Measles, once virtually eliminated from American life, has returned to Chicago — and you'll never guess where in the city the nasty little virus has made its big comeback.
Illegal immigrant shelters.
OK, so you probably guessed exactly that, and you aren't at all surprised, are you?
The not-so-shocking news came to my attention via the invaluable Twitter/X user known only as End Wokeness.
Measles in the entire state of Illinois:
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) March 27, 2024
2020: 0 cases
2021: 0 cases
2022: 0 cases
2023: 5 cases
2024: 31 and climbing
More measles infections in the past few weeks than the past 8 years combined.
But you didn't hear about this rapidly growing outbreak because it all comes…
The Chicago Sun-Times recently reported that "the city has reported 26 measles cases, 19 of which have been in children younger than 5. Most of the cases have been associated with the Pilsen migrant shelter."
That was on Monday. By Wednesday morning, the number of cases had risen to 31. As a result, city health officials say that illegal aliens at Pilson "should receive a second dose of the measles vaccine 28 days after the first shot."
Or as PJ Media's own Rick Moran put it 10 days ago, the outbreak makes Chicago "just like any other third-world city."
Measles had been basically eradicated from this country by 2000 when the CDC declared us free of "circulating" measles. Thanks to a safe and effective vaccine, we went from suffering 3,000 cases per million people in 1960 to just 13 per million.
We do still have the occasional outbreak, usually in wealthier neighborhoods where vaccination has fallen out of fashion.
"It is a strange first-world irony that wealthier, better-educated parents are the ones reducing infant vaccination rates," Orange County, Calif., medical director Matt Zahn said a few years ago. “Many people in this country have never seen a case of measles... We’re a victim of our own success.”
I'm reminded now of Tom Lehrer's old joke about a college friend who attended medical school and was specializing in "diseases of the rich." It's a lucrative field, to be sure — even though, when it comes to measles, the market was entirely self-created.
The current measles outbreak in Chicago — and I'd be genuinely surprised if it turns out to be the only one we experience — is the creation of Presidentish Joe Biden. Even fans of legal immigration, like myself, deplore the onslaught Biden has invited at our southern border. We have immigration controls, or at least we once did, in part to prevent the spread of infectious diseases to our shores.
I was just watching "The Godfather, Part II" with my 18-year-old son last week; he was blown away by the orderly treatment of immigrants at Ellis Island during one of the flashbacks to Vito Corleone's childhood. I had to explain to him what quarantine was when ten-year-old Vito was found during his health inspection to have smallpox.
Thanks to Biden, nothing like that sort of thing happens any longer at our most-traveled border — and so measles has returned.
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