Zika virus is becoming a public-health crisis in US

Only in government would decision-makers have the temerity to take a week off while important business with national implications is left undone.

In any private company, such irresponsible behavior by the chief executive officer and his or her management team would result in suspensions or even terminations.

However, when it’s Congress that fails to perform, there’s nary a peep from the public. Why? Because we have low expectations of the men and women elected to represent us in Washington.

Last week, the Republican majority in the U.S. Senate refused to deal with the growing public-health emergency triggered by the Zika virus. Let there be no mistake: The virus is spreading through the United States and the territories.

Last February, the Obama administration asked Congress for $1.9 billion in emergency funds to develop a vaccine, top-flight diagnostic tests and rapid- response teams for any Zika clusters that are detected, according to a news story on The Atlantic magazine’s website.

But Republicans in control of the Senate and House obviously don’t share the administration’s sense of urgency.

Rather than doing the responsible thing and acting on President Barack Obama’s request, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and his inner circle decided it was more important to take a week off.

This, despite the fact, that the number of Zika cases in the continental U.S. and the territories continues to grow. Scientists have confirmed the virus causes the birth defect microcephaly and the immune disorder Guillain-Barre, The Atlantic reports. The scientists also are investigating a link between Zika and brain and spinal-cord infections.

As the days get warmer and the breeding grounds for mosquitoes increase, the virus will spread more quickly.

Here’s what Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said at a White House briefing recently, “Everything we look at with this virus seems to be a bit scarier than we thought.”

And while warm-weather states are on the front lines of this emergency, no part of the country will be safe this summer.

DISTURBING DECISION

That’s why the decision by Sen. McConnell and his GOP colleagues is so disturbing. Democratic and Republican members of Congress had been negotiating for several months on a possible solution to the funding impasse, and while the two sides seem far apart, it is only through talking that common ground can be found.

“We shouldn’t be taking 10 days off as a dangerous virus threatens this nation,” said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.

Fortunately, the White House is taking the political high ground on this public- health crisis. It has agreed to a demand by Republicans to rechannel $600 million in funding for the fight against the Ebola virus to the anti-Zika campaign.

But $600 million is a drop in the bucket, given the cost of taking on this rapidly growing crisis. Zika-carrying mosquitoes are common in Brazil and other South American countries, which do not have the financial wherewithal to prevent the spread of the virus not only domestically, but globally.

Members of Congress who refuse to recognize that an epidemic looms would do well to consider this fact: In August, thousands of athletes and others from around the world will descend on Brazil for the Olympics. And while there will be public-health warnings on how to avoid getting bitten by mosquitoes and what medical precautions to take, there is one reality that must be acknowledged.

When the thousands of attendees at the Olympics return home, some – perhaps many – of them will be carriers of the mosquitoes. As has been shown time and again, national borders are not an impediment to the spread of disease. The Ebola virus became an international public-health emergency after it claimed thousands of lives in West Africa.

The list of such epidemics keeps growing – and will continue to do so until there is a global response to the public-health challenges, especially in underdeveloped nations.

Republicans in Congress are putting the nation at risk by playing political games with the Obama administration’s request for funding to fight the Zika virus.

The American people recognize that Congress is dysfunctional, but they will not sit idly by while the health of the nation is sacrificed at the altar of partisan politics.