July 15, 2014

A Plague on All Houses

By Fay Voshell

In 1345, the Mongol hordes besieging Kaffa were being decimated by the Black Death. Desperate, the leaders of the Mongol army figured it would take only a few plague-ridden corpses to infect and destroy all the inhabitants of the city. Everyone would die, Mongols and Christians together.
Eye witness Gabriele de’ Mussi tells us what happened next:

“Whereupon the Tartars (Mongols), worn out by this pestilential disease, and falling on all sides as if thunderstruck, and seeing that they were perishing hopelessly, ordered the corpses to be placed upon their engines and thrown into the city of Kaffa. Accordingly were the bodies of the dead hurled over the walls, so that the Christians were not able to hide or protect themselves from this danger, although they carried away as many as possible and threw them into the sea.”
Historians later would quibble over the accuracy of de’ Mussi’s account. Experts in medieval warfare along with knowledgeable army tacticians would dispute the logistics of catapulting decaying, disease ridden bodies over high city walls.
Nonetheless, the idea that it only takes a few diseased humans to infect entire cities was correct then and now, academic arguments aside.
The fact is that communicable diseases know no boundaries.
This is why Americans, particularly those who have decided not to vaccinate their children against the most common communicable diseases, should be very concerned about the almost entirely unregulated transportation of third world children (and adults) into the midst of crowded population centers. It is why all parents should be concerned about the fact undocumented aliens are being flown all over the United States to God knows where.
The truth is that unvaccinated children with communicable diseases rampant in the third world are being catapulted into centers of populations and will inevitably infect unvaccinated American children first.
Fantasy? Unwarranted and unreasoning racial prejudice against the “dazzling, sparkling array” of children seen and so described by our addlebrained former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi?
While she is correct about the seed of divinity in each child, perhaps she should consider the seeds of disease carried by more than one of the children. There is such a thing as being so heavenly minded one doesn’t see the earthly realities.
As the Daily Kos documented, one unvaccinated two-year-old wound up infecting an entire community of unvaccinated immigrants from Somalia living in Minnesota. Researchers investigated a measles outbreak in Minnesota in 2011:
“Researchers determined the outbreak began when an unvaccinated 2-year-old travelled to Kenya, where he contracted the measles virus. Upon returning to the United States, the child developed a fever, cough and vomiting, some of the early signs and symptoms of measles. Unfortunately, prior to a diagnosis of measles, the child passed the virus on to three children in a child day-care center and another household member. The measles then spread from individual to individual within a low vaccine uptake area, a Somali immigrant community in the Minneapolis area. Eventually, more than 3,000 people were exposed to the disease.”
It turned out to be the largest outbreak of measles in Minnesota in over 20 years.
“The Somali community in Minnesota is around 20-60 thousand, with many immigrants coming to Minnesota in the 1990's. Although the group is made up less of Somali-born individuals, and more US-born, many travel to Somalia and other nearby areas where measles is endemic. With the low vaccine uptake in this insular community, diseases contracted outside of the USA could get a toehold in this part of Minnesota. Measles is bad enough, but the situation could be worse someone brings back polio or some other vaccine preventable disease to the community.” [Italics mine.]
Why were the measles infected Somalis in Minnesota in the first place? According to a local CBS news outlet, they were there because of the efforts of organizations such as:
“the Lutheran Social Services, Catholic Charities, and World Relief Minnesota. Those agencies agree to help the refugees get settled, to learn English, find housing, get health care, and begin a new life. They ‘are known to be welcoming, and they invest a significant time of labor and resources to help people find some comfort here and hope. […]the Somalis have largely stayed, somewhere around 30,000 of them, partially because of the strength of the non-governmental VOLAGS, and partially because of the strength of governmental programs to help refugees begin a new life.
“After the first wave is assigned here, the second wave of relatives and friends soon followed. As Somalis settle down, find a life, the good news spreads: ‘Hey this is a good place, you can find a life here.’”
While broadminded Americans wish to see legal immigrants enjoy the American way of life, it is still true that liberal immigration policy supported by such organizations as left leaning Lutheran churches seem to have no particular aversion to either toxic ideology (at least 15 of the supposedly Americanized Minnesotan Somalis have answered the call to jihad) or to communicable diseases from or to unvaccinated peoples flooding over our now meaningless borders.
The truth is that the anti-vaccination faction is comprised of the mostly left-leaning crowd, which in turn also happens to be the pro amnesty, open borders crowd -- though the group is sometimes joined by some libertarian and religious groups.
But when disease and death comes calling on unvaccinated children of the followers of Rousseau, will the back-to-nature political persuasions of their parents save them?
On the contrary, the unintended consequences of liberals’ open border policies will be made deathly clear. Disease knows no boundaries, no class system, no hierarchy. It is a universal leveler of humanity.
Politicians fool around with politicizing disease to their own and their constituents’ peril. The politically correct heads in the sand approach by our administration, as well as the fatuity of deceived masses will not save them from the realities of disease.

Taking the ostrich approach to plagues has never saved anyone, as history reveals.
During the 14th century, while the Black Death raged in Italy, Boccacio wrote his “Decameron.” A group of young nobles flee Florence and go to an uninhabited villa in the countryside of Fiesole, where they while away the tedious hours by regaling one another with stories ranging from the bawdy to the serious. Thinking themselves safe behind their guarded paradise, they failed to realize that rats with fleas do not respect iron gates.
Our smiling president, thinking his messianic self safe behind his White House gates, continues to regale himself and his friends with stories having no relationship to reality. Like the royalty of Florence during the Plague, he plays games, shooting pool and drinking beer while enabling potential pestilence to ride the airways and land in our cities and our public schools.
What he fails to see is that disease and death know nothing of the distinctions between Left and Right. They are no respecters of persons, heed no rhetoric, pause before no gates and can choose to enter every home.
Plague falls on all houses.
Fay Voshell is a frequent contributor to American Thinker and other online publications such as National Review, PJMedia, RealClearReligion and many others. She may be reached at fvoshell@yahoo.com

http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/...ll_houses.html