Thread: Migrants bussed from the border is not just an immigration crisis. Think public healt

Migrants bussed from the border is not just an immigration crisis. Think public health.





Opinion by Dr. Marc Siegel•1h

August 17, 2023


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In 1903, my grandfather Alex entered the United States from Bialystok, Poland, following a pogrom that saw his parents killed. Once in the United States, he did not enter right away, despite a brother who was already here. Instead, he first waited at Ellis Island in New York Harbor, not just to be processed but also so that he could be screened for tuberculosis as well as other contagious diseases.


Admittedly, screening methods were ineffective back then compared with now, but immigrants knew that it was part of gaining admission to this land of promise, land of sanctuary.

120 years later, I was out on the street in front of my office recently when I saw a man lying in the hundred degree heat barely moving. I examined him with my stethoscope and found that he was still breathing. I called 911 and the ambulance took him to the hospital where I had trained, Bellevue, which proudly takes all comers. The ambulance attendants said they thought the man was a migrant who had crossed the border from Mexico, and without being detained had been bussed to New York City, where he had nowhere to go but the street.

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Mayor Eric Adams, who was initially welcoming in our status of sanctuary city, is now expressing alarm as about 100,000 asylum seekers have come to New York City since spring 2022. Our shelters are full, and there are few other places for them to go than the streets and the summer heat.

Adams is making a major plea to the state and Gov. Kathy Hochul, but so far not nearly enough has been done. A public health emergency for the city is a public health emergency for the state and for the country as well. USA TODAY just reported "plans to use $25 million in state funds to rent temporary homes for up to 1,250 asylum-seeking families who opt to leave New York City's crowded shelters." But this is just a drop in the bucket.

Migrants could be carrying infectious diseases

Last week I also visited migrants, including many children who looked at me with sad, expectant eyes, camped outside the Roosevelt Hotel here in Manhattan, without proper means to wash or toilet or without guaranteed hydration.

They were immediately at risk for dehydration and dysentery. I offered them my medical services, but they proudly refused.

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Migrants could be bringing infectious diseases across our southern border. When they are bussed to New York and elsewhere, these diseases go with them. A recent study showed that more than 4% percent of migrants from Central and South America to Europe were sick with Chagas' disease. It's contagious without the help of an animal or a blood-sucking bug and can cause serious complications, including heart failure.

Tuberculosis is on the rise in this country, as is syphilis and other sexually transmitted infections.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that immigration applicants with communicable diseases are inadmissible to the United States, but they can’t be stopped if they aren't routinely screened before entering the country, as is the case with undocumented migrants.

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What doctors and law enforcement face at the southern border

Neha Jaggi Sood, a spokesperson at the Division of Global Migration and Quarantine at the CDC, told me that though the CDC has ”comprehensive systems to track communicable diseases,” they do not “track diseases by immigration status.”

Sood added that “underreporting might occur.”

Dr. James Hodges, an internist practicing at the Texas border, told me that in his experience, the “open border” is leading to more drug-resistant tuberculosis in the United States because patients are only partly treated by over-the-counter antibiotics available in Mexico.

In southern Arizona, Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb told me, “Border Patrol and local agencies have seen all types of diseases like tuberculosis, scabies, COVID, hepatitis A and B, gonorrhea, syphilis, mumps, chicken pox, dengue fever, etc.

When the discussion was hot and heavy about Title 42 (a law that allows denial of entry to limit the spread of a disease) going away, I would consistently say it wasn’t just about COVID; it was about all the other health hazards being brought across our borders.”

Dr. Marc Siegel, a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors and a Fox News medical correspondent, is a professor of medicine and medical director of Doctor Radio at NYU Langone Health.© Provided

Dr. Paul Offit, head of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told me in a radio interview recently that it is measles that keeps him up at night. With measles vaccination rates dropping, and not all undocumented migrants are screened for measles before entry, he might well be right.

Measles and other vaccines are offered to eligible U.S.-bound migrants and refugees, but there's no enforcement in place yet.

The health risk extends wherever the migrants are sent, including here in New York City. The porous border is not just a national security crisis, it is also a public health emergency.

Dr. Marc Siegel, a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors, is a professor of medicine and medical director of Doctor Radio at New York University's Langone Health. His latest book is "COVID: the Politics of Fear and the Power of Science." Follow him on Twitter: @DrMarcSiegel
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Migrants bussed from the border is not just an immigration crisis. Think public health.





https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/oth...d6e0d85b&ei=18

Biden, Harris, and Mayorkas are a disgrace and traitors to this country.

They have put our health, our safety, and our security at maximum risk in our cities and are bankrupting us in the billions of dollars with their human trafficking. All for votes, power, and complete control of our lives.

How many terrorists and drug cartel have they unleashed on the American people? A ticking time bomb, now spread across all our states.

Their end game is to flood cities with these criminal trespassers to count them in the Census, which gets these reptiles more of our tax dollars in these districts and gain more seats in the White House! They are deviant, lying, corrupt, traitors that must be defunded and stopped from destroying us all and removed from office.

They already told us they want to "pack the court". They also want to "pack the White House" and take Republican seats by gaining MORE Democrat seats with their criminal trespassing cheap labor that they intend to count in the Census!

They are exposing our border patrol, healthcare workers, bus drivers, airplanes, police departments, hotel workers, restaurants, food banks, volunteers, law enforcement, school children, and every store full of our citizens to these disease infected parasites!

These bus drivers, hotel workers, and volunteers, should quit and walk out! You are exposing yourself, your co-workers, and your family with these diseases. Some of these diseases are a life sentence and deadly.

When school starts there will be a wildfire full of multiple diseases spreading into the school and they carry it back home to infect family members.

These raping animals carry STD's, they are raping women in the hotels, and having sex in the hallways! We are going to have an outbreak of STD's that we have eradicated long ago. They are raping women on the way here, now they are infected with STD's. This is a serious issue, and that border needs to be shut down and turn them all away.

This rotten administration belongs in Gitmo facing military tribunals.

And Mayor Adams demands 100,000 work permits for these unvetted disease infected parasites to work in our restaurants, hotels, farms, construction, stores, and whatever jobs they can TAKE from us. Hell no. Load them on military ships back home.

Get our people off of welfare and food stamps and into jobs. These leeches lower our wages and our quality of life.

Our schools and healthcare system are being decimated by this load of unrelenting trespassers.

I would not come in contact with these invaders within 100 feet, let alone have to touch them to do my job as a healthcare worker or border patrol. They need to demand that border is shut down for their own health and safety and that of their families they go home to every day.