THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

The two mosquito species that currently carry the Zika virus that is. Nobody is going to do the research for free and as yet there is not a big enough market for Big Pharma to bother so that leaves the US government to finance the research. The bill to provide some funding despite it being an inadequate amount has died in the Senate. The cause of its demise was a pack of "poison pill" amendments inserted without debate by the Republican Senators.

A bill that would have allocated $1.1 billion in funding to combat Zika lost a procedural vote in the Senate on Tuesday amid partisan bickering.

The legislation failed to reach the 60 votes needed, with Democrats and Republicans voting largely along party lines, 52-48.

Democrats said they were forced to block the bill because Republicans had cut them out of bipartisan negotiations last week and inserted a number of “poison pill” measures, including cuts to Obamacare and Ebola research and a ban on funding for nongovernmental entities such as Planned Parenthood.

Democrats also complained that the bill would ease environmental regulations for pesticides and strip a ban on the Confederate flag flying at cemeteries, passed by the House of Representatives.

“This bill was designed to fail,” said Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York.

“The saddest thing is this was really cynical what (Republicans) did,” said Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, who voted against the bill. “They purposely put things in the bill that they knew would kill it so they could pretend they were doing something about Zika.”

The White House also had threatened a veto.

Blunt’s Democratic opponent in November’s elections, Jason Kander, already is attacking the senator over the bill’s failure.

“Senator Blunt has taken four months to put together a bill that not only fails to fully fund the Zika response, but also plays political games with a health emergency,” Kander said in a statement “Agreeing to include a provision that would block contraceptive funding, a critical tool in combating a sexually transmitted virus like Zika, shows that Senator Blunt is more interested in appeasing his party than addressing this pressing emergency. This is exactly why we need a new generation of leadership in Congress.”

More than 819 cases of Zika have been reported in the continental United States by people who contracted the disease while traveling abroad.

It's only a few hundred people, how bad can it get? As for those two mosquito species, one of them only started carrying the virus when it reached the US. How many more mosquito species will be able to carry it as it spreads?