“Swine Flu” and Border Insanity

So let’s make something clear when it comes to Swine “Mexican” Flu: maintaining distance between national populations simply doesn’t work. It’s alarmist. It’s quite probably racist in origin.

“Sealing a border as an approach to containment is something that has been discussed and it was our planning assumption should an outbreak of a new strain of influenza occur overseas. We had plans for trying to swoop in and knockout or quench an outbreak if it were occurring far from our borders. That’s not the case here,” [acting chief of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Dr. Richard] Besser told a telephone briefing of Nevada-based health providers and reporters. “The idea of trying to limit the spread to Mexico is not realistic or at all possible.”

“Border controls do not work. Travel restrictions do not work,” WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl said in Geneva, recalling the SARS epidemic earlier in the decade that killed 774 people, mostly in Asia, and slowed the global economy. (AP/Yahoo!)

But, it seems, personal or “social distancing” does work :

“If it causes person-to-person transmission in the community in a virulent form, we’re going to have a problem,” said Dr. Brian Currie, an infectious disease expert at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx.

In that scenario, public health officials would be called upon to enact voluntary plans that could keep people away from work, out of school and in their homes for as long as it takes to quell the threat of infection.

Businesses would be advised to let workers telecommute, [Ira Longini, a national flu expert and professor of biostatistics and epidemiology at the University of Washington and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle] said. Sports teams would be encouraged to cancel practices and games and parents would be urged to keep small children at home, avoiding even playgroups and parks.

In some cases, people could be advised to stay 6 feet away from others in public, said Longini, who has built elaborate computer models that demonstrate how infection slows when such plans are implemented.

In severe situations, people may be told to stay 3 feet apart to avoid the infectious spray of droplets when someone coughs or sneezes, Currie said.

He was part of three teams of researchers commissioned by the federal government to study intervention strategies and published the results last year.

“The least stringent scenarios cut the epidemic by half,” he said. “The most stringent cut it by two-thirds.” (MSNBC)

Got it? People transmit disease, not borders. Allowing people to cross borders has no net effect on international disease transmission. Even if they’re infected with… the… disease… you’re… trying… to… stop….

Huh?

Kathy Barton, a spokeswoman for the Houston Health and Human Services Department, said Wednesday that the child had traveled with family from Mexico to Brownsville in South Texas. The child became ill in Brownsville and was taken to a Houston hospital and died Monday night, she said. (AP/Yahoo!)

It would appear that the first non-Mexican victim to be claimed by this burgeoning international pandemic is… a Mexican.

I don’t want to detract from the fact that this toddler’s death is tragic. I have a daughter a few months younger than this 23-month-old, and I can’t imagine losing her. Or, for that matter, my four-year-old daughter, my three-year-old daughter, my unborn son, or my pregnant wife.

My concern is that these wrong-headed, strictly PC moves by our “Dear Leader” and his cadre of incompetents could lead to exactly that.

[By the way, the BBC has an interesting--if alarming--look into what the future could hold, largely from residents of Mexico City.]