And, the health care system there is begging the feds for more money to help relieve this latest fallout from Biden’s totally screwed-up Afghan evacuation.
Americans turned away from Virginia hospitals over Afghan evacuees
(Editor: Glad to see that the Afghans are not being referred to as ‘refugees.’ They are not legitimate refugees!)
A massive influx of Afghan evacuees strained Northern Virginia hospitals so much this week that American citizens were being turned away.
Every Virginian should be complaining to Virginia Democrat Senators Tim Kaine and Mark Warner. Let them know that Biden’s disastrous Afghan surrender will be hurting them and their party in the next election. Throwing more taxpayer dollars at the problem won’t get them off the hook.
A hospital near Dulles Expo Center has been running out of beds, forcing the facility to turn away non-Afghan patients who didn’t need critical care, according to The Washington Post.
The overwhelmed hospital system prompted a regional emergency response group to monitor the hospitals after one became so packed with patients that federal officials lost track of a number of Afghans receiving medical care, including a month-old child suffering from a possibly life-threatening condition.
Kristin Nickerson, executive director of the Northern Virginia Emergency Response System, said the child was later located in one of the hospitals. Nickerson, who also directs the Northern Virginia Hospital Alliance, confirmed that another hospital was forced to turn away American patients.
“Our hospitals are already almost at capacity,” she said, referring to patients with COVID-19. “It’s not like they have tons of free beds available. We are still in the middle of a pandemic.”
Nickerson said federal officials have not been responsive to requests for financial help. The Washington Post reported that a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said questions should be presented to the Department of Homeland Security, which did not respond to several attempts seeking comment.
The offices of both Senators Tim Kaine and Mark Warner said they are aware of and monitoring the situation.
[….]
Nickerson further explained that a federal contractor which was supposed to retrieve Afghan evacuees after their hospital visits has left them in the facilities for up to six hours. Cherokee Federal, the contractor in question, did not respond to The Washington Post’s request for comment. [Oh, gee, another contractor for me to investigate!—ed]
Surprise (not!):
As Afghan evacuees continue to arrive, the cost to care for them continues to rise.
On Aug. 28, top local administrators, who make up the board of the Northern Virginia Emergency Response System group, sent a letter to Virginia’s secretary of health and human services, calling for federal and state dollars to be allocated for the ongoing effort.
“To meet the current need, we are leveraging what little resources we have to augment the existing team at the moment, but this is not sustainable with only a staff of 12,” the letter said.
J. Stephen Jones, chief executive of the Inova Health System, said the hospitals shouldn’t expect the impact of the Afghan crisis to end any time soon.
By the way, I have 390 posts in my health issues category. See what other health problems refugees and migrants of all sorts bring to America. Health problems, including mental health problems, that you ultimately pay for, one way or another.
If you missed it yesterday, I wrote a refugee-related story at ‘Frauds and Crooks.’
Hmmmm! She does mention removing the Muslim ban in a first one hundred days (assuming they get even one day!), but not a word about immediately raising the ceiling the President has placed on refugee admissions.
Glaring omission, I thought, as the Biden/Harris platform has stated from its earliest days that they would raise the ceiling to 125,000 refugees for 2021 beginning immediately after inauguration day on January 20th.
Trump’s ceiling for the year is 15,000.
Editor: I’ve been busy writing at ‘Frauds and Crooks’ recently. A lot of fraud news with the election! But other news too. Check out the latest on the Kenyan Killer case if you missed it where a NEW AMERICAN is behind bars charged with murdering possibly as many as 24 vulnerable senior citizens in a killing spree that went undetected for almost 2 years.
Kamala Harris Vows Amnesty in First 100 Days, Restarting Immigration from Exporters of Terrorism
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) detailed Democrat Joe Biden’s plans to drastically reopen various routes of migration to the United States, including an amnesty for all 11 to 22 million illegal aliens in the U.S. and a restart of immigration from countries that export terrorism.
During a brief, pre-recorded speech at the National Immigrant Integration Conference, Harris said she and Biden are focused on undoing President Trump’s reforms that sought to protect American citizens from security threats and the national workforce from unfair foreign competition.
My first thought when I saw this was omg, if we have to listen to this voice for four years, it will be torture! And, secondly I figured that the gaff-prone, and clearly mentally impaired, Joe Biden was beginning to be sidelined.
“In our first 100 days, we will send an immigration bill to Congress, reinstate DACA, repeal harmful and discriminatory policies like the Muslim ban,” Harris said. “And during our administration, we will repeal indiscriminate enforcement policies that tear families apart and make us less safe.”
The ending of Trump’s travel ban by Biden would come as the overwhelming majority of Americans support such immigration restrictions. Last month, 5-in-6 voters said they supported travel bans to slow the spread of the Chinese coronavirus crisis, and in November 2018, more than 4-in-9 Americans said they supported travel bans on Muslim-majority countries.
But, again no mention of lifting the refugee ceiling. Do they already know that during the Chinese Virus ‘crisis’ the average American will go ballistic to see thousands upon thousands of third worlders flown into the US (without COVID testing) to be cared for at taxpayer expense.
According to a report at The New Humanitarian, moving populations of people in conflict zones and where governments are weak are particularly vulnerable to a critical health crisis like the coronavirus.
Pakistan has closed its border with Iran
Of course, The New Humanitarian is most concerned with the refugees themselves and less concerned with the citizens of the countries where the migrants may end up.
Countries that seal their borders may be able to ward off the worst of a potential crisis.
I just told you in my previous post this morning, that Turkey is opening borders to allow ‘refugees’ to move through to Europe.
I wonder, is the US screening refugees and asylum seekers especially those from hotspots like China and Iran?
How the coronavirus outbreak could hit refugees and migrants
A surge in coronavirus cases outside China has raised concerns the outbreak could be particularly devastating for vulnerable refugee and migrant populations in countries hobbled by conflict.
Over the last week, cases of the illness known as Covid-19 have escalated dramatically in Iran, and new infections linked to the cluster have emerged in more than half a dozen other countries in the region including Iraq, Afghanistan, and Lebanon.
At least 12 million refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs) live between Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Turkey – countries linked to Iran by either frequent travel, irregular migration routes, shared borders, or all three. Iran itself hosts nearly one million refugees, mostly from neighbouring Afghanistan, and an estimated 1.5 to two million undocumented people.
The effects of armed conflict “fragment the public health system and the infrastructure that enables governments to actively perform surveillance of diseases”, said Dr. Mohammed Jawad, a researcher at Imperial College London who studies the impact of conflict on public health.
Dr. Adam Coutts, a public health specialist at Cambridge University who focuses on the Middle East, said refugees are especially vulnerable to the coronavirus or other diseases, due to ”high geographical mobility, instability, living in overcrowded conditions, lack of sanitation and WASH (waters, sanitation and hygiene) facilities, and lack of access to decent healthcare or vaccination programmes in host communities”.
But refugee populations are often left out of disaster and epidemic preparedness planning at the best of times. And simply reaching marginalised refugees and migrants with information is also a challenge.
Politicians in Italy and Greece have already started using the spectre of asylum seekers and migrants carrying the virus across international borders to drum up support for hardline migration policies. But public health experts believe the real risk is to refugee and migrant communities themselves, who face instability, sporadic access to healthcare, and now the growing threat of stigmatisation.
Note to PayPal donors! I want to thank all of you who send me donations for my work via PayPal. I very much appreciate your thoughtfulness. However, PayPal is making changes to their terms of service and I’ve decided to opt-out beginning on March 10, 2020.
Lost in all the hubbub over the tax bill, Hillary/Trump and the Russians, and now another Islamic terrorist attack, is the little known, but growing concern about the reemergence of the Plague, otherwise known as Black Death that decimated Europe in the 14th Century.
Is it even on America’s radar screen?
The disease moved more slowly in the 14th Century. Today we are one refugee and one plane flight away from infecting the North American continent.
Readers should know that many of the countries now on the Plague’s possible flight path are also countries from which refugees arrive almost daily to the US—most specifically Kenya (most US-bound Somalis come through Kenya), Ethiopia and South Africa.
The latest outbreak, which took root in Madagascar, has now killed 124 people and infected around 1,300, but scientists say this figure will definitely rise.
South Africa, Mozambique, Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, Comoros, the Seychelles, Mauritius and Reunion have all been placed on high alert by World Health Organisation (WHO) monitors.
Experts say the deadly disease is caused by the same bacteria that wiped out 25 million people in Europe in the 13th and 14th centuries.
And WHO officials, who have been working with Madagascar’s Ministry of Health, warn the risk of the epidemic spreading is “high”.
[….]
…concerned WHO officials claim there is “something different” about this outbreak and “health officials couldn’t explain it”.
Map of countries now infected in East Africa from the UK Express:
Sure hope the Trump Admin is aware and working on this!
See our Health Issues category (340 previous posts archived there) on more about the diseases and mental health problems entering the US with the refugee flow. Did you know refugees with HIV and TB are admitted to the US?
The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), which was mentioned by our reader in our previous post, asks an important question.
This is a subject we have mentioned frequently over the years as evidenced by our huge category (338 previous posts!) on refugee health issues,see it here.
Note to PayPal donors! I want to thank all of you who send me donations for my work via PayPal. I very much appreciate your thoughtfulness. However, PayPal is making changes to their terms of service and I’ve decided to opt-out beginning on March 10, 2020.
