Recent viral outbreak in Missouri and Illinois: Enterovirus D68

Hello internet! Today I come to you in rather a serious vein. The recent outbreak of the enterovirus EV-D68 has been causing somewhat of a stir. Disturbingly, this outbreak is being used by some people with anti-hispanic and white nationalist agendas to further their racist and racialist ends.

Rush Limbaugh, the "Americans for Legal Immigration", and "Fix This Nation", sources among others with rather disturbing bents, have decried this virus as a "mystery virus", never seen before, and obviously brought in by the last wave of Latino children who were allowed into the country and dispersed around the nation, in mysterious and conspiratorial ways.  A recent memo from the Inspector General to the border regions is said to 'admit' the connection of the "mystery virus" and the Latin American children.

But lets step back and do some research. I read the memorandum of July 30th, 2014 from John Roth, Inspector General regarding the oversight of the "unaccompanied alien children." Indeed, the memo does mention diseases. Pre-existing diseases the children had before they arrived. Also noted diseases spreading in the tight confines of the holding camps mainly due to poor sanitation present. In other words, the same health problems that come along with any large group of people confined to a small area and held there for a long time.

But Rush Limbaugh's "mystery virus." Lets hit the sources. I found information at the Journal of General Virology and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

EV-D68 is not a mystery virus. It was first isolated and identified in California in 1962. It is a very rare but known virus to the CDC and health watch groups world wide. There have been outbreaks in the last three years of the virus in North America, Europe and Asia. Small clusters of EV-D68 outbreaks have occurred throughout the US from 2009 to 2013. There was an outbreak in Japan in 2005. Another in the Philippines in 2008, and one in the Netherlands in 2010.

There is no specific treatment for EV-D68 but infections tend to be mild and self-limiting, the patient recovering on their own. It is dangerous to people with pre-existing conditions and severe respiratory illnesses where it can exasperate these conditions (this is what occurred in a well publicized case in Colorado and in many of the cases in Illinois).

The Jews were blamed for the black death in the dark ages, and while individual Jews may have inadvertently spread the bubonic plague, I am very sure they did not do it as an attack on aryan Europe. Obviously this story of Hispanics and Latinos being the cause of this latest outbreak is going to find much purchase among people like neo-nazis and white nationalists who want to believe in it.

Please do not allow yourselves to fall into this trap. Do the research, find sources, ask trained medical personnel. I found out all of the above in less than 30 minutes of the most cursory internet research.

I now return us all to our pictures of kitties and Giorgio Tsoukalos!