The Atlantic: Why Zika Needed An Ounce of Prevention
“In all likelihood, Congress was never all that close to finding a way to push past factional politics and fund efforts to fight Zika. Lawmakers have adjourned for recess after a failure to find common ground on the issue … Congress’s lack of concern about Zika mirrors that of the public. In a recent Kaiser Family Foundation tracking poll, only 16 percent of all people are very worried about Zika as a public health threat. There is a great deal of risk to these attitudes, however, and Congress knows well from delayed action on previous epidemics that the American health care system makes rapid responses to established diseases difficult and costly…” (Newkirk, 4/29).

Roll Call: How Zika Could Bite the GOP
“It could take just one pesky mosquito bite to put the public against Senate Republicans. Or so says one of the GOP senators involved in drafting supplemental legislation to address a public health response to the Zika virus, an illness that’s been shown to cause serious birth defects. ‘I think if you have one case of Zika infection that, you know, we could have done something about then we own it,’ South Carolina GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham told reporters Thursday…” (Lesniewski, 4/29).