On a side note, let me interject something “funny”, um, well, sort of:

Imagine how we in Alberta must be feeling right now. We have a supposedly conservative government, but it’s conservative in name only, but actually governs like any socialist, nanny-state government. The premier (translation: governor) is a pig farmer by his occupation.

So you’re comparison of swine and government is spot-on, at least here in Alberta.

Many diseases have long latency periods and go undetected while the exposed person unwittingly spreads it around.

I agree with securing the border, absolutely. But I don’t think it would help control the spread of a virulent disease like influenza. By the time we even realize there is a problem, it is already being spread all over the globe.

I also find it interesting that we check legal immigrants for communicable diseases, but not travelers. Not that I would want to submit to a battery of tests at the hands of the state when returning from Canada or Mexico, unless there was a verified threat. (And I question whether the current alarm could really be considered a verified threat.)

If there really is a threat from a deadly pandemic, anyone on both sides of any border might be subject to quarantine before being allowed to cross, and it would be difficult to defend objections to the policy. And the threat would increase the importance of sealing borders.

I think the presence or absence of a pandemic is only tangentially related to the importance of controlling the borders — the reasons for having borders in the first place are reasons enough to control them.

I also think we shouldn’t be too timid to assert that one valid reason for having a border and controlling it is the way people think and how they live. We have every right to assert that those who reject our culture and our view of individual rights through limited government are not welcome to live here. It’s probably a forlorn hope to wish for such a thing though, when many in our own society hold those values in contempt.

The bigger any organization is, the worse it screws up anything it tries to do. The more powerful that organization is, the worse the effects of the screw-ups are bound to be. If our government ever decides to secure the borders, it will probably be a new kind of nightmare, ineffective and horrible for the law-abiding. I’m not saying it shouldn’t be done, I’m just saying that when it is done, it’ll be done for the wrong reasons, by the wrong people, and hurting those that are supposed to be protected. That’s just my disillusionment showing, but I’d bet money on it.

Seems compelling…. looks like Tamiflu is ineffective against the current strain… it wouldn’t surprise me if these facts were known by our gov and pharma……

1940

http://history.amedd.army.mil/booksdocs/historiesofcomsn/section2.htm

CLAYTON LOOSLI, M.D.

Dr. Clayton Loosh was an Idahoan who attended the University of Chicago. He worked closely with Dr. O. H. Robertson. He was particularly helpful to the Commission in developing effective means of delivering virus in suspension for experimental challenges in human beings. He was also instrumental in developing the “glycolizers” that were used to create suspension of pRopylene glycol in the air. These were widely used at Camp Detrick for the protection of the staff who were working with particularly lethal agents.
Later, after he became Dean of the School of Medicine at the University of Southern California, he continued to be an active participant in the affairs of the Commission. He worked with mice, trying to produce a controlled
antigenic change in the virus. He also obtained interesting, and somewhat surprising, data on the effect of Los Angeles smog on mice infected with influenza virus. At one point, it appeared that the smog actually helped the
animals, rather than hurt them. He was a very friendly person with broad interests who was exceptionally well qualified to be dean of a medical school.

1944

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/194403/hill

The possibility of stopping the viruses in mid-air is of great interest. On this side of the Atlantic we have little concept of the importance of such a control, say in air-raid shelters where thousands of people have had to sleep night after night. In the British shelters the emphasis has been mainly on the control of cross-infections in operating rooms and in hospital wards. It has been found that small droplets such as are expelled in coughing can float in the air for many hours, even days. Arthur T. Edwards recently found that 10 percent of an original amount of influenza virus can remain alive on blankets for days or weeks. It is difficult to know whether the persistence of influenza in certain households is due to this domestication of the virus or to its constant introduction as active members of the family carry home the infection from outside contacts. It is the
killing of these droplets that is urgently important. For this, two promising methods have been found: the use of ultraviolet light and of germicidal mists or aerosols.

The theory of their action is simply that a small amount of a chemical which is known to be germicidal be finely dispersed into the atmosphere. Water was not a satisfactory solvent, partly because of its rapid evaporation, and for that reason propylene glycol, a pretty name with which everyone will probably soon be familiar, was used to carry a number of germicides, including Dakin’s solution. The English, hard-pressed to improve conditions, in their air-raid shelters, which sometimes, as in Bristol, were in deep caves or old tunnels, used aerosols with evident success.

By the crab-like motion which characterizes so many scientific advances, it was then found that propylene glycol alone was highly effective. As little as one part of this substance, in the form of an aerosol, was active in at
least several million volumes of air. Its effectiveness against both bacteria and viruses was established in this country by Oswald II. Robertson and his associates at the University of Chicago and later confirmed in
England.

1942

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,932876,00.html

How did it work? Respiratory disease bacteria float about in tiny droplets of water breathed, sneezed and coughed from human beings. The germicidal glycol also floats in infinitesimally small particles. Calculations showed
that if droplet had to hit droplet, it would take two to 200 hours for sterilization of sprayed air to take place. Since sterilization took place in seconds, Dr. Robertson concluded that the glycol droplets must give off
gas molecules which dissolve in the water droplets and kill the germs within them.

http://www.healthnz.co.nz

Murray Laugesen MD
Public health physician
History

That propylene glycol (PG) may protect users of the e-cigarette from airborne bacterial and viruses dates back to World War II. ‘Air Germicide’, a story in Time magazine Nov 16, 1942, reported the research of Dr. Oswald
Hope Robertson at Chicago’s BillingsHospital. He showed that half a part per million of PG in air could kill bacteria and viruses in that air within seconds. He found PG could protect mice from influenza virus, and that keys could well tolerate living in air containing PG. On the face of it, e-cigarette users might indeed be better off….actually confers immediate short term positive benefits, by reducing the risk of its users inhaling
live viruses and bacteria from room air. This is mind-blowing enough, but could its possible benefits also protect others close by? Is the e-cigarette more than a tool for reducing harm? Is it also potentially a talisman to ward off infection?

Protecting air travelers

Air travel is a weak point in defending ourselves internationally from fatal respiratory infections. Bird flu and pandemic influenza can spread globally at the speed of jet travel, as one infected person can infect many others
through air-conditioned, re-circulated air. Governments are spending millions on how to contain or just even slow spread of such epidemics.

Perhaps PG should be seriously considered.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propylene_glycol

Studies completed by Dr. Oswald Hope Robertson of University of Chicago’s Billings Hospital have shown propylene glycol inhalation may prevent pneumonia, influenza and other respiratory diseases. Time Magazine – Air
Germicide

Cases of propylene glycol poisoning are related to either inappropriate intravenous use or accidental ingestion by children.[6] The oral toxicity of propylene glycol is very low. In one study, rats were provided with feed
containing as much as 5% PG over a period of 104 weeks and they showed no
apparent ill effects.[7] Because of its low chronic oral toxicity, propylene glycol is generally recognized as safe (GRAS) for use as a direct food additive.

Serious toxicity will occur only at extremely high intakes over a relatively
short period of time that result in plasma concentrations of over 4 g/L.[8]
Such levels of ingestion would not be possible when consuming reasonable
amounts of a food product or dietary supplements containing at most 1 g/kg
propylene glycol.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/redgold/innovators/bio_robertson2.html

Dr. Robertson’s laboratory then undertook a double program of field studies in hospitals, army barracks, and industrial installations and laboratory experiments in an effort to develop methods of combating the spread of air-borne infections, which had become an exceedingly important source of attrition of human effectiveness during the war. Studies were carried out on the physical chemistry of aerosols containing viable infectious agents.

Effects of various parameters on the viability of these agents were studied and the mechanism of air sterilization by chemical agents was worked out in detail. Such studies showed that the previously held theory that bactericidal action was exerted through collision of aerosol particles of germicide with aerosol particles of the infectious agent was erroneous, and that the actual mechanism of action required action of the bactericidal agent through the vapor phase. New agents were developed which were enormously more effective than previous materials, and which were shown to be without toxic effects to human populations. The physical chemistry of aerosol vapor interactions was studied, and a number of fundamental papers were published in this field. While the use of chemical air sterilization was developed to the point where it became a practical measure, it never
proved possible to obtain clear-cut epidemiological data demonstrating
beyond any question that these measures would reduce respiratory disease in ordinary situations of human habitation. Nevertheless, the fundamental
advances obtained in the course of these studies have been useful in a
variety of ways, in both pure and applied science.

Here’s another one….

http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/abs/10.1089/jam.2007.0626

Here’s some more…

http://www.epa.gov/oppsrrd1/REDs/propylene_glycol_red.pdf

http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/abs/10.1089/jam.2007.0626

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/04/29/Swine-Flu.aspx

ron@esmoke.net

I strongly suspect most Americans detest, and would vote down, such rewards for unlawful entry. But the issue is never voted upon by the American people; even if it were, the leftists/elites would take judicial and other action to overturn the results of a plebiscite they dislike (think CA’s Prop 8.) I’m not sure what the solution is, though the problem is painfully obvious.

I see no reason why we shouldn’t have a 10-year moratorium on all immigration, with a permanent moratorium on 3rd-world immigration.

Like Ludwig von Mises and F. A. Hayek, Rand demonstrates the importance of immigration not just to America but to American libertarianism. Mises had fled his native Austria right before the Nazis confiscated his library, Rand fled the Communists who came to power in her native Russia. When a heckler asked her at a public speech, “Why should we care what a foreigner thinks?”, she replied with her usual fire, “I chose to be an American. What did you ever do, except for having been born?”