SAM FADDIS FROM AND MAGAZINE
Tuberculosis is one of those diseases most Americans think is a relic of the past. They are wrong. It is back courtesy of the policies of the Biden administration.
All over the country illegals are jammed into camps and emergency shelters. They are coming here from all over the world. No one is doing any meaningful medical screening of these people. They are bringing tuberculosis with them.
On Cape Cod in Massachusetts, there is one such shelter where 100 people are jammed into an old motel. In December Heidi Nelson of the Duffy Health Center, which provides care at the shelter sent an email to multiple elected officials in Massachusetts warning of a crisis situation at the shelter and reporting an outbreak of tuberculosis amongst the illegals housed there. The state of Massachusetts responded by declaring the email too sensitive to release and attempting to cover up the situation. When a radio talk show host threatened to read the email on the air, government attorneys intervened to prevent it.
There is nothing surprising or unique about this situation. The National Institute of Health published a study last year warning of the danger of tuberculosis spread by illegals. One-third of the world’s population is infected with tuberculosis. Thousands of people are entering the country illegally every day. You do the math.
Every portion of the country is impacted. Perhaps most worrisome is the situation in New York City. Data shows in excess of 500 new tuberculosis cases in New York City in 2023. That’s the highest number of new cases in a decade. It is also a 20% increase over last year.
Keep in mind when looking at those numbers that no one is requiring illegals arriving in the city to be screened. No one has any idea how many more cases remain unidentified. Those figures on new cases represent those that more or less accidentally have come to the attention of authorities.
“This is definitely a more dramatic resurgence than we would have probably expected – with internal figures suggesting the city is on the pace to exceed last year’s 536 newly diagnosed TB patients or at a rate of 6.1 cases per 100,000 people,” said Elizabeth Lovinger, a health policy director at Treatment Action Group, a public health advocacy group that focuses on TB. She added, “When there are particularly high spikes in TB and other infectious diseases in New York City, that tends to be kind of a bellwether for the rest of the country.”
Tuberculosis is caused by a bacteria. When an infected person coughs or sneezes the bacteria is expelled in droplets of moisture which can float around in the air for hours. When breathed in by another person that individual can contract the disease. Form that image in your mind and then imagine the interior of a New York subway car in rush hour. The disease can spread like wildfire in that kind of environment.
Tuberculosis attacks your lungs. Symptoms include a bad cough that lasts 3 weeks or longer, pain in the chest, coughing up blood or sputum (phlegm from deep inside the lungs), fatigue, weight loss, loss of appetite, and death.
