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Zika: The Epidemic at America's Door
Zika may have already infected 80,000 Americans, just in Puerto Rico, and Congress has refused to act — what if Miami or New York is next?
By Janet Reitman June 15, 2016
Puerto Rico's Martin Peña canal is a winding, heavily polluted waterway that snakes 3.7 miles through the center of San Juan. Eight small, deeply impoverished communities, all lacking an efficient sewage system, surround the channel, and have for generations dumped untreated waste directly into the mud-colored water. One Friday in late April, it rained torrentially all night, turning the narrow streets into waist-high, foul-smelling rivers, washing away furniture, appliances, clothing and cars. Some degree of flooding happens about 20 times a year, and signs are posted along the canal advising, in Spanish, that "contact with the water may cause illness." In the past, the health risks have included gastrointestinal ailments, as well as mosquito-borne viruses, like dengue fever. This spring, another mosquito-related illness, the Zika virus, was added to the list.
On the Sunday after this deluge, I visit the tiny community of Buena Vista Hato Rey, which is drying out after a day of 90-degree heat. Navigating around gigantic mud puddles, I find my way to the small, one-story home of Dolores Perez, who is standing in her courtyard surrounded by her soggy possessions: rugs, jeans, sweatshirts, a hair dryer. She's lived in the house for 43 years, she tells me, and had lain awake all of Friday night waiting for the flood, which she and her family eventually managed to push back with brooms, mops and dustpans. This time, they'd been able to save their furniture, she said; in the future, who could tell?
The Perez family, thanks to their damaged pipes, hadn't had running water in about a year. "We called the water company 11 times – finally they tell us, 'Get a plumber,'" Perez's brother says, wryly. Yet there is plenty of standing water – in the streets, the gutters, the abandoned houses and empty lots – none of which the city of San Juan is able to do much about. If the water isn't removed, it is a near certainty that swarms of mosquitoes will be born in those pools, and at least some of them will carry Zika, which could, if public-health estimates are right, infect up to 875,000 of the island's 3.5 million people by the end of the year.
The specter of this plague, whose true impact may take months to emerge, looms over Puerto Rico, the largely impoverished island territory, roughly the size of Connecticut, that has become the Zika epicenter for the United States. Of the 1,301 mosquito-borne cases recorded in the U.S., 97 percent of them are in Puerto Rico, neither a state nor a sovereign nation, but whose people are, nonetheless, U.S. citizens. As of early June, the start of Puerto Rico's long, hot and rainy summer, there are 1,259 recorded cases on the island, though some health officials believe the true number may be more than 80,000.
In February, the Obama administration requested $1.9 billion in emergency aid to combat Zika, but Congress has yet to approve any funds. In May, the Senate put forth a bill to provide $1.1 billion, but House Republicans rejected the measure, instead proposing the government provide $622 million, most of which would be redirected from money set aside to fight Ebola and other infectious diseases. A week later, Congress broke for a 10-day recess without coming to a decision. Dr. Tom Frieden, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told the National Press Club that he was shocked by the delay: "We have a narrow window of opportunity to scale up effective Zika-prevention measures, and that window of opportunity is closing."
Panicking that his state could soon face "disaster" as mosquito season approached, Florida Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, wrote a letter to President Obama, beseeching him to make federal funds available. "Congress has failed to act, and now they are on vacation," he said.
In 2014, Congress agreed to spend $5.4 billion on the Ebola epidemic, and Frieden, who notes the CDC is still trying to stamp out Ebola in West Africa, said he "hopes that Congress will do the right thing with Zika." But unlike Ebola, which causes gruesome symptoms often followed by death, Zika is somewhat of a stealth virus. Most people infected will have no symptoms. Some may come down with conjunctivitis or break out in a skin rash, or experience muscle or joint pain or run a fever. Within a week or so, all of the symptoms, if they even emerged, are gone. In a certain number of cases, however, this may only be the beginning. Women who are infected with Zika during pregnancy run the risk of passing the virus to the fetus, which may then develop birth defects, the worst being microcephaly, a condition that causes babies to be born with undersize brains and heads. Depending on the severity, children with microcephaly may be stillborn or die shortly after birth, and those who live longer may require extensive, and expensive, medical care – the CDC estimates that it could cost $10 million to care for one microcephalic child. Zika, which seems to be particularly drawn to neurological tissue, may also cause swelling of the brain or spinal cord in adults, and has been linked to Guillain-Barré syndrome, an autoimmune neurological condition that can cause severe, if usually temporary, paralysis.
But the scariest aspect of Zika is how little scientists actually know about it. "There's a surprise a day with this virus," says Dr. Lyle Petersen, director of the CDC's division of vector-borne diseases, which are illnesses spread by arthropods like mosquitoes and ticks. Zika is spread by the Aëdes aegypti, the same mosquito that carries dengue, yellow fever and chikungunya. But Zika, notes Petersen, is the first virus since the rubella outbreak of the 1960s to cause major birth defects. Microcephaly may be just one of many complications. Researchers are also preparing for the possibility that Zika will cause a host of developmental problems that are, so far, unknown, and may take months or years to emerge. "That's really the untold story of this: We don't know the whole spectrum," says Petersen. "Are children that are born that look 'normal' really normal? That's going to take time, and some very sophisticated testing, to figure out."
http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/zika-the-epidemic-at-americas-door-20160615
Please for the love of god, someone that supports gun control explain to me the morality of making guns the focus right now, and not the Zika virus, or any of 10 other issues.
Zika may have already infected 80,000 Americans, just in Puerto Rico, and Congress has refused to act — what if Miami or New York is next?
By Janet Reitman June 15, 2016
Puerto Rico's Martin Peña canal is a winding, heavily polluted waterway that snakes 3.7 miles through the center of San Juan. Eight small, deeply impoverished communities, all lacking an efficient sewage system, surround the channel, and have for generations dumped untreated waste directly into the mud-colored water. One Friday in late April, it rained torrentially all night, turning the narrow streets into waist-high, foul-smelling rivers, washing away furniture, appliances, clothing and cars. Some degree of flooding happens about 20 times a year, and signs are posted along the canal advising, in Spanish, that "contact with the water may cause illness." In the past, the health risks have included gastrointestinal ailments, as well as mosquito-borne viruses, like dengue fever. This spring, another mosquito-related illness, the Zika virus, was added to the list.
On the Sunday after this deluge, I visit the tiny community of Buena Vista Hato Rey, which is drying out after a day of 90-degree heat. Navigating around gigantic mud puddles, I find my way to the small, one-story home of Dolores Perez, who is standing in her courtyard surrounded by her soggy possessions: rugs, jeans, sweatshirts, a hair dryer. She's lived in the house for 43 years, she tells me, and had lain awake all of Friday night waiting for the flood, which she and her family eventually managed to push back with brooms, mops and dustpans. This time, they'd been able to save their furniture, she said; in the future, who could tell?
The Perez family, thanks to their damaged pipes, hadn't had running water in about a year. "We called the water company 11 times – finally they tell us, 'Get a plumber,'" Perez's brother says, wryly. Yet there is plenty of standing water – in the streets, the gutters, the abandoned houses and empty lots – none of which the city of San Juan is able to do much about. If the water isn't removed, it is a near certainty that swarms of mosquitoes will be born in those pools, and at least some of them will carry Zika, which could, if public-health estimates are right, infect up to 875,000 of the island's 3.5 million people by the end of the year.
The specter of this plague, whose true impact may take months to emerge, looms over Puerto Rico, the largely impoverished island territory, roughly the size of Connecticut, that has become the Zika epicenter for the United States. Of the 1,301 mosquito-borne cases recorded in the U.S., 97 percent of them are in Puerto Rico, neither a state nor a sovereign nation, but whose people are, nonetheless, U.S. citizens. As of early June, the start of Puerto Rico's long, hot and rainy summer, there are 1,259 recorded cases on the island, though some health officials believe the true number may be more than 80,000.
In February, the Obama administration requested $1.9 billion in emergency aid to combat Zika, but Congress has yet to approve any funds. In May, the Senate put forth a bill to provide $1.1 billion, but House Republicans rejected the measure, instead proposing the government provide $622 million, most of which would be redirected from money set aside to fight Ebola and other infectious diseases. A week later, Congress broke for a 10-day recess without coming to a decision. Dr. Tom Frieden, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told the National Press Club that he was shocked by the delay: "We have a narrow window of opportunity to scale up effective Zika-prevention measures, and that window of opportunity is closing."
Panicking that his state could soon face "disaster" as mosquito season approached, Florida Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, wrote a letter to President Obama, beseeching him to make federal funds available. "Congress has failed to act, and now they are on vacation," he said.
In 2014, Congress agreed to spend $5.4 billion on the Ebola epidemic, and Frieden, who notes the CDC is still trying to stamp out Ebola in West Africa, said he "hopes that Congress will do the right thing with Zika." But unlike Ebola, which causes gruesome symptoms often followed by death, Zika is somewhat of a stealth virus. Most people infected will have no symptoms. Some may come down with conjunctivitis or break out in a skin rash, or experience muscle or joint pain or run a fever. Within a week or so, all of the symptoms, if they even emerged, are gone. In a certain number of cases, however, this may only be the beginning. Women who are infected with Zika during pregnancy run the risk of passing the virus to the fetus, which may then develop birth defects, the worst being microcephaly, a condition that causes babies to be born with undersize brains and heads. Depending on the severity, children with microcephaly may be stillborn or die shortly after birth, and those who live longer may require extensive, and expensive, medical care – the CDC estimates that it could cost $10 million to care for one microcephalic child. Zika, which seems to be particularly drawn to neurological tissue, may also cause swelling of the brain or spinal cord in adults, and has been linked to Guillain-Barré syndrome, an autoimmune neurological condition that can cause severe, if usually temporary, paralysis.
But the scariest aspect of Zika is how little scientists actually know about it. "There's a surprise a day with this virus," says Dr. Lyle Petersen, director of the CDC's division of vector-borne diseases, which are illnesses spread by arthropods like mosquitoes and ticks. Zika is spread by the Aëdes aegypti, the same mosquito that carries dengue, yellow fever and chikungunya. But Zika, notes Petersen, is the first virus since the rubella outbreak of the 1960s to cause major birth defects. Microcephaly may be just one of many complications. Researchers are also preparing for the possibility that Zika will cause a host of developmental problems that are, so far, unknown, and may take months or years to emerge. "That's really the untold story of this: We don't know the whole spectrum," says Petersen. "Are children that are born that look 'normal' really normal? That's going to take time, and some very sophisticated testing, to figure out."
http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/zika-the-epidemic-at-americas-door-20160615
Please for the love of god, someone that supports gun control explain to me the morality of making guns the focus right now, and not the Zika virus, or any of 10 other issues.
