As the border collapses, a measles cluster is growing at a migrant shelter in Chicago
Guest Post by Alex Berenson
But legal immigrants still have to take useless Covid jabs. And the media, which went nuts over a Florida school cluster last month, is ignoring the Chicago cases. Sometimes the hypocrisy is too much.
Want to come to the United States legally?
You will need 15 different vaccinations, including, yes, a Covid shot. A Covid vaccine is required even if you have previously had Covid – and even if you are young and at low risk from Covid but at high risk from mRNA-caused myocarditis.
In fact, the government has stricter rules for Covid jabs than other vaccines. Immigrants must have received only the first dose of other vaccines when they apply for entry or citizenship. But they must have completed their Covid vaccinations.
These rules were issued in 2021. They remain in place three years later even though Covid is now endemic and not even the most dedicated mRNA fanatic believes the shots protect from Covid infection or transmission.
You will also be required to get a flu shot, Hepatitis A and B vaccines, and of course a measles shot; measles is very contagious and the vaccine against it highly effective.
But those rules do not apply if you show up at the southern border asking for asylum. Illegal alien, undocumented migrant, asylee – by any name, you will be welcomed to the United States, no proof of vaccination required.
Now the inevitable has happened.
A shelter for asylum-seekers in Chicago has become the center of a growing cluster of measles cases. Eight cases have been confirmed so far, and more are expected. Local health officials have asked for federal help in controlling the outbreak.
So far, though, the national media has largely ignored the Chicago measles cluster – likely because covering it would raise yet more questions about the risks posed by the record number of migrants being waved into Texas despite that state’s objections.
The silence over the Chicago cluster is especially striking given the way the national media covered a similarly-sized cluster of measles cases last month in south Florida, the state that reporters love to hate.
The outbreak began in mid-February in a large elementary school in western Broward County, on the edge of the Everglades, and quickly grew to nine cases. The school’s principal reported about 97 percent of its 1,067 students had been vaccinated against measles, meaning that the outbreak would almost certainly fizzle out quickly.
But after Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladopo refused to impose home quarantine on the handful of unvaccinated students and instead said parents could choose for themselves whether to keep their kids at home, the media went predictably insane.
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(The amazing thing about Dr. Leana S. Wen is that she is NOT the most annoying and alarmist Washington Post columnist; that would be the one and only Jennifer Rubin.)
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Wen’s column was notable for its hysteria, but she was far from alone.
The Guardian (a leftist British newspaper): “Florida is swamped by disease outbreaks as quackery replaces science”
The New York Times: “Amid Florida’s Measles Outbreak, Surgeon General Goes Against Medical Guidance”
Scientific American: “Florida Risks Making a Dangerous Measles Outbreak Much Worse”
Not for the first time, supposedly serious news organization were indulging a near-Orwellian misuse of language, considering the “outbreak” consisted of nine cases with no reported hospitalizations.
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But even as the shrieking grew, the outbreak itself fizzled.
No cases have been reported in almost four weeks, past the incubation period for measles. Broward County and the Florida Department of Health have now officially declared the outbreak over, a fact the national media has largely ignored.
Maybe the Chicago cluster will fizzle the same way, but – unlike the Florida “outbreak” – it both reveals and presents a real danger, since vaccination rates among asylum-seekers are dismally low.
You can expect national news organizations to mention that risk on the 12th of never.