One hundred years ago, the KKK accused migrants of spreading disease. Fox News picked up where they left off
'Measles and chickenpox and leprosy?!' To which Fox's medical correspondent responded: 'Absolutely.' Late last week, before President Obama gave up on pressuring Congress on comprehensive immigration reform in favor of his familiar executive actions, media outlets began pressing a familiar non-news item.
The local CBS station in Dallas/Fort Worth reported that "four or five [US Border Patrol] agents have tested positive" for illnesses such as chicken pox or tuberculosis, ostensibly contracted at their border posts. With over 18,500 agents stationed along the Mexican border, the headline probably should have been something like "Border Patrol Agents Unusually Healthy Among Americans". Matt Drudge preferred, as usual, a more pernicious threat: BORDER PATROL AGENTS TEST POSITIVE FOR DISEASE CARRIED BY IMMIGRANTS.
Channel 11 in Dallas also reported that one of the children among the 52,000 who have crossed US borders in the last few months has been diagnosed with H1N1 virus (also known as "swine flu"). Congressman Henry Cuellar blamed the potential problem on "some of these countries where they don't have great health care systems." Perhaps he was talking about the United States: Now that H1N1 is the predominant flu strain in the US and Canada, the Centers for Disease Control reports that 2,008 of the 2,815 reported cases of the flu in the US this season have been identified as H1N1. That means that if you had the flu in the US in the past nine months, it is more than 70% likely that you were infected with the swine flu, just like the sick child trapped in Texas.
A little informed comparison can be helpful: a study of mortality among US school teachers suggests that they contract autoimmune illnesses at a rate disproportionate with the general population. Also: the subway is a major conduit for the spread of influenza, including swine flu.
rest at http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/02/border-patrol-diseases-anti-immigration-myth
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