JUST ANOTHER DAY AT THE US-MEXICAN BORDER. Breitbart: “Suddenly faced with a new and unforeseen threat, people entering the country who said they felt unwell were questioned about their symptoms. But there were no reports of anyone refused entry.”
THE SWINE STILL AWOL Although Secretary Napolitano has advised Americans not to travel to Mexico, the Homeland Security’s headless head lady has instructed border agents to lay off entrants from Mexico; do only passive surveillance now.
“Right now,” she said, “we don’t think the facts warrant a more active testing or screening of passengers coming in from Mexico. … All persons entering the United States from a location of human infection of swine flu will be processed through all appropriate CBP protocols. Right now those are passive. That means that they’re looking for people who — and asking about, are you sick, have you been sick, and the like; and if so, then they can be referred over for further examination.”
Meantime, world-wide, “thermal scanners and upgraded checks for flu-like symptoms” have been implemented at airport checkpoints.
MSNBC: “Ira Longini, professor of biostatistics and epidemiology at the University of Washington in Seattle, talks about using ‘social distancing’ to reduce transmission of swine flu.” But worries that the window of opportunity is closing.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but “social distancing” would include precisely the measures this administration (following in the the footsteps of the last band of bastards) refuses to take: Put some distance between residents of flu “Ground Zero” (Mexico) and the US.
Update I: Writes the indefatigable Brenda Walker of VDARE.COM:
“I don’t think Washington would shut down the Mexican border for any reason. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of American citizens are killed yearly by illegal alien Mexicans and those victims are considered by elites to be the acceptable cost of the globalized economy. Nothing changed in immigration policy after 9/11 when 3,000 died in an hour. So don’t expect a few germs to alter the Potemkin village that stands for national security these days. DHS is not even testing travelers from Mexico for the virus even though the government has declared a public health emergency.”
Update II (April 29): Those anarchists who think laissez faire is best in the case of the Mexican Flu will be disappointed. The WHO has raised the pandemic threat to 5, “meaning the world is at imminent risk of a pandemic from H1N1 swine flu,” said Dr. Margaret Chan.
This also means that the US can no longer just wave through entrants from Ground Zero.
In my household there is a little less snickering at the resident Howard Hughes: me. For years I’ve practiced rituals my family has scoffed, even mocked. Having grown up in a water-poor country where fruit and veg. are irrigated with “recycled” water (Israel), I wash produce down to the individual berry, and dry it, with the hope that mechanical manipulation helps remove filth.
With me in my handbag are alcohol impregnated “wet ones”; I prefer these to bottled gel, because you can’t sterilize handles, bars and door knobs with the latter. My keyboard has recently been replaced since vigorous cleaning had caused the letters to fade. I’ve been barred from our very old TV remote, after Sean managed to salvage it.
You get the drift.
Still, Scherie G. makes exactly the point that needs making. Not everyone entering the US is equal, however much our egalitarians would like that to be the case. Americans are so naive, they fail to even begin to imagine the kind of hygiene, health, and eating habits mass migration brings to their country.
As an immigrant to this country, I was screened for TB, HIV, Hepatitis B., and other infectious diseases. Can I honestly say that the host population had no right to know whether I carried these dread diseases?
Anyone who has not crossed over into the intellectual abyss that is anarchy will recognize that, yes, the host population has a right to be protected from an assault on their persons.
What infuriates me is the fact that such screening is practiced on a biased sample: one which is law abiding, tax-paying, and relatively well-off and healthy.
The number of communicable diseases—some really grotesques, such as brain worms, dengue fever, and leprosy—that have entered the US because of unselective immigration is appalling.
“Each illegal with Multi-Drug Resistant Tuberculosis coughs and infects 10 to 30 people, who will not show symptoms immediately. Latent disease explodes later,” reports WND.
So the idea that once one carrier enters the country, then the other million need not be stopped is worse than stupid. The greater the number of infected entering the country, the greater and wider-spread the harm.
Update III: DHS does not have to solve the problem of the flu; all it has to do is its duty: defend this country’s borders. Not sure why this simple thing is so hard to grasp. It must be the affliction that accompanies those congenital, left-liberal, anarcho-instincts.