The Obama Flu?

The Obama Flu?
By Patrick J. Buchanan
May 1, 2009

Because of the peril of swine flu, Joe Biden said yesterday, he
would urge his family to stay out of "confined places" like
airplanes and subways here in the United States.

Yet, the Obama administration will not consider closing the United
States to airplanes and buses coming in from the epicenter of the
epidemic, Mexico City.

Does this contradiction make sense?

America, at this writing, has recorded fewer than 100 cases of the
swine flu. One victim has died, a 2-year-old Mexican boy. He was
flown out of Mexico City to Matamoros, crossed over with his
parents into Texas, was taken to a hospital in Brownsville,
terribly sick, then transferred to a Houston hospital. There he died.

Clear from this is that Mexicans, seriously ill, may head for the
United States, where the medical care is known to be far superior
and also free for the indigent.

This is understandable.

What is not is the United States conducting business as usual on
the Mexican border, when tourists are fleeing Cancun, cruise ships
refuse to put in to Mexican ports, Texas is closing schools,
Europeans are shutting airports to flights from Mexico City and
Obama is telling parents to pull the kids out of school if the flu
shows up.

Is this a serious medical menace to Americans or not?

Some scientists claim this is a mild hybrid strain of the flu that
visits every season, no big deal. But the World Health Organization
has raised the threat level of H1N1 swine flu to Category 5. This
means the world is at imminent risk of a pandemic. Yet, the death
toll, as of now, is only one in the United States, and 159 out of
2,500 sickened in Mexico.

Still, the political fallout here could be immense.

According to Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, in a
normal flu season, 35,000 Americans die. Thirty-five thousand! That
is more than 10 times the number who died on 9-11 and about as many
as we lost in the Korean War.

And if this Mexican flu is anything like the Hong Kong flu that
killed 33,000 Americans in 1968-69, or, Lord forbid, the Spanish
Flu that killed 25 million to 50 million worldwide in 1918-19 --
more Americans died from it than all the Americans killed in World
Wars I and II combined -- this administration is dangerously behind
the curve.

Back in 1980, Gov. Jerry Brown's refusal to use the pesticide
malathion on the Mediterranean fruit fly almost killed his career.
For the Medflies made it over the mountains into the Central Valley
and ravaged California's crops and orchards. And we were only
talking then about farm produce, not tens of thousands of lives
possibly lost.

Obama's coolness may prove correct.

But if he is perceived at having refused to close the border to
buses bringing in sick Mexicans, or airports to planes coming in
from Mexico City, so as not to offend the open-borders crowd, and a
deadly epidemic ensues, full responsibility will be his. And he
will pay a far greater price than George W. Bush did for being AWOL
in Katrina.

For a president's first duty is not to the NAFTA-mandated free flow
of goods and people between the United States and Mexico, but to
protect the health and lives of the American people.

In the 1940s, it was not uncommon, when there was an outbreak of
measles, mumps, chicken pox, scarlet fever or polio, for homes and
families to be quarantined until it could be demonstrated to health
authorities that everyone in the house was free of the disease.

Today's political correctness means we cannot discriminate against
individuals who may bring in infectious diseases like AIDS.

Under NAFTA, GATT and globalization, America threw open her doors
to mass immigration and accepted an invasion of illegal aliens that
brought 12 million to 20 million into the country.

With them has come a raft of diseases never seen here before, or
eradicated years ago: multiple drug resistant tuberculosis,
malaria, leprosy, measles, syphilis, Chagas disease, dengue fever
and new strains of hepatitis. Even bed bugs have invaded half the
American states.

However "mild" Mexican swine flu may prove to be, it is wreaking
havoc in Mexico. And, already, that country is suffering from a
collapse in the price of oil it sells to the United States, a
reduction in the remittances sent back from Mexican workers in the
United States due to the downturn here and a collapse in tourism
due to the cartels war that took 6,000 lives last year.

Now, with tourists fleeing, hotels emptying out and athletic events
being canceled, Mexico could be hit with a second devastating
economic blow, from which she does not soon recover.

In January, the U.S. Joint Forces Command identified two large
nations in real danger of "rapid and sudden collapse."

One was Pakistan, the other Mexico.

Unfortunately, the boys at the JFC seem to have gotten it right.

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