States like Texas asking for coordination and help. Any state preparing for an eventual outbreak.
Got a problem with that?
Zika: The Epidemic at America's Door
http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/...-door-20160615
Three babies born in the US with Zika-related birth defects
http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/16/11956278/us-zika-birth-defects-cdc-three-infants
but Repugs just love ing over their knitter boy.
New York State Department of Health: 233 Confirmed Zika Virus Cases in New York City, Officials Say
https://www.facebook.com/topic/New-Y...36889313963282
The GOP won’t fight Zika: Anti-woman agenda makes it hard for conservatives to combat the disease’s birth defects
Republicans demand cuts to contraception spending, even though it's a critical part of fighting the Zika virus
The Zika virus is spreading rapidly in the United States, with the Centers for Disease Control reporting over 300 cases in pregnant women so far. Most people agree that the federal government needs to do something, and soon, to combat the spread of this disease, but as Congress goes into its last week of the summer, there seems to be no real movement on passing a bill funding the anti-Zika efforts.
The problem is that Republicans are far too obsessed with the fact that women have sex — and with punishing women for it — to worry about something like a dangerous virus that causes birth defects spreading rapidly through our nation.
Last month, Republicans did offer a bill to combat the Zika virus, but the bill was a grab bag of radical right wing demands — including
cutting Obamacare funding by half a billion and
money for veterans by another half billion more —
but the crown jewel of this supposed Zika bill was an item
defunding Planned Parenthood.
Cutting services at Planned Parenthood has been a long obsession for Republicans, and it’s clear they want to use public panic over Zika in order to take another run at making sure low income women lose access to contraception services.
But there’s something particularly gruesome about Republicans wallowing in an anti-sex, anti-woman agenda right now, because the overwhelming medical consensus is that contraception access is an important tool — perhaps the most important tool — in fighting the worst effects of the Zika virus.
After all, as the CDC notes, the “illness is usually mild with symptoms lasting for several days to a week”, with very few cases requiring hospitalization or resulting in death. No, the real danger of Zika is that it’s linked to serious birth defects, if pregnant women get infected, with microcephaly being the biggest dangerous.
In the face of a disease that is otherwise no big deal, unless you’re pregnant, clearly the move here is to prevent pregnancy until the danger passes.
Otherwise, women will be forced to choose between abortion or risking giving birth to a baby who may die or be seriously re ed or blind (or both) due to microcephaly.
http://www.salon.com/2016/07/12/the_...birth_defects/
Harris County confirms first baby born here with Zika-linked defect
http://www.chron.com/news/houston-te...in-8372258.php
just "zika-linked"?
whew, sure glad the microcephaly wasn't CAUSED by zika.
Bell County, Texas: Health Officials Confirm 1st Case of Zika Virus in Area
The male carrier contracted the disease while traveling in a Zika-infected area, health officials said. There have been an estimated 60 cases of Zika virus in Texas so far, reports said.
https://www.facebook.com/topic/Bell-...67313547555819
When Republicans Sabotage Zika Funding, Local Health Departments Suffer
As Congress continues to stall on funding Zika research, local health departments are bearing the brunt of their inaction.
Earlier this month, the Centers for Disease Control shifted $44 million of its federal funding towards research on the mosquito-borne disease after Congress failed to allocate any funds itself.
But since this money is normally funneled down to local health departments for emergency preparedness, city and statewide offices have lost critical funds they need in order to prevent the spread of Zika at the local level.
New York City, home to a confirmed 310 cases of the infectious disease, lost $1 million in emergency funds from the CDC — a number that deputy health commissioner Maris Raphael predicts could impact the city’s capacity to conduct lab testing as well as surveillance activities like tracking and interviewing Zika patients.
“It’s very painstaking, time-intensive work, but so critical for the ultimate goal of spreading disease,” she said in an interview. “You need people with that technical expertise to investigate outbreaks on any given day.”
Raphael added that the “highly problematic” cut could affect the department’s ability to sustain its existing Zika monitoring networks while also addressing the competing demands of other potential outbreaks.
House Republicans have repeatedly stalled a bipartisan Senate bill that sought to allocate $1.1 billion towards research on the virus. When the House passed another $1.1 billion plan in June, Senate Democrats objected to
“poison pill” provisions that would have
prohibited allocating funds to Planned Parenthood for fighting the virus,
weakened pesticide restrictions, and, curiously,
ended the ban on displaying Confederate flags in national cemeteries.
http://www.nationalmemo.com/exclusiv...tments-suffer/
America would be so much better off without Repugs and you assholes who elect them.
Florida Identifies Two More Zika Cases Not Related to Travel
http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...ted-to-travel/
Zika Cases in Puerto Rico Are Skyrocketing
Infections are skyrocketing: Many residents fail to protect themselves against bites because they believe the threat is exaggerated.
Federal and local health officials are feuding, and the governor’s special adviser on Zika has quit in disgust.
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.
Most never get tested. 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,” \\
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.
Obstetricians, too, are quietly urging their infected pregnant patients to have regular ultrasounds and to consider abortion if brain damage turns up.
And damage is turning up.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/31/he...er=rss&emc=rss
Caring for Zika victims costs $10 million each ... and a lifetime of aching despair
At least 12 babies in the United States have already been born with the heartbreaking brain damage caused by the Zika virus. And with that number expected to multiply, public health and pediatric specialists are scrambling as they have rarely done to prepare for the lifelong implications of each case.
“the doctors said she would never walk, but … ” scenarios. These children will never walk. Never talk. Never laugh. Never play with a toy. Never feed themselves. Never even know that they are loved. They will only cry, and never be comforted.
They heard ophthalmologist Camila Ventura of Brazil, the epicenter of Zika in the Americas, describe how extremely irritable, even
inconsolable, the newborns with microcephaly are.
“The babies cannot stop crying,” she said.
The parents of these children face not only day after day after day of bleak despair, but also crushing financial burdens.http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/0...28Daily+Kos%29
Many of Zika’s littlest victims, diagnosed with microcephaly and other serious birth defects that might not immediately be apparent, could require care estimated at more than $10 million through adulthood.
Puerto Rico is being pummeled by Zika, with hundreds of cases of birth defects feared
The number of Zika cases in Puerto Rico rapidly continues to climb, with federal officials warning Friday that the spread of the virus there could lead to hundreds of children being born with severe defects in the coming year.
Health officials said that as of July 7, 5,582 people in the US territory had been diagnosed with Zika, including 672 pregnant women. Of the pregnant women, about one third of them — 231 women — did not have symptoms, leading officials to warn that there could be many more pregnant women in Puerto Rico who are unknowingly infected with the virus.
The Puerto Rico Department of Health, which tallies its numbers through a different method than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Friday it had counted 788 pregnant women with Zika, 256 of whom were asymptomatic.
The local health department said Puerto Rico has had 7,296 total confirmed Zika cases.
Puerto Rico has seen 21 cases of confirmed or suspected Guillain-Barresyndrome as a result of a Zika infection or an unspecified infection from a virus in Zika’s family. The condition leads to a gradual and generally temporary paralysis, but many patients have to be put on breathing machines at some point.
Residents of 77 out of 78 municipalities in Puerto Rico have tested positive for Zika.
https://www.statnews.com/2016/07/29/...erto-rico-cdc/
Florida Gov. Rick Scott asks feds for help after Zika outbreak produces 10 new cases
Zika outbreak in Miami has led to 10 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.
Scott said he called on the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to dispatch an Emergency Response Team to Miami to help the state's health department in their investigation of the local cases believed to have been spread in a one-square-mile area in early July.
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/08/flor...e+Raw+Story%29
Officials Warn Women To Avoid Travel To Miami Neighborhood Over Zika Outbreak
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/zi...+%28TPMNews%29
Still curious?
In a sign that the Zika cases might affect tourism in Florida, Britain’s health agency, saying the risk was moderate, advised pregnant women on Saturday to “consider postponing nonessential travel to affected areas until after the pregnancy.”
Jack Ezon, the president of Ovation Vacations in New York, said that his agency b, and that about four times as many people called for information about the travel advisory.
“Yesterday, the news was terrorism. Today, the news is Zika,” he said.
The airline JetBlue said in a statement that it would allow refunds for people with “concerns of traveling to Zika-impacted areas confirmed by the C.D.C.”
But Ross Feinstein, a spokesman for American Airlines, which has a hub in Miami, said no refunds would be issued, even for pregnant women.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/02/he...a-florida.html
We saw how quickly Repugs reacted when they discovered LEAD in Congress' water.
How quickly would they react if Zika were to be found in DC and near suburbs?
Last edited by boutons_deux; 08-02-2016 at 09:58 AM.
Can't wait to see how the clusterf of Rio Olympics adds to the spread.
IOC neck n neck with Repugs for repugnancy.
Will State Leaders Keep South Texans Safe from Zika Virus?
Women in South Texas colonias are particularly vulnerable, public health advocates say.
Poor Hispanic women will likely be hardest hit when a Zika outbreak takes place in South Texas, according to public health advocates.
Thousands of low-income women who live close to the Texas-Mexico border are uninsured and have no access to birth control, making them especially vulnerable to Zika’s most serious effect — microcephaly in infants born to women with the virus.
So far Texas has 97 do ented cases of Zika, with the majority concentrated in the urban areas around Houston and Dallas.
“We already have dengue circulating so we know the vector is here, which makes us highly vulnerable,”
“We’re right on the border, and we know Zika is spreading in Mexico. We’re at particularly high risk.”
Brownsville’s 193-day mosquito season is the 23rd longest in the country,
“It’s not that we don’t have the infrastructure, it’s that we don’t have the funding to set up surveillance.”
https://www.texasobserver.org/zika-v...th-texas-risk/
TX Repugs won't even fund education, so they certainly won't fund protecting "Mexicans".
GOP tying up every zika bill with planned parenthood shenanigans
Yeah it's pathetic. Almost as bad as what they did with HIV in the 80s.GOP tying up every zika bill with planned parenthood shenanigans
They are also attaching to the Zika funding the deregulation of BigChem's environmental poisons.GOP tying up every zika bill with planned parenthood shenanigans
America is already years behind Europe in blocking poisons, eg, atrazine. But BigChem makes/blocks govt policy to protect/increase its profits.
Last edited by boutons_deux; 08-05-2016 at 09:44 PM.
GOP tying up every zika bill with planned parenthood shenanigans
Florida governor criticizes Washington for lagging in Zika fight
Florida Republican Governor Rick Scott on Sunday accused the federal government of lagging in providing assistance to combat the spread of the Zika virus in a Miami-area neighborhood, the site of the first U.S. transmission of the virus.
“We still need the federal government to show up. The President and Congress have to work together. This is a national, international issue. It’s not just a Florida issue,” Scott said.
===============
Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida stirred controversy by telling political news outlet Politico that pregnant women infected with Zika should not be able to get an abortion, even when there was evidence the baby might be born with severe microcephaly.
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/08/florida-governor-criticizes-washington-for-lagging-in-zika-fight/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaig n=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story%29
iow, slave states HATE the Feds, except when they beg the Feds/Blue States to save their hypocritical asses.
Will Rubio pay the estimated $10M it's estimated to take to care for a microcephalic baby through adulthood?
Rick Scott's fight against Zika hampered by Rick Scott's budget cutting
Fighting the Zika virus has become a top priority for Gov. Rick Scott, but the state’s refusal to expand Medicaid coupled with his record of cutting money for county health departments, health clinics and programs for special-needs Floridians has started to complicate his message that the federal government is failing the state in addressing the potential crisis.
But averaged over his six years’ in office, Scott’s mosquito-control spending represents slightly less than a 2 percent annual increase — had he not cut money for fighting the bugs by 40 percent his first year in office.
As the Zika virus spreads in Florida, Gov. Rick Scott has toured the state, talked up his administration’s commitment to fighting the mosquito-borne ailment and frequently criticized Congress and President Obama for not spending enough to help out.Scott cut so much health care that things are really efficient. Now, all he needs is someone to replace all the funds he cut.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/0...28Daily+Kos%29
Red/slave state govt wants Yankees to bail out their sociopathic asses.
How A Right-Wing Media Myth About Planned Parenthood Could Hurt Florida’s Fight Against Zika
Access to contraception and abortion care are essential to address the spread of Zika in the United States.
As Emma Grey Ellis wrote in an August 2 article for Wired, “To actually combat Zika, you need to gain control of its vectors.”
She continued that although enabling people “to delay pregnancy to avoid passing Zika to their children is an obvious, vital step,” there were a number of “political stumbling blocks” preventing access to reproductive health services.
These “stumbling blocks” have included opposition from public officials. During an August 6 interview with Politico, former Republican presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) said he believed those impacted by Zika should not have the option to abort the pregnancy.
Gov. Scott has urged pregnant people to “contact your OB-GYN for guidance to and receive a Zika prevention kit.”
However, according to Mother Jones, “Planned Parenthood hasn't received any Zika kits from the Florida Department of Health, nor has it received any guidance from the department about how to serve pregnant women during a possible outbreak.”
The outlet noted that this failure is problematic given the significant role Planned Parenthood plays in caring for low-income and uninsured patients, who are “more likely to get pregnant by accident.”
Furthermore, even when pregnancies are intentional, the threat posed by Zika is still substantial.
In an article forThe Atlantic, journalist Liz Tracy reported on her fraught experience being pregnant in Miami during the Zika outbreak.
She wrote that the threat of Zika transformed “nine-and-a-half months into a horror movie with a monster that is almost impossible to locate and hard to avoid.”
As Tracy explained, thanks to the numerous barriers to abortion access, “if a Zika infection terribly damaged the fetus, and we decided on having an abortion, those restrictive laws would pose an overwhelming emotional, practical, and financial challenge.”
Tracy also quoted another pregnant woman saying that with the lack of testing, kits, and care in Florida, “It just feels like too little too late” to contain Zika in the state.
She added, “It’s crazy how much they could have done in advance and nothing was done.”
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2016/08...rica+-+Blog%29
Thanks, Repugs, you ing sociopathically ideological assholes.
While Republicans Vacation, President Obama Acts to Fight Zika
Failure to pass Zika funding forced the administration to choose between delaying vaccine work and raiding other programs to avoid these delays.
It is not as if Democrats needed anything more to defeat Republicans and retake both chambers of Congress, President Barack Obama just gave them another campaign talking point.
While the laziest REPUG Congress in recent memory is on yet another extended vacation, something they claim hardworking Americans simply don’t deserve, the President is doing their job in protecting American citizens from a frightening enemy.
On Thursday the
Obama Administration announced it was forced to shift roughly $81 million from three critical areas, biomedical research, anti-poverty programs and healthcare to develop a Zika vaccine to combat the virus.
The White House said it had to resort to “extraordinary measures” because Republicans in Congress refused to approve the spending because they refuse to help Americans as their raison d’être.
Republicans would not approve one penny to combat a dangerous virus unless Democrats and the President also banned Planned Parenthood from providing contraception related to protecting Americans from the nasty virus which can be sexually transmitted.
http://www.politicususa.com/2016/08/...iticus+USA+%29
Repugs and Repug voters
Last edited by boutons_deux; 08-12-2016 at 10:08 AM.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
