Tuberculosis is a silent killer that crosses borders News, Sports, Work

BETSY McCAUGHEY

Open borders allow deadly drugs and criminal gangs to invade our country. But there is a silent killer that also crosses the border: tuberculosis.

America’s awakened public health authorities are more concerned with equity—the redistribution of health care resources among racial groups—than with a disease that was once nearly eradicated in the United States becoming a threat again.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, reported cases of tuberculosis increased by 34% from 2020 to 2023 and continue to rise. More than three-quarters of cases occur in people who were born abroad, who contracted the disease in their homeland or traveled through countries with high rates of tuberculosis. The rate of tuberculosis in Haiti is 60 times higher than in the United States

In New York City, the No. 1 destination for migrants, the incidence of tuberculosis is two and a half times higher than the national average and continues to rise.

A staggering 89% of tuberculosis patients in the Big Apple were born abroad. The Flushing/Clearview neighborhoods in Queens, Sunset Park, Brooklyn and Manhattan’s Lower East Side were the hardest hit. The largest national group of reported TB cases comes from China, according to the city’s latest annual TB report.

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

Western Europe, Scandinavia and North America are reporting rising rates of tuberculosis as migrants arrive from poorer countries where tuberculosis is common. Health authorities in Great Britain are warning the public about the characteristic cough that accompanies tuberculosis.

In Europe, health authorities are conducting lively debates about the cost-effective screening of tuberculosis carriers and the prevention of their infection in the local population.

Someone can carry latent TB for years and then suddenly, after moving to a new country, develop active—and highly contagious—TB and spread it through coughing and sneezing.

But in the US, the CDC, confused by the mission, emphasizes health equity and rushes for resources “disproportionately affected” groups That’s fine, but what about protecting Americans from the reemergence of a disease they’ve largely eliminated? In all the agency’s reports, there is not a word about what is causing the TB surge: the open border.

Immigrants who enter the country legally and apply for a green card are screened for tuberculosis using an interferon-gamma release test. Latent carriers are allowed to enter the country and referred to the local health department for further treatment. It’s voluntary and seamless, but it’s better than not checking at all.

Migrants who cross the border illegally or enter through Biden’s new parole program are not screened. Zip.

The CDC is MIA on screening and isolating the infected before they bring the disease to cities and towns across the country. The agency forgets about its own “Control and prevention” mission.

Take the case of a Chinese migrant with active drug-resistant tuberculosis who crossed the border illegally in April. When her symptoms worsened and on July 23 she was diagnosed with: “very positive” nothing was done to isolate her.

Instead, she was shuffled between immigration processing facilities in California and Louisiana, exposing hundreds.

Now, the state of Louisiana has sued the federal government to keep migrants with lesions in custody until they undergo a medical examination. State Attorney General Liz Murrill warns of illegals who are “not tested for diseases that could threaten the lives of Louisiana and American citizens.”

Thousands of unaccompanied minors with latent tuberculosis are being released into communities across the country instead of being held in health and social services facilities for months to be treated with a course of antibiotics.

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

On Nov. 1, Sen. Mike Lee (D-Utah) urged Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to take precautions against the disease’s invasion, warning that tuberculosis “spreading rapidly among the millions of unverified 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 worrying. The US waged a war against tuberculosis in the 20th century and won. Americans should not now be exposed to this disease through open borders.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Betsy McCaughey is the former lieutenant governor of New York and co-founder of the Save Our City Committee at saveourcityny.org. Follow her on Twitter @Betsy_McCaughey. To learn more about Betsy McCaughey and read articles by other Creators Syndicate authors and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.