Common Sense, Swine Flu (H1N1 Flu) & the Mexican Border

Those close to the outbreak of disease are always unlucky and those who catch the disease early on also suffer. When the south China, civet cat induced SARS outbreak occurred in 2003, it was very clear that the United States had been lucky and Canada had not. A specific series of events led to the quick transmission of SARS to a relatively large group of people in Toronto before a full understanding of SARS and its symptoms were known. Members of a church visiting a hospital with an unidentified infected patient spread the disease to their congregation. Canada had 151 cases and 43 deaths while the US had 27 cases and 0 deaths.

While most people remember the televised panic in Honk Kong, once identified, the global SARS outbreak was quickly controlled. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), "a total of 8,098 people worldwide became sick with SARS during the 2003 outbreak. Of these, 774 died." To see where SARS eventually spread to, click on the following link.
http://www.who.int/csr/sars/country/table2004_04_21/en/index.html

While SARS was new and deadly, it was quickly contained. The three most important things learned from SARS, to consider when looking at the swine H1N1 flu pandemic are:
1) The vast majority of SARS cases and deaths occurred near its epicenter in China. China had repeated outbreaks for another year.
2) The global Air transportation system quickly moved individuals exposed to SARS across the globe. Many of those travellers arrived home without symptoms and unaware of their exposure. Notice that there was only one exposure in Africa and none in South America, which are two relatively poor continents.
3) Once the disease was recognized (by symptoms and lab tests) and the basics understood, It was just as quickly brought under control in the developed parts of the world and due to the cost of air travel, there was little exposure in poorer nations/regions outside of southeast Asia.

With regards to Swine Flu, Mexico is very unfortunate as was Southern China with SARS. Mexico is taking fairly drastic action to prevent the spread of the disease while they get a handle on it. Unfortunately it will ripple through Mexico as it did in China.

With regards to the United States, public health officials have implemented similar protocols to other flu and disease outbreaks. The Center for Disease Control has updated information.
http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/

Many public officials and individuals have made uninformed, careless, foolish and reckless statements. Among the careless statements are those by Vice President, Joe Biden. His advice contradicted the advice of public health officials and if followed would damage certain sectors of the economy.

Across the United States, individual school districts have reacted by closing schools where there was no evidence of any exposure. While those school officials maintain that they were being cautious, I maintain that they were merely pretending to be doing something. Why is common sense so lacking when it comes to School Districts? Why is pretending to do something, so often confused with actually doing something in this country?

Again also, the conspiracy theorists are out talking. The very individuals who think they are more likely to survive an automobile accident without wearing their seat belts are often holing up like its Armageddon when there is a health problem like this.

Finally and most importantly, we must stop pretending that we are doing something about the porous and therefore uncontrollable border with Mexico. This outbreak will only break out in the United States, if public health regulations and quarantines are bypassed.

While it is relatively easy to screen air passengers returning from vacation in Mexico and relatively difficult but possible to screen vehicles driving legally across the border, it is impossible to screen people crossing the border illegally. I am not calling for a fear driven or reckless reaction here but a rather an open debate on the need for an actual solution to controlling the flow of people across the US-Mexico border.

We have allowed a black market in manual labor to render our border and immigration policies meaningless. It is time for the politics of blame to stop and time for a practical and pragmatic solution. We are far better off having permitted and documented legal aliens working in this country than the current situation. Recognizing and regulating a permanent alien workforce will not make all problems disappear and will create some additional problems but it will better protect all of us and allow the US - Mexico border to be reshaped in terms of illegal crossings and reformed in terms of security.

We also need to supplement this with tougher action on those who enter the country illegally and those who employ undocumented workers to dry up the manual labor black market permanently.