Experts see little reason to worry about a Zika outbreak in the U.S.

Experts see no cause for nationwide panic over spread of Zika virus

Zika.

If you’ve been listening to the reports from the CDC, even hearing the name can be enough to make you want to run inside and hide.

Obama’s billion-plus Zika-prevention bill (with some extras that got slipped in by Congress) will be up again when the Senate resumes a short session this week. And Big Pharma’s experimental Zika vaccine is now heading into human trials.

Pregnant women across the country are in panic mode — and the summer has only just started.

But recently, some top experts have come forward and said “not so fast.”

A ‘pesticide Trojan horse’

Apparently there are at least four authorities in the field of mosquitoes and infectious diseases who didn’t get the CDC’s memo.

You know, the one that said to drop everything and start ringing the Zika alarm bells.

Dr. David Freedman from the University of Alabama is among those who are not concerned about a widespread Zika outbreak occurring in the U.S.

The professor, who is also a part of the World Health Organization Emergency Committee on Zika, said that what’s needed for an epidemic is a combination of a “dense population” of both mosquitoes and people, along with poor sewage and garbage facilities.

In other words, Third World conditions.

The chances of a “widespread mosquito outbreak” in the United States is “not high,” Dr. Freedman said.

And he’s not the only one.

There’s also Dr. Chris Barker, who specializes in mosquito diseases at the University Of California School Of Veterinary Medicine.

He believes that the risk of Zika getting established in the continental U.S. is “near zero.”

Another is Dr. Laura Harrington, who happens to be chair of entomology at Cornell. She points out that the CDC is saying Zika mosquitoes (called Aedes) are in areas of the U.S. where “there’s no way you’re going to find them.”

That, she said, is causing “hysteria” in locations where there are more important issues to fund and worry about, such as Lyme disease.

Then there’s Dr. Amesh Adalja, with the University of Pittsburgh, who notes that the areas we should be focused on are the Gulf states, such as Florida and Texas — not the entire U.S.

Despite that, it looks like most every state is on red alert. New Jersey, for example, has started up a 24/7 Zika hotline!

But there’s a very good reason — and a lot of money at stake — in keeping the Zika panic snowballing.

A little over a month ago I told you how passage of that Zika bill — the one that will be up again when the Senate returns midweek — would gut some hard-won pesticide regulations.

It’s so sneaky, in fact, that it’s being called the “Pesticide Trojan Horse Act.”

And when it hitches a ride along with the billion or so to “fight” the virus, it would do away with a special permit the EPA requires before pesticides can be sprayed on or near lakes and streams.

That alone could put millions of babies at risk for things like autism and cancer.

And then there’s the Zika vaccine, something that’s being fast-tracked into trials and then straight to the FDA at a speed we’ve never seen before. That billion-dollar shot will have women lined up around the block.

The bottom line, according to the experts I mentioned, appears to be that if you don’t live in places like Florida or Texas, the chances of your city or town having a Zika crisis are pretty slim.

So forcing the entire U.S. to spend the summer months in a haze of pesticides that will be hitting us from both the ground and air is neither safe nor logical.

And that, not Zika, may be where the biggest danger to moms and babies will be coming from.

Sources:
“Some experts question extent of Zika threat to U.S.” HealthDay, upi.com