Mrs. dpnewell wrote:I have an idea. Allow folk to flood across our southern boarder with out any documentation or health exam, and allow them to live among us without regard for any illnesses, pests or parasites they may be carrying. Anyone who objects to this is a white supremist, Trump worshiping racist.
David
No... people are called white supremacists and trump worshipping racists because when they read a CDC notification about Chagas disease and read this quote:
"According to the CDC, around 300,000 people have Chagas disease in the U.S.—most of which were infected with the parasite in rural areas of Mexico, Central America and South America"
They immediately think they need to stop the influx of those sick, pest and parasite ridden immigrants. Without identifying the rest of their quote: "most of which were infected with the parasite in rural areas of Mexico, Central America and South America"
They weren't infected here. And currently there isn't enough presence of the parasite for it to be likely that people will be infected in the US (yes, that can change). But restricting immigrants isn't going to make any real impact (ie, if you are in the camp of "reducing coal use won't make a big enough impact on global warming, so we shouldn't do it" then you REALLY should look at this as a big nothing).
I was curious, partially because I really love diseases... parasites are interesting and their lifecycle is cool. This is interesting stuff. So I did a quick google on the parasite itself....
Quote:
Trypanosoma cruzi parasite has been found to infect domestic dogs, humans, opossums, woodrats, armadillos, coyotes, mice, raccoons, skunks, and foxes
You're not going to to stop this parasite by stopping humans from coming across the border. This is a really robust parasite that can live in a ton of different animals. Essentially any natural area will exist as a sink for this disease to continue to propagate without human intervention. So your concern should be focused on the vector itself (the Triatomine bugs).... Which are spreading north. I wonder why an insect which was prevalent in warm climates in central america would be spreading north. That's a real head scratcher.... someone should come up with a hypothesis.