Measles Outbreak at LAX?

The Daily Mail reports that "Health officials have warned of a potential measles outbreak at Los Angeles International airport." 

    A passenger arriving on a Korean Air flight from Seoul to the US tested positive for the highly contagious respiratory illness, which is currently ripping its way through Texas with two reportedly dead in its wake.

    Travelers who were in Terminal B on February 19 during the hours of 1pm to 4pm have been warned that they could be at high risk of the virus. 

    The airport is working with the CDC to notify passengers on the flight who might have been close enough to the infected traveler to contract the disease.

    Passengers who believe they were exposed to the virus at Los Angeles airport have been advised to confirm if they have been vaccinated against measles. 

It reminds me of this recent piece from Sam Faddis at AND Magazine: "Deporting Illegals Is A Good First Step, But Unfortunately The Microbes They Brought With Them Will Stay." Faddis writes:

    Customs and Border Protection is now moving rapidly to put in place expedited removal options to get illegals carrying deadly diseases off our soil. That is welcome news, but it is too late. Epidemics don’t start as roaring fires. They start slowly and then expand, gathering speed as they go. Multiple such epidemics are already underway, and we are far behind in our efforts to control them.

    The largest tuberculosis outbreak in American history is in progress in Kansas. As of Jan. 17th, public health officials reported that they had documented 66 active cases and 79 latent infections in the Kansas City, Kansas, metro area since 2024. Most of the cases have been in Wyandotte County, with a handful in Johnson County.

 * * *

    Public health officials in Kansas continue to attempt to downplay the danger posed by the spreading contagion. They should not. TB is highly contagious. It can be spread through the air. One-third of the people on the planet are infected with tuberculosis. If left untreated fifty percent of those infected will die.

    Tuberculosis, however, is not the only disease with which we need to be concerned. There are current outbreaks of measles and varicella (chickenpox) on both sides of the Texas-Mexico border. In Piedras Negras, Coahuila, the border city across the Rio Grande from Eagle Pass, Texas at least 60 young children have tested positive for varicella. In South Plains, Texas there have been at least 90 cases of the measles. That outbreak has apparently now spread to New Mexico.

    According to a Concho Valley News report, sixteen patients in Texas have been hospitalized. Five of the cases are reported to have been vaccinated against the disease. The remainder of the cases were unvaccinated or had a vaccination status listed as unknown.

    Keep in mind that this is what has been reported to date. We detect outbreaks of a disease when people seek medical care. That means they are already sick and they have likely already passed on the disease to others, who themselves have already infected yet more individuals. We are always running behind even as the rate at which the disease is spreading is increasing.

 And its not just diseases that immigrants and international travelers bring with them. The author of "Bed Bugs Epidemic in the United States" published Entomology, Ornithology & Herpetology: Current Research, noted that "the reason for this resurgence of bed bugs is the less use of pesticides and the international immigration where foreign people carry bed bugs with them into the country." It also relates "that immigrants and guest workers play a significant role in transmitting bed bugs. This is clear especially in some large cities where people translocate frequently and occupy a place briefly such as hotels or motels. New York, California, and Florida have the highest rates of bed bugs’ infestation. These states have also higher rates of immigrants and frequent transportation rates."