“Stop. This is crazy. It’s like using a sledgehammer to crack a peanut. The devastation that it has already caused is beyond comprehension. We can’t live without these honeybees” said Stanley. Jason Ward, Dorchester County Administrator, has stated the spraying happened because four people in the county were already infected, worrying residents.
Millions of honeybees killed by spraying in one county in one state alone. The devastation done to a bee population barely recovering will be unprecedented.
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/mil...praying-naled/
http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/09/health/florida-zika-spraying-
starts/
Zika on steroids: How the Christian Right’s sex hangups turn Zika into a bigger crisis
http://www.salon.com/2016/09/07/zika...risis_partner/
Zika could have been an ordinary epidemic, like the ever-changing influenza that emerges each winter and spreads across the Northern Hemisphere with sad but rare complications. But the Religious Right’s antagonism to birth control and abortion — and honest conversation about sex in general — has transformed the Zika epidemic into a nightmare that will devastate lives for an entire generation.
In the absence of pregnancy, Zika usually isn’t a big deal. Only one in five people who contract Zika experience symptoms, and those who do mostly feel like they’ve gotten the flu. This is not to say Zika never does lasting harm to adults, just that, like the flu, those cases appear to be rare.
The difference, as most people now know, is that getting Zika while pregnant is really, really bad. The virus attacks the fetal nervous system, eating brain structures that have already developed and blocking development of others. Even babies who look normal may be damaged for life.
Unlike the flu, when it comes to Zika, pregnancy prevention or timing is everything.
Even if Zika spreads across its potential range of 41 states, a quick and targeted response could make lasting harm rare, at least within U.S. borders. The solution is simple and relatively cheap, but it consists of policies that the sex-obsessed, patriarchy-protecting Religious Right has been opposing for decades:
Information. Launch a huge public education campaign so all couples know how to prevent mistimed or unwanted pregnancy and can delay parenthood until the time is safe. Currently a third of pregnancies globally and almost half in the United States are accidents, with some of the highest rates where Zika-carrying mosquitos live.
Contraception. Make state-of-the-art birth control available to all free of charge, including the very best IUDs and implants, which drop the accidental pregnancy rate below one in 500. (With the pill that’s one in 11; with condoms one in six; with the rhythm method it’s closer to one in four.)
Abortion. Ensure that couples who discover microcephaly and other fetal defects in utero can, if they prefer, abort a diseased pregnancy and start over. Millions of healthy children exist in this world only because their parents receive the mercy of a fresh start (like I did).
Each of these steps is easier and cheaper than trying to eradicate mosquitos, prevent people from getting bitten, or develop and distribute a vaccine. With existing contraceptive knowledge and technologies, birth defects from Zika could drop to near zero. The problem is not a lack of means; it’s a lack of will brought on by religious teachings that generate resistance and controversy around anything that has to do with sex, gender roles or reproduction.
You reap what you sow
No matter what, tragic birth defects from Zika would have hit some families as the virus spreads out of Africa where it is endemic (and where most women appear to have immunity before they reach reproductive age). But without relentless promotion of ignorance and falsehood by priests and pastors — without anti-contraception campaigning by the Vatican in particular — birth defects from Zika would be a small fraction of what humanity now faces.