1st terrorism, now unvetted aliens blamed for TB surge
Big list of locations where infection has reappeared
Published: 9 hours ago
Much has been said about terrorism and how the United States, failing to adequately investigate those aliens who want to come, has allowed the violence to happen.
For instance, reports just on Monday suggested that the Obama administration’s secret policy forbidding immigration officials from reviewing social media messages of foreigners may have been at fault for allowing Tashfeen Malik to enter.
She was the San Bernardino terrorist who, along with her husband, killed 14 and injured nearly two dozen at a county Christmas party.
The reports confirm Malik got a U.S. visa in May 2014 despite “what the FBI said were extensive social media messages about jihad and martyrdom.”
But just imagine: an unvetted alien arriving in the United States with a disease that could turn epidemic. In fact, tuberculosis once ran rampant around the world, killing hundreds of thousands, millions.
And it could be such a threat again for the U.S., according to an expert.
“You know, we already have Border Patrol agents that have come down with this, so this is not a benign problem. I think it’s a very serious problem. I don’t know the exact numbers, but I know that it’s clustering around immigrants now,” said Dr. Lee Hieb, a WND columnist, orthopedic surgeon and past president of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons.
She also has written “Surviving the Medical Meltdown: Your guide to Living Through the Disaster of Obamacare.”
“We had a public health department that made a great effort in the 1900s to essentially not eliminate, but really reduce the numbers of tuberculosis cases. So it cost a lot of money,” she said. “We did a lot of things to get TB to go away, because it’s a bad disease.
“Well, what’s happened now is when we have unprotected borders, we’re seeing people come, especially from South America, with multiple drug-resistant tuberculosis. And keep in mind, if you’re a legal immigrant you cannot come into this country with active TB. You will be screened out with a chest X-ray and/or a skin test, and you will not be allowed in. So these are people that are not getting any screening. They’re just letting them in, and multiple drug-resistant TB is a very bad disease that has a very high mortality rate. It’s something like 50 percent of people die from it …”
Get the stunning new e-book free from WND, “Emerging Diseases,” by Jane Orient, M.D.
Just the past few weeks have revealed a stunning accumulation of reports about the return of the TB specter:
It was the New York Times that confirmed a nurse in a California hospital was diagnosed with TB, but not before she exposed up to 1,000 people, including 350 infants, in the maternity wing of the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in San Jose. Hospital officials said each of the 1,026 people, 350 infants, 308 workers and 368 parents, mostly mothers, were being contacted. “The consequences of a tuberculosis infection in infants can be severe,” said Dr. Stephen Harris, chairman of pediatrics there.
ABC reported just last week that officials were investigating the possible exposure to tuberculosis of at least 150 faculty and students at American River College in Sacramento, and preliminary testing already had indicated at least five tested positive. The outbreak resulted following “the diagnosis of a student with active TB disease.”
Earlier in December, VCStar reported, one person at Pacifica High School in Oxnard, California, was diagnosed with “contagious tuberculosis.” Officials said they would test about 350 students, teachers and staff members.
On Dec 2, according to WTAE Television, a veteran at a facility in Pittsburgh was diagnosed, so officials now are sending letters to veterans who might have been exposed to the bacterial infection that most often affects the lungs recently. He’s being treated so far.
About the same time, a commentary in the Hill warned about the surge of tuberculosis, especially drug-resistant strains. Dr. Sanjan Jain said the misperception that TB no longer is important is dangerous belief. “TB causes almost 10 million new cases worldwide annually, with strains impervious to drug treatments rapidly spreading,” he wrote, citing one case where a child was found with an infection, and while treatment produced results, she will have to be monitored for another two years.
A report from KFSM in Bentonville, Arkansas, on Dec. 1 revealed that a student at Northwest Arkansas Community College had tested positive. Other students and instructors were being tested.
The last week of November saw a report from the San Diego Union-Tribune that a case was confirmed at Helix Charter High School, prompting the testing of another 230 people. No details were released by the county health agency about the ill person. But the report said there have been 184 cases confirmed in San Diego County this year.
The San Bernardino Sun,which also was full of the terrorists’ shooting attack, reported just two weeks ago that letters were being sent to 1,700 people asking them to be tested for TB. The letters to patients treated at the Loma Linda VA warned them they may have come into contact with a worker now being treated for the disease.
From KSAT in San Antonio came a report at the end of November that the principal of Robert E. Lee High School was notifying parents that a student had been diagnosed. He already was working with San Antonio Metro Health.
ClickonDetroit.com reported in the middle of November that a student at Utica Community Schools was diagnosed with TB. He had been splitting time between Utica High and Sterling Heights Stevenson High so notes were sent home with students at both. The health department tried to assure parents there was no threat.
From a Fox station in New York came a report at the same time that Public School 112 in the Bronx confirmed a student was being treated. The report said in the U.S., there are some 200,000 cases reported annually.
From the News-Miner in Fairbanks, Alaska, was a report tuberculosis actually tied HIV as the most deadly infectious disease in the world. The report said each disease accounted for between 1.1 million and 1.2 million deaths in 2014. It said Third-World and developing countries suffer the highest mortality rates. But as recently as 1950, TB was “responsible for killing at least 240 Alaskans.”
The Herald-News in Joliet said there had been eight new cases just since July 1 – and each one was requiring a specific regimen of antibiotics lasting six months or longer. Officials blamed travel, specifically air travel, for the growing problem.
All within the last six weeks or so. And often in areas where alien populations are abundant.
Get the stunning new e-book from WND, “Emerging Diseases,” by Jane Orient, M.D.
Dr. Jane Orient, M.D., the author of the e-book from WND, “Emerging Diseases,” has explained, “The dreaded infectious diseases of the past may be forgotten, but they are not gone, and diseases that are new, at least to the United States, are emerging.”
Orient, president of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, warns there’s danger in letting such issues “drop off our radar.”
“Unfortunately, much of our public heath establishment has been diverted into protecting us against sugary soft drinks, rather than infectious disease threats,” she writes. “And public trust is being eroded by politicization of the issues and conflicts of interest.”
She addresses the new surge of tuberculosis in her book, along with other diseases like Ebola, Chikungunya, Dengue, Chagas, smallpox, whooping cough, measles and more.
WND commentator Selena Owens wrote recently about the issue: “Thousands of illegals crashing America’s public schools also place a national health risk to students, faculty and family members because many of these children carry contagious diseases. Parents used to be concerned only with a cold or flu spreading to their kids. The biggest ‘plague’ when my kids were in school was head lice. Now contagious diseases are the norm. Expect the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to make their rounds and inoculate all students whether parents want them to or not.
“Diseases and viruses such as tuberculosis that have been absent from society for years will re-emerge. According to Dr. Jane Orient, executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, ‘Legal immigrants have always been required to undergo health screenings, but these kids coming have no medical screenings and no vaccine records. They’re likely coming here with a number of infectious diseases that will spread like wildfire.’”
Hieb continued, “My dad was in medical school in the 1940s, when we had no treatment for tuberculosis, and in those days we lost 2 percent of medical school class members to tuberculosis because it’s a bad disease. Once we got treatment, we didn’t lose people anymore, but now we’re starting to again. Because antibiotics are used somewhat indiscriminately in third-world countries, they’ve developed multiple drug-resistant tuberculosis, so that it doesn’t respond to the cheap drugs, and now it’s a very expensive proposition to treat. It costs on average a million and a quarter to a million and a half dollars to treat one case of multiple drug-resistant TB. It takes IV drug therapy many times; it’s a big, big multiyear proposition.”
She continued, “So these are people that are coming in without any resources to treat this disease. They’re not going to pay for it; it’s the American taxpayer that’s going to pay for their treatment. But beyond that, because we’ve made these sanctuary cities – in my state of Iowa, Davenport, Iowa, the mayor has declared it a sanctuary city. Are you kidding me? What bothers me about that is he’s basically saying, ‘I’m willing to expose your children to multiple drug-resistant TB in the schools, because we’re not going to screen these people and we’re going to give them free sanctuary. And when they get sick and they’re noticeably sick, then we’ll treat them through the state medical system at expense to the taxpayer, but your daughter or son might have already been exposed, by the way.’
“They’re not saying it in that many words, but that’s essentially what they’re doing,” she said.
Get the stunning new e-book free from WND, “Emerging Diseases,” by Jane Orient, M.D.
Read more at
http://www.wnd.com/2015/12/1st-terrorism-now-unvetted-aliens-blamed-for-tb-surge/#MuLjYqFq5cLSXeyB.99
