Six Diseases Return To US as Migration Advocates Celebrate ‘World Refugee Day’ by Michael Patrick Leahy19 Jun 20161,341
Six diseases that were recently near eradication are making a comeback in the United States, as the taxpayer funded refugee resettlement industry launches a propaganda blitz about the so-called World Refugee Day this Monday.
The near eradication of these diseases in the United States during the twentieth century was a remarkable accomplishment of American civilization. Until recently, most Americans believed these diseases were gone from our shores for good.
But a politicized public health system, and a rise in the subsidized migration into the United States, however, have combined to reverse a century of progress.
The number of foreign-born residents of the country has increased by 31 million in three decades, from 11 million in 1986 to 42 million in 2015. Immigration to the United States during this period has come from Middle Eastern, African, Asian, South American and Central American countries where all these diseases are prevalent. The extra 31 million have arrived in a number of ways: approximately 3 million are refugees, 11 million are illegal immigrants, and the remainder are legal immigrants, asylees, and parolees.
Tuberculosis
The number of communicable TB cases, dubbed active TB, increased by 1.7 percent to 9,563 in 2015, after 23 years of steady decline in the United States.
Medical experts agree that this increase is attributable to the dramatic increase in the number of foreign born residents of the country over the past three decades.
In 1986, 22 percent of the 22,000 active TB cases in the U.S. were foreign born. By 2015, 66 percent of the 9,563 active TB cases were foreign born—a tripling.
The number of active cases of TB among native-born Americans declined from 17,000 in 1986, down to just over 3,200 in 2015. At the same time, the number of foreign born cases increased from 5,000 to a little over 6,300.
Refugees are arriving in the United States with active TB. As Breitbart News recently reported, the number of refugees who have arrived with active TB over the past five years is huge: 21 in Louisiana, ten in Colorado, eleven in Florida, four in Indiana, eleven in Florida, and nine in one county in Kentucky.
Refugees are also arriving with high rates of non-communicable ‘latent TB’ infection (LTBI): 35 percent in Vermont, 27 percent in Tennessee, 26 percent in Indiana, 22 percent in Minnesota, 15 percent in Texas, and 12 percent in California. A large number of people with latent TB gradually acquire active or communicable TB.
A recent UC San Diego study concluded that high rates of LTBI among recently resettled refugees poses a health risk to the local community and general public.
Measles
“In 2014, the United States experienced a record number of measles cases, with 667 cases from 27 states reported to CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD); this is the greatest number of cases since measles elimination was documented in the U.S. in 2000,” the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports. (emphasis added)
It’s not been much better since then. “From January 2 to May 21, 2016, 19 people from 9 states (Arizona, California, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Tennessee, and Texas) were reported to have measles. In 2015, 189 people from 24 states and the District of Columbia were reported to have measles,” the CDC adds.
“The majority of people who got measles were unvaccinated,” the CDC notes, adding that “[m]easles is still common in many parts of the world including some countries in Europe, Asia, the Pacific, and Africa.”
In 2015, a woman in Washington State died of measles, the first death from measles in the United States since 2003.
Refugees are not required to have vaccines, including the critical MMR vaccine, which protects against measles, mumps, and rubella: “Refugees, unlike most immigrant populations, are not required to have any vaccinations [including the critical MMR vaccine] before arrival in the United States,” the CDC reports.
At least one outbreak of measles in the United States in 2016 raises the question of whether an unvaccinated refugee was the original person who transmitted the disease. “The first reported case of a person with measles in the recent Memphis outbreak, which now numbers seven confirmed cases, was at a local mosque on April 15, according to the Shelby County Health Department,” Breitbart News reported recently.:
“Dr. Alisa Haushalter, Director of the Shelby County Health Department … acknowledged, however, that the measles outbreak could have originated with an unvaccinated for measles adult or child brought to Tennessee under the federal refugee resettlement program, something she called “a possibility amongst many” There had been no reported cases of measles in Shelby County for the previous 24 months, according to a spokesperson for the Tennessee Department of Health. “There have been nine previous cases of measles in the entire state of Tennessee in the past 12 years,” WREG reported. . . The prevalence of communicable disease among refugee populations is well documented. In January 2016, for instance, a severe outbreak of measles occurred in a refugee camp in Calais, France.
Whooping Cough
“Pertussis, a respiratory illness commonly known as whooping cough, is a very contagious disease caused by a type of bacteria called Bordetella pertussis. These bacteria attach to the cilia (tiny, hair-like extensions) that line part of the upper respiratory system. The bacteria release toxins (poisons), which damage the cilia and cause airways to swell,” the CDC reports.
In 1926, there were over 200,000 cases of whooping cough (pertussis) reported in the United States.
Half a century later, the disease had been virtually eradicated here, and only 1,010 cases were reported in 1976.
But a decade later, in 1986, the number of reported cases had crept back up over 4,000. Now, in 2014, the reported number of cases have increased to 32,971, more than thirty times the number of cases reported just four decades earlier.
“Following the introduction of pertussis vaccines in the 1940s when case counts frequently exceeded 100,000 cases per year, reports declined dramatically to fewer than 10,000 by 1965,” the CDC notes.
“During the 1980s pertussis reports began increasing gradually, and by 2014 more than 32,000 cases were reported nationwide,” the CDC admits, but fails to point out the simultaneous quadrupling of foreign-born residents of the United States.
Mumps
“Once a common illness among children and young adults, cases of mumps in the US have dropped by 99% since a vaccine was introduced in 1967,”Health.com reports:
“But occurrences crop up, particularly among close-knit communities. The CDC reports that there have been 688 reported cases of mumps in the US in 2015, including small outbreaks at universities in Pennsylvania, Iowa, and Wisconsin. In 2014, there was a mini-outbreak among professional hockey players,” Health.com reports.
The only way to prevent the mumps (aside from avoiding people with it) is to get the MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) vaccine. Though usually administered to kids, you can get the vaccine at any time. It’s not foolproof (two doses are 88% effective at preventing the disease, per the CDC), and its protection can wear off over time, but it’s vastly better to get the shot than not. Booster doses are often recommended during outbreaks.
As noted, refugees are not required to have the MMR vaccine that prevents mumps.
Scarlet Fever
“Largely forgotten over the past century thanks to the rise of antibiotics … scarlet fever … [has been making a]comeback in Asia (with more than 5,000 cases over the past five years in Hong Kong and 100,000 in China) and the United Kingdom (roughly 12,000 cases over the past year),” Health.com reports.
It is a serious disease that mainly affects children, as the CDC notes:
Scarlet fever – or scarlatina – is a bacterial infection caused by group AStreptococcus or “group A strep.” This illness affects a small percentage of people who have strep throat or, less commonly, streptococcal skin infections. Scarlet fever is treatable with antibiotics and usually is a mild illness, but it needs to be treated to prevent rare but serious long-term health problems. Treatment with antibiotics also helps clear up symptoms faster and reduces spread to other people.
Although anyone can get scarlet fever, it usually affects children between 5 and 15 years old. The classic symptom of the disease is a certain type of red rash that feels rough, like sandpaper.
Bubonic Plague
The United States experienced a significant outbreak of bubonic plague in San Francisco during the first decade of the 20th century. This outbreak was much smaller than those in China and India just a few years earlier, but was frightening to many Americans. As PBS reported:
In the summer of 1899, a ship sailing from Hong Kong to San Francisco had had two cases of plague on board. Because of this, although no passengers were ill when the ship reached San Franscisco, it was to be quarantined on Angel Island. When the boat was searched, 11 stowaways were found — the next day two were missing. Their bodies were later found in the Bay, and autopsy showed they contained plague bacilli. Despite this scare, there was no immediate outbreak of disease. But rats from the ship probably had something to do with the epidemic that hit San Francisco nine months later.
If you “think this notorious killer died with the Middle Ages,” think again. “The disease actually persists in parts of Africa, Asia, and South America. And there have been 16 reported cases of plague, with four deaths, in the United States this past year. Most recently, a 16-year-old girl from Oregon was sickened and hospitalized after apparently being bitten by a flea on a hunting trip,” as Health.com reported recently.:
You can get plague from fleas that have carried the Yersinia pestis bacteria from an infected rodent, or by handling an infected animal, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Bubonic plague is the most common form in the U.S., while pneumonic plague (affecting the lungs) and septicemic plague (affecting the blood) are less prevalent but more serious. Symptoms of bubonic plague include fever, chills, headache, and swollen lymph glands.
These six “comeback” diseases are not the only ones of concern to America’s public health.
A number of other diseases, some of which are prevalent among foreign born residents of the United States and foreign visitors, also present a current problem, to varying degrees, including zika, flesh eating parasites—cutaneous leishmaniasis, ebola, leprosy, intestinal parasites, HIV, scabies, and diptheria.