Get out the bug spray: Diseases carried by insect “vectors” such as ticks, fleas, and mosquitos are on the rise in the United States. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported this week that cases of vector-borne diseases tripled from 2004 to 2016. And over that time period, as global travel has increased, eight new diseases have emerged here, including Zika and chikungunya. Although some of the spike is probably due to increased disease surveillance, the threat, the report’s authors note, is becoming increasingly urgent—even as funding to fight vector-borne diseases remains dangerously inadequate: Four-fifths of control agencies “lack critical prevention and control capacities,” according to the report. The number of Lyme disease cases in New York state have roughly quadrupled since the 1990s. Mostly, the work of controlling vector-borne infections falls on state and county health departments.