Swine Flu: Just a Dry Run?

Remember 9/11? Of course you do. Pearl Harbor? Sure.

But there are other types of attacks that can be used to bring a nation to its knees.

You can damage it economically by manipulating the markets.

You can flood the country with people that cannot be identified who can do things under the invisibility of anonymity.

You can allow sick people to fly from one nation to another and spread disease.

For those of you that don't remember, we no longer regularly have outbreaks of diseases like measles and cholera and diptheria here in the United States because we require our kids to be inoculated. Yet every year, there are flare ups. And most of those cases are in communities with large immigrant populations. We similarly see many food borne diseases spread by workers that are not well educated in the necessary hygiene to avoid contamination. And now we have a swine flu outbreak that seems to have originated in Mexico City and come north to San Antonio. I don't think that is a coincidence. SA, Houston and Dallas have all become destination cities for traveling immigrants from Mexico. That they come here and spread disease is just another disturbing trend. If you will read back to the days of Ellis Island, incoming immigrants would sometimes be quarantined for a period to make sure that they didn't carry any dangerous germs into the population. We still do that with many animals, as do many other countries. With all that is going on today, shouldn't the CDC ask the INS to take more care investigating those people who come in via plane, train or auto and outstay visas? Maybe they are just trying to mix in, but it could be that they are sick and spreading serious diseases to other people. I remember the polio outbreak in west Texas when I was young. People died. Instead of worrying about some terrorist that got his feelings hurt by wearing underpants on his head, maybe we should look to our food safety and our health safety. All it takes is one guy infected with small pox or plague and we have a real problem on our hands. And who says this isn't a dry run for a bigger event?