TB -- The Silent Killer Crossing Our Border

: Betsy Mccaughey on Nov 6, 2024

Open borders allow deadly narcotics and criminal gangs to invade our country. But there's a silent killer also making its way across the border: tuberculosis.

America's woke public health authorities are more concerned with equity -- redistributing health resources among racial groups -- than with keeping a disease the U.S. once nearly eradicated from becoming a threat again.

Reported cases of TB shot up 34% from 2020 to 2023, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and continue to rise. More than three quarters of the cases are foreign-born people who picked up the disease in their home countries or traveling through countries with high TB rates. The TB incidence rate is 60 times higher in Haiti than in the U.S.

In New York City -- the No. 1 destination for migrants -- the incidence of TB is two and a half times the national average and still rising.

A staggering 89% of TB patients in the Big Apple are foreign-born. The Flushing/Clearview areas of Queens, Sunset Park, Brooklyn and the Lower East Side of Manhattan are the neighborhoods most affected. The single largest national group with reported TB cases is from China, according to the city's most recent Annual Tuberculosis Summary.

TB is no laughing matter. Globally it has just overtaken COVID-19 as the biggest infectious disease killer on earth. There is no effective vaccine for it, but most cases -- except severely drug-resistant ones -- can be treated with antibiotics, provided they're taken daily without interruption for several months or longer. Not easy.

Western Europe, Scandinavia and North America are all reporting rising TB rates as migrants from poorer countries -- where TB is common -- arrive. UK health authorities are alerting the public to the distinctive cough that comes with TB.

In Europe, public health authorities are engaged in a lively debate about how to affordably screen TB carriers and keep them from infecting the local population. Someone can carry latent TB for years, then suddenly, after resettling in a new country, develop active -- and highly contagious -- TB and spread it by coughing and sneezing.

But in the U.S., the mission-confused CDC is stressing health equity and rushing resources to the "disproportionately affected" groups. That's fine, but how about also shielding Americans from the reemergence of a disease they've largely eliminated? In all the agency's reports, not a word about what's causing the surge in TB: an open border.

Immigrants who enter the country legally and apply for green cards are screened for TB with the interferon-gamma release assay test. Latent carriers are allowed into the country and referred to a local health department for follow-up treatment. It's voluntary and hit-or-miss but better than no screening at all.

Migrants flooding across the border illegally or entering with Biden's new parole app get no screening. Zip.

The CDC is MIA about screening and isolating the infected before they bring the disease to cities and towns across the country. The agency is forgetting its "Control and Prevention" mission.

Take the case of a Chinese migrant with active drug-resistant TB who crossed the border illegally in April. When her symptoms worsened and she was diagnosed on July 23 as "highly positive," nothing was done to isolate her. Instead, she was shuffled between immigration processing facilities in California and Louisiana, exposing hundreds.

Now Louisiana is suing federal authorities to keep the exposed migrants detained until they are medically cleared. State Attorney General Liz Murrill warns about illegals who are "untested for diseases that can threaten the lives of Louisiana and American citizens."

Thousands of unaccompanied minors with latent TB are being released into communities across the country, rather than being kept in Health and Human Services shelter facilities for the many months it would take to treat them with a course of antibiotics.

CDC data show a whopping 42% increase in incidence of TB among children ages 5-14 in one year.

On Nov. 1, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) demanded that Homeland Security head Alejandro Mayorkas erect precautions against a disease invasion, warning that TB "is rapidly spreading through the millions of unscreened illegal immigrants released into the interior of the United States."

The number of reported cases this year -- just under 10,000 -- is small but the trend is worrisome. The U.S. waged a war against TB in the 20th century and won. Americans shouldn't have to surrender to this disease now because of open borders.

Betsy McCaughey is a former Lt. Governor of New York and co-founder of the Committee to Save Our City at saveourcityny.org. Follow her on Twitter @Betsy_McCaughey. To find out more about Betsy McCaughey and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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