregnant women and their partners
Pregnant women should not travel to this area.
Pregnant women and their partners living in or traveling to this area should follow steps to prevent mosquito bites.
Women and men who live in or traveled to this area and who have a pregnant sex partner should use condoms or other barriers to prevent infection every time they have sex or not have sex during the pregnancy.
All pregnant women in the United States should be assessed for possible Zika virus exposure during each prenatal care visit.
Pregnant women who live in or frequently travel to this area should be tested in the first and second trimester of pregnancy.
Pregnant women with possible Zika exposure and signs or symptoms of Zika should be tested for Zika.
Pregnant women who traveled to or had unprotected sex with a partner that traveled to or lives in this area should talk to their healthcare provider and should be tested for Zika.
Couples thinking about getting pregnant
Women with Zika should wait at least 8 weeks and men with Zika should wait at least 6 months after symptoms began to try to get pregnant.
Women and men who live in or frequently travel to this area should talk to their healthcare provider.
Women and men who traveled to this area should wait at least 8 weeks before trying to get pregnant.

[Laurian]

1. The tourist trade will take a big hit and

Marco Rubio and Rick Scott can suffer the blowback.

Unfortunately, those working in the tourist industry will also suffer.

R's have no business governing. They wouldn't recognize the "public good" if it bit them in the ass.

[treestar]

2. I know they are anti-government and all

but contagious diseases? That's one area they should let government be involved.

[tanyev]

3. There is no end to the time and money they will spend on trying to shut down Planned Parenthood,

but a genuine threat to the health of pregnant women and the babies they are carrying? Nothing. Effing hypocrites.

[kestrel91316]

4. I am SOOOOO glad my niece in South FL had her baby a year ago.

And I am even more glad that they have no plans for another right now and are very aware of the Zika situation and what it means for them.

[AngryAmish]

5. Getting rid of all mosquitos is over 100 year old technology.

We built the Panama Canal by beating it. Oil the water. All puddles drained. Pay folks $15 an hour, go into every backyard, every swamp etc and put kerosene across the top of the water. It drowns the mosquito larvae.

And start the gene drive.

[Warren DeMontague]

6. Honestly, I'm very environmentally aware, etc. but DDT got kind of a bad rap due to Rachel Carson.

And we see impacts today through not just mosquitoes but also things like bedbugs.

it may be time to reexamine that particular chemical.

[FSogol]

7. No thanks. There are better ways to control mosquito population without damaging the

entire ecosystem.

[Warren DeMontague]

8. Like I said, I think it got potentially a bad rap.

And it was extremely effective against malaria, etc.

[dembotoz]

13. i dunno i kinda like still having bald eagle and its cousins still around

better living thru chemistry sometimes isn't

[Orrex]

14. "The ban on DDT may have killed 20 million children."

From Malaria.

I kind of like not having 20 million dead kids around, but YMMV. In any case, it's not as simple as a permanent and inviolable ban based on a 50 year old book.

[gratuitous]

9. Surprisingly, Gov. Scott has blamed Congress for failing to fund the fight against Zika

I know! It shocked me, too.

[pnwmom]

10. I bet he's blaming the Dems, even though they were very willing to vote for the funds.

But they weren't willing to take those funds out of the budget for Planned Parenthood and the ACA.

[gratuitous]

11. I'll have to go back and check

But my sense was that Gov. Scott really was blaming Congress and the Republican leadership for playing political games with people's lives instead of taking action.

[Yo_Mama]

12. The situation in Puerto Rico has been dire for more than a month - why

is it more pressing to fund when a few persons in FL are endangered when so many thousands are actively in trouble already in Puerto Rico?

[Orrex]

15. NPR ran a fairly damning report on this yesterday

Their political reporting is generally kind of softball and overly friendly to Republicans, but this piece with Donald McNeil Jr. was rather chilling.

He flat out said that officials in Puerto Rico need to "act like grownups" and get their shit together, but he feels that they're simply (and deliberately) treading water until cooler weather hits and the mosquitoes die out normally.

Ultimately I can't speak for his overall veracity, but he paints a bleak picture of bureaucratic foot-dragging and an inability to act with decisiveness.


And you're correct--the situation in PR is much worse than in FL.

[Yo_Mama]

16. "Dire" is what I really believe it to be - and PR doesn't have the resources.

Florida does.

It seems to me that we are showing some sort of bigotry here. A few cases in Florida is a crisis; tens of thousands in Puerto Rico just don't ring any alarm bells?

The CDC has estimated that thousands of Puerto Ricans are being infected A DAY.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/31/health/zika-virus-puerto-rico.html?_r=0

Tests on donated blood, the most reliable barometer of the epidemic’s spread, show that almost 2 percent of the donors were infected in the last 10 days.

“That’s a stunning number and reflects an explosion of cases,” Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the director of the C.D.C., said in an interview.

The proportion of pregnant women testing positive for the virus has risen sevenfold since January, the agency said on Friday. Officials warned that hundreds of infants could be born with microcephaly in the coming year.

Puerto Rico has a population of 3.5 - 3.6 million. If the blood donation figures are accurate for the general population, about 75,000 inhabitants have been infected in less than two weeks.

[Avalux]

17. It's bad there. A friend went to visit family recently...

...her daughters didn't go because they want to have kids in the future and didn't want to risk it. Puerto Ricans are even saying that the mosquitoes hurt MORE when they bite. As if they've become bigger and more aggressive. I'm not sure what's going on there unless the virus mutates them somehow.

[Orrex]

18. Dire is right

The report seemed to suggest that local authorities in PR are resistant to CDC's direct involvement, but that's the part that I can't verify independently.

I would hope that it's not a territorial squabble between fiefdoms, but if that's not it then what is it?

Regardless, there's no excuse for failing to act, and every dime that the US thinks it's saving now will be $10,000 dollars spent later to deal with the long term consequences.