{"id":2050,"date":"2020-03-22T11:30:43","date_gmt":"2020-03-22T15:30:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=2050"},"modified":"2020-03-22T11:30:43","modified_gmt":"2020-03-22T15:30:43","slug":"coronavirus-hysteria-and-contradictions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2020\/03\/coronavirus-hysteria-and-contradictions.html","title":{"rendered":"Coronavirus Hysteria and Contradictions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Given the hyper-alarmism concerning \u201cThe <\/em>Coronavirus\u201d with which the public is relentlessly besieged by both Big Government and Big Media, one would think that no cost would be spared in the effort to defeat this Plague that is decimating the world, correct?<\/p>\n

But when we consider what the Chicken Littles are not <\/em>mentioning, it is fair to ask:<\/p>\n

How seriously do<\/em> the panic-stricken genuinely take this?<\/p>\n

Given all of the sudden talk of \u201csocial distancing,\u201d \u201cself-isolation,\u201d and \u201cflattening the curve,\u201d one would think that everyone should be on board with bringing all <\/em>immigration to a grinding and, because there are always diseases and viruses that pose threats to Americans, a permanent<\/em> halt.<\/p>\n

Americans from all walks of life, irrespectively of their political persuasions, should be demanding <\/em>this.<\/p>\n

The logic of \u201csocial distancing,\u201d \u201cself-isolating,\u201d and \u201cflattening the curve\u201d inescapably precludes allowing, to say nothing of encouraging, more people <\/em>into our country.<\/p>\n

And it violently<\/em> contradicts the logic (or illogic) of a policy that invites people from countries with high incidences of dangerous diseases.<\/p>\n

The person who supports \u201cself-isolation\u201d and \u201csocial distancing\u201d while continuing to support America\u2019s modus operandi vis-\u00e0-vis immigration is like the person who, for the purpose of slowing the spread of a dangerous disease, severs ties with others by locking himself in his home.\u00a0 At the same time, though, he invites into his home <\/em>limitless numbers of people from countries with conditions that make those countries breeding grounds for infectious diseases.<\/p>\n

The irrationality should be seen for what it is.<\/p>\n

So, why no loud, unabashed calls to End Immigration NOW (or something to this effect)?<\/p>\n

To President Trump\u2019s credit, he has implemented some travel bans\u2014which his enemies in the Democratic Party have resisted and for which they have hurled the all too predictable accusations of \u201cracism\u201d and \u201cxenophobia\u201d at him.<\/p>\n

But even these travel bans are highly selective.\u00a0 If this is the State of National Emergency that the President has declared it to be, and the State of Emergency that the governors of many states have declared it to be, then, first and foremost, one would think that all Americans, irrespectively of any other differences that may divide them, would be unanimous in demanding that travel from all <\/em>other countries, especially travel from those countries with Third World conditions, should be ended instantaneously.<\/p>\n

The United States military, which exists in order to protect America, <\/em>should be stationed along our nation\u2019s borders, specifically along our southern border.\u00a0 This is the measure that must<\/em> be taken to insure that the flood of illegal aliens that our politicians have shamelessly allowed and, particularly in the case of Democrats, aggressively encouraged<\/em>, come to an end once and for all.\u00a0 In addition to violating America\u2019s sovereignty, these aliens who circumvent just those health-screening procedures that are designed to protect American citizens have injected<\/a> back into the body politic numerous diseases, potentially deadly <\/em>diseases, over which America had long ago prevailed.<\/p>\n

Not even Trump, who, many of us have never forgotten, ran explicitly on a platform to \u201cbuild that wall\u201d on our southern border (that wall that still hasn\u2019t been built), has used this as an occasion to promote stronger border security.<\/p>\n

Nothing less than a resounding, unanimous, unabashed call for closing America\u2019s doors indefinitely, until the Black Plague 2.0 has completed its sweep over the land, is required to convince the skeptical among us that those who are screaming loudest about it aren\u2019t just using this a pretext for other, perhaps less obvious, purposes.<\/p>\n

Beyond this\u2014and while I don\u2019t wish to stray too far afield\u2014anyone who is genuinely interested in protecting the well-being of our fellow Americans from infectious diseases should be thinking about, at the very least<\/em>, severely restricting the numbers of people who enter the United States each year, particularly when they are entering from underdeveloped countries.\u00a0 The Open Borders crowd, the Democratic Party that is its home, and all of the Big Con, America-Is-An-Idea types who have zealously (recklessly) been embracing unrelenting immigration from anywhere in the world since forever should be unceremoniously put out of business\u2026now. <\/em><\/p>\n

So far, I haven\u2019t heard anyone, neither Republican nor Democrat, neither \u201cliberal\u201d nor \u201cconservative\u201d, make any such calls.<\/p>\n

But if, <\/em>as they claim, politicians who are now annexing to themselves exponentially more power over the lives of Americans than even that (awesome) amount of power that they already exercised are doing so for the sake of protecting Americans from this<\/em> infectious disease, then not only should they be of one mind and will when it comes to stopping all entry into America for present<\/em> purposes; they should recognize the need for upending our current immigration system and stopping entry into America always<\/em> so as to protect citizens from all <\/em>infectious diseases that are known to be carried by immigrants.<\/p>\n

Especially telling about the conspicuous, virtually unanimous silence on this subject is that Hispanics, i.e., the members of just that group that is disproportionately represented among those aliens that have been illegally crossing our southern border for decades, are also disproportionately represented among Tuberculosis (TB) carriers.\u00a0 According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC<\/a>), even though TB, which \u201cwas once a leading cause of death in the United States,\u201d has been declining \u201cin almost all racial and ethnic groups\u201d over the decades, it nevertheless remains the case that \u201cHispanics\/Latinos continue to have a disproportionately higher burden of TB.\u201d<\/p>\n

The numbers are stunning. In 2015, the CDC reports that 28% of all people with TB within the United States were Hispanic.\u00a0 Among foreign-born TB patients, nearly one-third<\/em> were Hispanic. With 4.8 cases per 100,000 population, Hispanics carry TB at a rate eight times<\/em> that of \u201cwhite, non-Hispanic people\u201d (who carry it at a rate of .6 cases per 100,000 population).<\/p>\n

In 2017, TB killed 1.6 million<\/em> human beings globally.<\/p>\n

Back in the mid-1990s, Peter Brimelow\u2019s Alien Nation <\/em>supplied readers with facts that virtually no one else dared to talk about until fairly recently (and even now, in the thick of the Apocalypse that Big Media and Big Government would have us think is upon us, far too few people are willing to reckon with ((politically incorrect<\/em>))reality).<\/p>\n

For starters, the resurgence of TB in America, Brimelow wrote, is \u201clargely\u2026because of immigration from regions like Latin America where the disease is endemic (foreign-born cases accounted for nearly two thirds of the increase in the last decade\u2026.).\u201d\u00a0 Elaborating, the author shares some staggering figures: \u201cIn 1991, some 27 percent of U.S. cases were foreign born; over 60 percent of California\u2019s cases, and 30 to 80 percent of the cases in some immigrant-heavy Washington suburbs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brimelow continues:<\/p>\n

\u201cLeprosy: of the six thousand patients in the United States in 1987, 90 percent were refugees or immigrants from Southeast Asia or Mexico;<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cMeasles: virtually eliminated in the United States during the 1980s, measles is flaring up\u2014in Hispanic areas, particularly among recent arrivals from Latin America<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cCholera, malaria, dengue fever [similar to the \u201cYellow Fever\u201d]: all are widespread in Latin America, and all have been reported in the United States recently.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Though Brimelow penned these words decades ago, his essential point remains as accurate today as it was a quarter of a century ago.\u00a0 And that point is that immigration does indeed pose health risks for Americans.<\/p>\n

So, then, shouldn\u2019t the country \u201cself-isolate\u201d or \u201cself-quarantine\u201d from the rest of the world, or at least from the countless foreigners who, by hook or by crook, seek to enter America every day?\u00a0 <\/em>If not, why not? How is \u201csocial distancing\u201d from those who would aspire to enter the United States not the only morally viable course of action with respect to \u201cflattening the curve\u201d of, not just the spread of COVID-19, but any and all potentially dangerous viruses?<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t expect things to change significantly, if at all, with either our immigration policy or that of any other Western country. That no one in either Big Government or Big Media is advocating these measures\u2014massive and indefinite immigration restriction in order to protect citizens not just from the latest coronavirus, but from dangerous viruses of all kinds\u2014suggests what some of us suspect:<\/p>\n

Those in Big Government and Big Media spreading the panic are powered by motives other than what appears on the surface, for if their professed intentions were sincere and they favored this massive contraction of our civil society to protect us from one<\/em> infectious disease, then they should have long ago favored immigration restrictions so as to protect us from infectious diseases of various kinds<\/em> carried disproportionately by foreigners seeking to enter our land.<\/p>\n

In the next installment of this series on Coronavirus hysteria, I will show how and why the reasonable can\u2019t but conclude that this is indeed a manufactured<\/em> hysteria that has possessed the country\u2014and the world.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Given the hyper-alarmism concerning \u201cThe Coronavirus\u201d with which the public is relentlessly besieged by both Big Government and Big Media, one would think that no cost would be spared in the effort to defeat this Plague that is decimating the world, correct? 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