No, that OTC drug won’t cure your cold or flu.

I admit that I am one of those people who hates to call in sick. I came down with a cold recently, and left to my own devices I would have gone to work anyways. But my wife talked me out of it, and it was the right thing to do.

This scenario plays out differently in a current radio advertising campaign for Vicks DayQuil and NyQuil: “The No Sick Days Medicine”.

You can hear some of spots here.

To summarize one ad, a father coughs and laments that he is feeling ill and will have to call in sick and also miss his daughter’s dance recital. But then it’s DayQuil to the rescue, and sick day begone.

Everyone wins.

Except the handful of people sitting around him in the office and in the auditorium at the dance recital for an extended period of time, who are highly vulnerable to contracting whatever is infecting his respiratory system.

You see, DayQuil may reduce congestion, Tylenol may reduce pain and fever, Ricola cough drops may numb your throat, and VapoRub may open your sinuses. But as the manufacturers of these products will admit, none of those OTC medicines will cure the common cold or help you recover any faster (for a more thorough examination of symptom relief, check out this article from the website Science Based Medicine).

We all have our remedies to help us feel better. But only the antibodies that your incredible immune system produces against the virus that is infecting you will neutralize that infection. And the best way to help your immune system do its job is to get some solid rest.

The most important point that I want to make is that regardless of what concoction you do or don’t take for your cold symptoms, you are still contagious. Even if you temporarily do feel a little better.

For all you know, your cold may actually be the flu. And if it is influenza, there are several thousand people in the U.S. every year, especially grandparents and young children, who would strongly prefer that you do stay home.

So instead of being patient zero, be a hero by taking that sick day. Survey data shows that in America, not enough of us do — a fact that is apparent in our culture.But let’s reverse this expectation. 

We all deserve it, right?

(Originally posted here on Medium).

The chemical reaction that probably killed Kim Jong Nam

(Cross-posted from Medium here)

On February 13, a 45-year old man by the name of Kim Jong Nam was making his way through a Malaysian airport to catch his flight home to Macau. Without warning, two women approached him in succession and smeared an oily substance over his face. Within 20 minutes, the man was dead. The two women are alive, and in custody.

As you probably know by now, Kim Jong Nam was the half-brother of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. Being the eldest son of their father Kim Jong Il, he was the prince that could have been but never was, and instead lived a lonely and reasonably paranoid life of exile mostly outside of North Korea.

Motives and details regarding his assassination are murky, but it is reported that he was killed by a nerve agent called VX. This toxin is deadly in ridiculously small amounts, and classified by the United Nations as a weapon of mass destruction.

In terms of diabolical assassination schemes successfully executed, this incident is on par with the death of Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov by ricin delivered via umbrella, or the death of Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko by radioactive polonium-210.

Among the questions raised by the Kim Jong Nam investigation currently underway, there are two that seem connected:

1. Why were two persons used to carry out this murder?

2. Why were neither of the two persons severely harmed or killed by the VX toxin they administered?

The most probable answer* to both questions is that the VX nerve agent was administered in a binary fashion. In other words, the two women each delivered a different chemical substance, and those two substances reacted on the spot (i.e., on the man’s face) to produce the VX toxin. Since both substances would be relatively harmless on their own, neither of the two women suffered Kim Jong Nam’s fate.

The hypothetical mode of VX poisoning that Nam suffered, via delivery of the precursor compound QL by one assailant, and the delivery of sulfur by the other assailant.

The first compound in this scenario would be an oily, colorless liquid called QL, or technically, N-[2-[ethoxy(methyl)phosphanyl]oxyethyl]-N-propan-2-ylpropan-2-amine. As you might guess from that name and can see from the diagram, it is a bit complex and would require some serious Walter White-like chemistry skillz to produce in a lab. It is a low-toxicity precursor to VX, only lacking a sulfur to make it deadly.

The second compound would be some form of sulfur, which is safe and easy to obtain. Sulfur reacts instantly with QL to form the VX nerve agent, or N-[2-[ethoxy(methyl)phosphoryl]sulfanylethyl]-N-propan-2-ylpropan-2-amine if you want to get technical.

In this scenario, the first assailant would be safe from any incidental exposure to VX, but not the second. And indeed, it was reported that one of the women had to vomit following the incident.

The binary form of chemical weapon delivery is not uncommon. Countries that have stockpiled large volumes of chemical weapons like VX usually store the precursors rather than the actual agent whenever possible. Obviously, it is much safer approach.

VX is has its origins in insecticide research, and is molecularly similar to what you would find in common yard pesticides containing malathion or other organophosphates. It is literally a human pesticide that goes straight to the nervous system and locks muscles into their contracted state, eventually asphyxiating the victim. It is death by torture.

Although the U.S. claims to have eliminated its massive stockpiles of VX manufactured during the 1960s, it is believed to be on hand in other countries including Russia, and possibly Syria and North Korea. Hopefully, if nothing else, this incident can arouse awareness of the potential terror of mass chemical warfare, and urge us toward global action in eliminating its influence on the planet we share.

*There are, of course, other possible explanations. See here, for instance.

The Antiquities Act, Graphed

(Cross-posted in Medium here, where a higher quality rendering of the graphic can be seen.)

In 1906, Theodore Roosevelt signed the Antiquities Act into law, giving executive authority to U.S. Presidents to designate National Monuments on federal lands. Those lands are then provided additional protections from looting, grazing, mining and fossil fuel excavations.

During the past 111 years, the Antiquities Act has been used by 16 Presidents to establish or expand 157 National Monuments in 39 states and U.S. territories, preserving over 843 million acres of federal land. The fate of those monuments has varied: some have become National Parks and some have become state parks, while many remain as National Monuments managed by various federal agencies.

Shown here are two bar graphs, illustrated with pertinent details about each of the 157 National Monuments. Data was taken primarily from a National Parks Service website, found here. This data does not include the 45 National Monuments established by Congress, as they are not products of the Antiquities Act.

The first graph presents the monuments in chronological order, from Roosevelt’s first monument in 1906 to the final three monuments established by Obama a week before he left office.

The second graph presents the monuments in order of smallest to largest, from New York’s Old Fort Niagara at a few thousandths of an acre to Hawaii’s Papahanaumokuakea, which lives up to its long name and covers a few hundred million acres of ocean reefs.

Because of this huge range in sizes among the monuments, a logarithmic scale was used to plot the data. This is important to note because that means that the size values increase exponentially along the x-axis rather than in the linear fashion that most people would be accustomed to seeing when looking at graphs. Using a linear scale to compare this range of data would unfortunately be futile for every monument that isn’t on the same scale as Papahanaumokuakea, and very few of them are.

If you look closely, a few things may stand out. For instance, marine monuments are among the largest and are a recent phenomenon; use of the Antiquities Act has become somewhat partisan in recent decades just like so many other issues; and, no President established more monuments than Obama.

For a focused look at how different Presidents have used the Antiquities Act, please see my recent article in Catalyst Magazine.

Enjoy.

National Monuments established under the Antiquities Act, from first to most recent.

National Monuments established under the Antiquities Act, from smallest in size to largest.

Confessions of a Postdoc on Leaving the Ivory Towers

Like many before me, I have followed the grad school and postdoc path fully toward its uncertain destination. I gathered some data along the way. This is my story.

1. Prologue
Right now, there are over 40,000 post-doctoral ("postdoc") scientific researchers working at universities and research institutions in the U.S. These are the primary authors of the large majority of peer-reviewed research papers, often working 50 to 60 hours/week for an average salary of about $45,000/year. They usually have experience teaching at universities, and they have been mentored in the finest methods of research by the most brilliant minds in academia.

2. Fluid Mechanics

Although the postdoc position was once intended to be the bridge of training between earning a PhD and becoming a professor, that scenario does not play out for most PhD graduates these days. In the sciences, the flow of PhD graduates pumped out from academia has become increasingly greater than the trickle of new tenure-track professors hired into academia, leaving about 90% of PhDs to spill over into some other form of employment. This is especially true for those who did not attend one of the more prestigious universities.

I am among those 90%. As I began my 5th year as a postdoc and accepted that the odds of a future faculty position were not in my favor, I took inventory of my skills and interests, identified and cultivated transferable job skills, and began considering careers beyond the ivory towers of academia.

3. Priorities and Realities

When the scales of academia fell from my eyes, I came to realize that many of the other career paths may pay better, have more job security, require less travel or demand fewer hours of work on evenings and weekends in comparison to faculty positions. These factors are all more important to me (and my wife) now than they were when I began graduate school as an untethered bachelor.

That said, I have a huge amount of respect for the minority who are cut from the herd to become research professors, and how much they are capable of doing. Teaching, research, mentoring, writing, fund-raising, management, innovation -- they do it all. It is a prestigious position in society, and deservedly so.

After I began the process of updating my CV, converting it into a resume, polishing personal statements, creating a web portfolio and putting out applications, I learned how hard it is to get noticed. There are a lot of good positions out there, but there are also an increasing number PhD candidates competing for them. For what it's worth, LinkedIn will tell you how many people have applied for an advertised position, and that number can sometimes be in the triple digits. That may give you some idea of how many jobs on average you will need to apply for in order to get hired anywhere.

Earning a PhD trained me to think about the world around me in ways that are rare in a post-truth world, and I am forever grateful for that. However, it did not help me gain the experience that is desired for a lot of positions in the biotech and pharmaceutical sectors. My job searches gave me reason to believe that a bachelors or masters degree in the biological sciences with several years of cGMP industry experience would yield more opportunities on the job market than a PhD with postdoc experience. Thus, I am somewhat empathetic to the arguments raised by some who question the value of a PhD in today's economy.

4. Planting Seeds Beyond the Ivory Towers

During 2016 (my final year working as a postdoc), I applied for 38 different jobs over a 7 month period. 

Here's a graphic I made that illustrates the outcome. The positions are numbered, and the initial response to each of my applications is classified, along with how many days it took to receive that response. The pie chart shows the proportion of the various types of jobs that I applied for.

I ended up with one job offer, which I accepted. That's a 2.6% success rate, although accepting that offer meant that I had to withdraw from the searches for two other positions (#36 and #37) that potentially could have had positive outcomes for me. 

Mostly, I applied for openings in the U.S., but a few were abroad too. I applied for positions that did and did not require a PhD, inside and outside of academia, doing teaching, research, writing, or some combination of those things.

The responses to my applications varied widely. Aside from the occasional automated email confirmation, 23 of the 38 applications disappeared into the ether of forevermore with no response, positive or negative. Of the 15 that did respond, 9 were negative responses informing me that my application would not be considered, and 6 were positive responses requesting some type of interview, writing test or other follow up.

The amount of time it took for me to receive any kind of response generally ranged from a few days to a few weeks. But in one odd case, a company responded with a request for a brief phone chat 73 days after I had submitted the application (#37). They were hiring on a rolling basis, which was probably a factor.

I participated in a brief phone interview with one well known biotech supplier (#35). As it concluded, the interviewer explained that I would be contacted by so-and-so for a more thorough follow up interview over Skype the following week. I never heard from them again.

In another case (#36), I was received a rejection email 10 days after I applied. Then, 12 days later, they contacted me again to request a phone interview. I wondered if these HR idiosyncrasies could be some indication of how the broader organizations function, but I guess I'll never know.

It is hard to identify many clear trends from this data, given that my personal experience is only a small sample size. I can't say that one job type was more responsive in any particular way. The academic positions generally had a longer response time, which is expected given the amount of application materials that they requested and the Fall 2017 start date for those positions.

5. Projections and Reflections

Ultimately, the position I accepted (#38) was as a Public Health Scientist in the virology lab at my state's department of health services. It was one of the few local positions I applied for, and incidentally the only one that resulted in an in-person interview. 

I prepared for the interview by going over general job interview questions I found on the internet and writing out responses. This proved helpful. I showed up on time, in a suit and tie, and tried to remember to make eye contact with everyone on the interview panel. It turned out that one of the people working there that was on the interview panel was a person I had known previously from my department when he was a graduate student there. I don't know if that was a factor.

While it is not the highest salaried position that I pursued, it will be a modest increase in salary, and an improvement in benefits such as retirement plans. And, it should generally consume only 40 hours of my week unless there is a public health crisis. The value of more time on the evenings and weekends to spend on all the other things that I enjoy in life, like our newborn son, will not be insignificant.

I have loved the creative and scientific aspects of working in academic research, and feel very fortunate to have been able to do so for so many years with some of the smartest and most interesting people that I have known. But I am also eager to work in a more application driven environment that has important implications for public health in my state. I am eager to have stability, to know that my employment status is not ephemeral, and to know that I can put down roots if I want to. Plus, I am able to continue working in virology, my current and chosen field of interest. 

I hope that this information will be useful perhaps to others in my field who sometimes wonder where their PhD will take them.

Journalism + Science = BFFs in the Post-truth Era?

"Over-worked," "under-paid" and "liberal" are adjectives that typify the average journalist according to a headline from The Atlantic a couple years ago. Some might say that these words could be used to describe the average research scientist at an academic institution as well.

But beyond these labels, I've come to realize that the similarities between both professions run very deep.

In the purest sense, both the scientist and the journalist are slaves to the facts and details. They are both committed to seeking the inconspicuous truth, and communicating their findings to the masses. Carl Sagan's axiom "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" is equally applicable to either as a guiding principle of ethics. Investigating, questioning, ignoring bias, learning and writing are hallmarks of both professions that were just as essential to Woodward and Bernstein for Watergate as they were to Watson and Crick for describing the structure of DNA.

Scientific research institutions and print journalism outlets have also shared a common financial struggle in recent decades. The former due to stagnant federal support, and the latter due to the emergence of a competitive and expansive digital market.

Now it seems that the two institutions will share another common struggle that is on the rise: maintaining relevance in culture that increasingly values ideals more than facts.

In the same way that verifiable scientific claims have been frustrated by baseless pseudo-science nonsense that finds life on the internet, real fact-based investigative journalism has been forced to compete with the advent of "fake news" and low-quality "click-bait" sites that have gained prominence online during this past election cycle. In response, both Google and Facebook have begun taking measures this week to prevent "fake news" sites from using their advertising platforms.

But sadly, what is the age of information for some people is also the age of misinformation for others. The Oxford Dictionary just chose "post-truth" as its Word of the Year for 2016. It is a good word for when extraordinary claims no longer require extraordinary evidence and people are more easily persuaded instead by insults, complicit deceit and the logic of memes.

Being keenly aware of this concern, the veteran journalist Dan Rather wrote a very appropriate piece in Scientific American this week in which he argued that it will become increasingly important for scientists and journalists to be allied in their efforts. In his words:

"What we need is sustained and improved partnerships between the press and the scientific community. We need more cross-pollination and engagement. We need experimentation on form, tone, content, and distribution. We cannot allow science content to be relegated to echo chambers or elite distribution outlets. We need to try to find a way to take the message to where the people are, through digital promotion, distribution and social media engagement."

Mr. Rather went on to express his support as a journalist for the cause of science, and described ways in which he intends to be proactively involved with the scientific community. 

Obviously, this resonates with me and aligns with my intentions on this blog. I hope to be similarly involved with the journalism community during my scientific career, and this week I reached a goal that will help me do that. I was accepted as a member of the National Association of Science Writers (NASW), something I've been working toward all year.

I believe that decisions are best made in the context of reality, and I hope that scientists and journalists can successfully work together to persuade the public to agree on that too. Because if we can't agree on basic facts, then what hope do we have to ever find agreement in our opinions?

If you want to support good journalism, one easy thing you can do is sign up for a digital (or even paper) subscription to a reputable newspaper or news magazine that holds itself accountable for what it reports. And if you want to support good science, you can sign up to join the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

In any case, please support good communication by not posting links to media that make extraordinary claims without first doing a bit of due diligence on your part -- regardless of your bias. 

It's in the long-term best interest of everyone.

$1.1 Billion for Zika: The FY 2017 Breakdown

Last week, the President signed into law an act of spending that includes $1.1 billion allocated for Zika virus-related efforts through the end of the fiscal year (Sept. 30, 2017). As I have written about previously, this funding has traveled a long and sinuous road through Congress since February, when the President originally requested $1.9 billion in emergency aid for Zika.

But now that it’s finally official, here’s a look at what it contains. This figure shows a breakdown of how the $1,108,094,000 in Zika funding is divvied up.

Most relevant to the scientific community is the $933 million allocated to the Department of Health and Human Services, which includes the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Of this, $152 million is designated for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) “for research on the virology, natural history, and pathogenesis of the Zika virus infection and preclinical and clinical development of vaccines and other medical countermeasures for the Zika virus and other vector-borne diseases, domestically and internationally,” as stated in the bill.

This is good news for the many scientists who have initiated research projects in response to the emerging concerns relating to Zika, and hope to continue that work. Researchers are currently digging for answers to questions such as how long the virus can persist in the infected person, what mechanisms underlie the range of symptoms (or lack thereof) that can result from infection and how the course of Zika virus infection might be affected by co-infections from other Flaviviruses such as the dengue virus.

This is also good news for researchers interested in developing a vaccine against Zika. Additional support for a Zika virus vaccine is provided in the $387 million designated to the NIH Public Health and Social Services Emergency Fund.

In order for a new vaccine to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration for public use, it must first pass through three costly and time-consuming phases of clinical trials. NIAID director Anthony Fauci explained in a recent interview that there are already two Zika DNA vaccine candidates that are in the first phase of these trials (NCT01099852 and NCT02840487), and several others that are a step behind in the preclinical stages of testing. Without this funding, plans to move trials with these vaccine candidates into the next phase by January would have been stalled. Since the Brazilian summer mosquito season is at its peak in January, this timing is critical.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also receives a $394 million slice of this pie, which the bill states will be used “to prevent, prepare for, and respond to Zika virus, health conditions related to such virus, and other vector-borne diseases, domestically and internationally”. This will be a boon to places like Florida, where mosquito control efforts have strained local budgets; and Puerto Rico, where the first major outbreak of Zika infections this year is estimated to have affected at least a few thousand pregnant women who will give birth in the coming months.

Also included in this funding is nearly $20 million for the Department of State that will support foreign and domestic response efforts, and over $155 million in foreign aid for ‘Bilateral Economic Assistance’ and ‘International Assistance Programs’ via the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). This money will fund coordinated efforts with groups such as the World Health Organization (WHO), which has requested $122 million this year from donor countries to implement a strategic response to Zika. So far, it has received only $21.3 million, about half of which has already come from USAID.

How many different species are on earth?

If mankind were to visit Mars and find life, among our first questions would be how many different forms of it exist there. Ironically though, this is not a question that we can answer about our own planet.

 

On earth, life is on the bottoms of the ocean, it is floating on the dust in the atmosphere, and it is found in every crevice in between. Try as we might, it is nearly impossible to count all the species. But so far, we have cataloged over 1,600,000 of them. And we can only estimate how many are yet to be  found and identified.

 

Back in 2011, a group of scientists actually did produce such an estimation. Their approach to doing this was a bit like estimating the number of jellybeans in a jar based on how many are visible, and doing so for each color. Except with way more sophisticated math.

Based on the number of known species cataloged at the time, they came up with the estimate of 8,749,900 species, not counting the microbes (bacteria and archaea).

 

If we were to break this number down into the classification groups (plants, animals, etc.), it would look like this graphic below. It’s mostly animals, which includes all insects, spiders, and other crawly things.

 

Now, let's talk about the microbes - all the creatures we can't see. In May 2016, a couple of other researchers came up with a new estimation for those guys: 100,000,000,000 species (or, 100 billion). And this is the low end of their estimation*. 

 

To put this in perspective, here’s how that number compares to the 8,749,900 forms of higher life shown above (eukaryotes).

 

You can see how the number of more complex species is almost insignificant.

 

This amount of microbial diversity is incomprehensible. To me, it seems impossibly high. But how would I know? I can’t see all the microbes around me (and inside me). That is part of what makes this a tough estimation to make. The other part is that at the microbial level, it is difficult to distinguish one species from another when you are trying to classify them. A given species of bacteria will usually have many different strains, and it’s a fuzzy genetic line sometimes that separates a 'strain' from a 'species'. Microorganisms are indifferent to our attempts to classify them. They just are what they are, and they are evolving.

 

In any case, consider that as human beings, we are only one of billions of species on a planet where "life finds a way". Lots of ways. In a universe that is otherwise sterile for as far as we can see, we should be humbled by the diversity of life that surrounds us. If we protect life in all of its forms, there is still much we can learn from it.

*I used the lower end of the estimation because it included microscopic fungi, which were also included in the 8,749,900 value. The upper estimation was 10-fold higher: 1 trillion.

 

 

 

 

 

Evolution From Blog to Website

For the scientist, the process of peer-reviewed publication forms the foundation for all research. It is a feedback loop - a self-perpetuating and co-dependent exchange of input and output between scientists.

There was a nice piece written a few years ago in Wired magazine about the power of feedback loops. That article explains that all feedback loops have four components: 

1. Evidence

2. Relevance

3. Consequence

4. Action

In regards to science, Evidence = Data.

But raw data alone won't persuade the majority of your audience. From the Wired article:  

"..the information must be relayed to the individual, not in the raw-data form in which it was captured, but in a context that makes it emotionally resonant. This is the relevance stage."

In other words, relevance is a function of how well you are able to communicate your data.

Communicating science to the general public is a notorious challenge for most scientists. But communication even among scientists can be a challenge too. In part, because most scientists today work across disciplines.

In either case, few things can be as helpful to the process as a clear diagram that distills and translates the cognitive beauty of really good data into something that is equally pleasing aesthetically. Since I enjoy producing diagrams, I recently decided to expand this blog into a website (www.cognitivefeedbackloop.com), and offer up my services to other scientists. 

For a nominal fee, I will gladly draw up a publication quality vector diagram according to publisher specifications for any scientist that is interested. I will continue with the blog too, which will also now serve as a gallery for some of my past work (albeit with a different intended audience in mind).

Good science communication with the public feeds back to the researcher in the form of continued funding support for further work. And good science communication within the scientific community feeds back to the researcher in the form of new discoveries, that enable deeper questions to be explored. 

In either case, I believe that a beautiful diagram will reach far more people than data or text can on its own. If you are a scientist, and you think I might be able to help you out in this regard, let's chat. Send me an email through robert@cognitivefeedbackloop.com

Robbing Ebola to Pay Zika: Are you cool with that?

Summary of the response to Zika virus in 2016 from the scientific community, World Health Organization, U.S. National Institutes of Health, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. President, and U.S. Congress.

This here is Aedes aegypti.

Or just a mosquito, as many would see it.

Actually it is one of over 3,500 different types of mosquitos that exist around the world. It is in the news right now because it is known to transmit the Zika virus, and it lives in South and North America. It wasn’t always in the Americas – it was native to Africa. But it immigrated its way across the Altantic some time ago. It is now migrating northward into the United States. So far, more than half of the 50 states have this mosquito in them. Anywhere this mosquito is found, there is potential for Zika virus to spread (among other diseases).

The Zika virus was first reported in 1952. We still don’t know very much about it. But here are a few things we have learned about it since the World Health Organization declared it a "public health emergency" on February 1 this year.

Zika virus can be transmitted sexually, from men to women or between men.

Zika virus can be transmitted in utero, from pregnant women to the fetus.

Zika virus can infect brain cells during early development.

Zika virus can cause microcephaly and other brain disorders in affected infants.

Zika virus can cause eye problems or blindness in affected infants.

Zika virus can retard or abolish fetal development.

Zika virus can cause miscarriage or prematurity.

Infants are susceptible if the mother is infected by Zika virus during the first or second trimester of pregnancy.

Zika virus can cause autoimmune disorders including acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (ADEM) and Guillain-Barre syndrome in adults.

This is quite alarming, particularly if you are a woman who is pregnant, or planning to become pregnant soon. And it raises many more questions that do not yet have answers.

But as we learned from past epidemics like SARS and Ebola, the best way to stop a public health emergency is to nip it in the bud. This is also the most economical way, because an emergency response can cost a lot of money. But how much?

On February 15, the World Health Organization (WHO) requested $56 million in funding from its member nations (including the U.S.) to coordinate a detailed emergency response plan.

One week later, President Obama requested 1.9 billion from Congress to fund surveillance, prevention, vaccine development, foreign aid, and domestic aid to the U.S. territory Puerto Rico. The Caribbean island is in the midst of a debt crisis, and does not have the infrastructure or the resources needed to implement an effective mosquito control program. Incidentally, it has become a hotbed for the spread of Zika.

This is a section of El Yunque National Forest in Puerto Rico that I photographed while hiking there in 2015. Like much of the infrastructure elsewhere in Puerto Rico, many ramadas and other features of the park are no longer maintained due to the economic downturn (it is still a beautiful park). Evacuated buildings and unmaintained land are left to rot and become breeding grounds for mosquitoes.

The U.S. Congress has so far declined to act on the funding request due to a lack of support from the Republican majority, with the exception of Florida senator Marco Rubio. Instead, Congress directed the President to divert the funds that were allocated for the Ebola response at the end of 2014. Those funds originally amounted to $5.4 billion and were intended to be used in various ways over a 5-year period.

Although Ebola is no longer considered a global health emergency, it is still a concern in West Africa. Outbreaks continue to occur in some regions there, just like they did before 2014 when Ebola wasn’t a buzzword and the WHO allegedly wasn’t responding quickly enough to prevent it from spreading.

As per the suggestion (or demands) of Congress, on April 6 the White House announced it would pull $510 million from Ebola funding and scrape together another  $79 million from other sources in order to mount an immediate $589 million response to the Zika virus.  


This amounts to less than a third of the $1.9 billion originally requested by the President. Will it be sufficient? According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and National Institutes of Health, the answer is No.

Meanwhile, as of March 22, the WHO has only received $3 million of the $56 million it is seeking to confront the spread of Zika virus before this summer when the 2016 Summer Olympic Games will take place in Rio de Janeiro Brazil. About 500,000 spectators and athletes from around the world are expected to attend. So far this year, 91,387 cases of Zika have been reported in Brazil, and 35,505 of those were in Rio.

Are you cool with that?

If not, you can let Congress know here.

A mosquito advisory in Puerto Rico from early 2015 - before Zika would have been added to the list.