Headed Your Way
It’s swine flu, from Mexico: NYT. Your public health officials, not on the ball: Washington Post.
Most of the cases so far are in California and Texas, not surprisingly, given the high volume of legal and illegal traffic across the Mexican border. Already some linkage of swine flu and immigration policy, compliments of Malkin.
The epidemiologists tell us flu can move rapidly around the world, thanks to the nature of the disease and high rates of global travel, quite apart from poor border enforcement and policies that actively encourage people to illegally border hop. In this particular set of circumstances, however, there is a strong possibility those policies and practices are accelerating the movement of the disease.
That said, disease-fueled xenophobia by itself is no reason to implement sound immigration policy … not when so many other good reasons exist. The untaxed income, the strain on social services and schools, the facilitation of crime in a world that accommodates predators, criminals of all kinds and plain old destructive irresponsibility. Disease of all kinds is just one of the social ills that poor border controls allow to fester. Anyway, that alien-packed panel truck already crossed the border. The time for disease-fueled xenophobia, sadly, has passed. It just makes a good, if potentially devastating gotcha on people who think encouraging a parasitic, lawless underclass makes any kind of sense.
It’ll be interesting though to see if we see a boost in northward movement, which reportedly had dropped in the current recession, by people who are panicked about the dire health crisis back home and figure they’ll get better health care up here.
Here’s the Beeb with a window on what’s going on south of the border.
Allahpundit at Hotair, glad he’s a shut-in, similarly notes that as attractive a resort as it may be, disease-fueled xenophobia doesn’t entirely address the problem.
It was probably inevitable. Gateway with the news that President Obama could be the most direct path of swine flu into the United States. Quarantine now! Hillary, too, she just got back a few weeks ago and was hanging out in churches where sick people go and cough a lot!
Waiting on the usual suspects to express shock that anyone would dare link the spread of dire disease to humanitarian open border and social support policies for document-challenged Americans. Not seeing it yet, though a right-snarking Wonkette offers up the delightful prospect that Obama infected Hugo. Good one. Hey, one little cough, and Hugo could kill off his pal Fidel!
We have a winner! The Moderate Voice, in name only, yaps on about the social and racial injustice of fluism, then denounces those scoundrels on the right who would dare “twist into a political circus” such a serious global issue. Can you twist something into a political circus? Sounds like someone might be feverish.
Topics: Mexico, illegals, medicine
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 8:56 am on Sunday, April 26, 2009
6 Responses to “Headed Your Way”
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April 26th, 2009 at 10:44 am
[...] Plus, reason to take a breath and relax. And a roundup from Jules Crittenden. [...]
April 26th, 2009 at 11:59 am
And don’t forget J-Nap is in the Hizzy.
http://www.jourtegrity.blogspot.com
April 26th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
Would a huge swine flu crisis take the torture memos off of the front page, where they’re about to set fire to Mzzzzz Pelosi?
What sorts of emergency powers might the gummint claim, in the midst of a major health emergency? (Nevermind that it’s the same gummint who declares whether or not the emergency is major…) Travel restrictions? Limits to size of assemblies? (Could have to be extended to mid-summer, too bad about the 4th of July Tea Parties.) Say, wouldn’t an emergency overhaul of the U.S. healthcare system be just the thing to head off handfulls, maybe millions, of flu deaths? Don’t forget how the gummint is so good at establishing temporary measures that go away when no longer needed.
April 26th, 2009 at 8:09 pm
[...] Bloggers: Shawn Mallow of Wizbang (Right) uses the same tongue-in-cheek logic to oppose my own; Jules Crittendon and Michelle Malkin (Both Right) are blaming this upon President Obama’s President [...]
April 28th, 2009 at 11:59 am
[...] by taoist in Capitalism and Economics. Tags: Doctors, Medicine, Swine Flu trackback With all of the swine flu news going around (and here’s a lighter take on that), here’s a point [...]
May 15th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
[...] Via Jules, Wonkette, As for Obama, after meeting Solís [who died of swine flu shortly after that] on the [...]