Editor,
Ongoing Republican obstructionism to any Obama-proposed legislation recently reached an egregious level; public health is now being endangered. They have blocked appropriations to fund the fight to eliminate the microcephaly-causing Zika virus, carried by mosquitoes, and therefore able to be quickly spread anywhere. They have played with the lives and health of even American babies, even after several tens of thousands of Zika cases have already appeared in Puerto Rico. Their typical dirty trick: inserting into this vitally necessary legislation unrelated provisions like allowing the Confederate flag to be flown at federal cemeteries, bringing down funding for Planned Parenthood and lessening restrictions on pesticide use.
This has put on hold a necessary all-out effort to combat the virus so that the looming pandemic can be nipped in the bud. Meanwhile such politicians are dog-whistling to their racist and Christianist base, who live right there in the Deep South where Zika is most likely to appear in larger numbers on our mainland.
Do these bozos not get that a lot more science needs to be done in a hurry at this point - particularly research towards developing a Zika vaccine? But what do you expect from the corresponding House Committee on Science, when its Republican chairperson himself is a climate change denier?
This is yet another example of global disease propagation that needs a global authority to step in and lead epidemic prevention by throwing a smothering motherlode of money at the problem. One idea being floated is public health emergency bonds sold as a kind of insurance on a mandatory basis to every single country by the World Health Organization, resulting in a single pool of immediately available cash.
But with the U.S. so resistant to give up the slightest bit of sovereignty (such as the WHO running our CDC), don’t count on any corresponding diminution of Republican Congressional power any time soon.
Arun Ahuja
UNM student
