Zika in the USA: crime and punishment

The news coming from Florida today are very grim news indeed. Ten additional cases of Zika virus infection have been reported in northern Miami, leading to fears of a growing outbreak of the disease. There is a widespread sense of urgency as Florida Governor Rick Scott has activated the emergency response team from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to help stem the outbreak. Four people had been confirmed last week to have the virus after likely contracting the disease via infected mosquitoes in a 1-square-mile area in northern Miami, according to Scott. What made the first cases in Florida a game breaker was that the outbreak was the first time the Zika virus had been transmitted via infected mosquitoes within the continental U.S.

The most worrysome fact about the Zika virus is that a person can be an active carrier of the disease and never show any symptoms, which makes any Zika outbreak extremely difficult to isolate. Of the 10 additional people reported infected, six had no symptoms and were identified only through a door-to-door investigation. Experts from the CDC and National Institutes of Health had long suspected that there could be some local transmission of Zika virus in the U.S., especially in Florida, where the Aedes aegypti mosquito is present and many people travel to South or Central American countries, where the Zika epidemic has been ongoing. The Florida Department of Health has tested 2,300 people for Zika virus statewide, which is really just a drop in the bucket for such a big state, and 372 have been confirmed to be infected with the virus.

In the eve of the summer Olympic games of 2016, Brazil was punished by the USA government with warnings to travelers regarding the Zika outbreaks in that country, to the point of scaring American athletes into the risks involved for them in competing in Brazil. But now, with the Zika virus already in the USA, it appears that the US government will have to start punishing its own citizenry for something that is getting out of hand and over which it has no control.

Beyond the human casualties, the immediate threat to Florida will be to its economy. Florida depends for its economic well being in a lot of tourism, like the Walt DisneyWorld Resort in Orlando, and this just covers the bare essentials. If panic spreads and tourists from other parts of the USA refrain from travelling to Florida because of the Zika outbreak, and even worse, if tourists from all around the world change their plans refraining from visiting Florida because of the Zika outbreak, the economy of the whole state could be in for very hard times. It could experience a crack well beyond the capabilities of the Federal Reserve Board and the US Treasury to do anything about it.

The scenario now playing in Florida was not unexpected. It was known all along that it was just a matter of time before it became a reality.

In February 21 of this year, President Obama urgently requested $1.9 billion in emergency funding for the US response to the Zika virus outbreak and urged Congress to take action “expeditiously.”, the White House saying earlier that the president would request the funding, shortly after the World Health Organization declared the serious complications associated with Zika — such as babies born with abnormally small heads and a neurological condition that causes paralysis — to be a global health emergency.

And what did the Congress do in response to the emergency request laid out by Presidente Obama? Nothing, absolutely nothing. His request stalled in Congress, where it has been stalled ever since. Half a year has gone by, and the clock is still ticking. And this time, the Republicans are to blame, since they control both houses of Congress. Remember when, back in the 2014 elections, Democrats lost control of the Senate in the midterm elections? Some pundits explained it off by arguing that it was a way for the American people to punish the Democrats for the gridlock in Congress over almost all important issues at hand. The American people, they argued, were wise enough to give full control of Congress to the Republicans, in the hope that President Obama would be forced to negotiate with a Congress dominated by a single party.

Well, giving the Republicans control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate backfired in what could be considered their response to their most important test so far, the requested approval for $1.9 billion in emergency funding for the US response to the Zika virus outbreak. This is no longer a debatable issue, the Republicans failed the test. Florida is about to crack in a jillion pieces, and since Democrats in Congress are the minority, there is no way that the Republicans can avoid their responsibility in what amounts to a major crime against the American people: ignoring the severity of the Zika outbreak and stalling for nearly half a year an urgent request. Republicans have to take the full blame and responsibility, it is their major political crime. The punishment however comes not to them (it may come in November 2016 if the American people decide they’ve had enough with the Republicans and sink into the drainage all hopes of the Republicans of regaining the White House with Donald Trump), but to the people of Florida.

At present, there is no vaccine for Zika. Besides praying, there is nothing that can be done except spraying insecticides with the ever more diminishing hopes of containing what could become a major epidemic. There is no known cure for Zika, and any major actions that could have been taken were not taken because the  Republican controlled Congress did a very good job in stalling the requested approval of $1.9 billion. With the Zika virus now spreading perhaps beyond control, even those $1.9 billion may not be enough to safeguard the general public in the short run. Developing a working vaccine is not a matter of days or weeks, it is a matter of years. Even if the Republicans react and do what they were suppossed to do way back half a year ago when they were given control of the Senate by voters who were assumed to be wise, it will be too little to late.

Perhaps the only real hope people who live in Florida can cling to, besides changing residence and leaving the state for good, will be with the coming of the autumn and winter seasons which will force the mosquito responsible for transmitting the disease to lie dormant for several months. This, of course, provided global warming does not give Florida a very warm autumn and a warm winter, since in such a case Floridians could end up having a crisis getting out of proportions. Something to remember the next time a Republican Congressman or Senator comes asking for a vote to send him back to Washington, keeping in mind that these guys are precisely the ones who have been stalling the emergency funds that were required to implement urgent actions against the Zika virus.