Agreed. Jumping to conclusions and getting hysterical, absent hard evidence is never a good idea.
While this particular strain EV-D68 is rather rare, enteroviruses are quite common and usually peak in August and September and there are hundreds of different strains of non-polio enteroviruses, some causing little or no symptoms or symptoms much like the common cold (a rhinovirus) and others causing Hand Foot and Mouth disease, some causing more serious illnesses such as non-polio but polio-like paralysis, acute hemorrhagic conjunctivitis or even viral meningitis.
But in fact if you or your child ever had a mild summer or early fall “head cold”; a mild cold and more of a nuisance than a serious illness, most likely it was not a rhinovirus but an enterovirus that caused it. In fact this family of non-polio enteroviruses in general, are so common and many often do not cause any serious illness that is it hard to tell how many cases there are every year as many times it does not require anything but home care and chicken soup, such as you would for the common cold and not necessitating even a trip to the doctor’s live alone to the ER, so it isn’t widely tested for or reported to the CDC.
The interesting thing about this outbreak of EV-D68 (and there have been smaller and less severe outbreaks in the US in the past) is number of children getting sick, how fast it is spreading, how rapidly those children who do become very ill go from just cold symptoms to wheezing and not being able to breathe, and that it is making some children, especially those with asthma require hospitalization for breathing problems.
The good news is there have been no deaths reported (at least so far) and those children who did require hospitalization and breathing treatments (nebulizers), again mostly among those children who have asthma or a history of wheezing and breathing problems (allergies?) have been recovering quickly and sent home after a brief hospital stay and without further complications. A more interesting question might be why so many kids in the US now days have asthma.
The thing about this family of non-polio enteroviruses (an RNA virus) is their propensity for rapid mutation.
So while I would not discount that this outbreak of EV-D68 “might” be attributed to the recent influx of illegal alien children (and young adults), the fact that this particular virus has been present in the US, first identified in the early 60’s in California, it is also possible that this is just a mutation of a virus already present in the US population that in the past caused only mild illnesses in smaller outbreaks over the last 40 years but it has now mutated into something a bit more serious – with or possibly without it being introduced as some sort of novel disease brought to the US by illegals from south of the border.
We could close off and seal our borders off completely, to any and all foreigners and to all international travel to any third world nation, and it would still be possible for certain viruses already present in our native population to mutate and cause outbreaks of serious illnesses from time to time.
Viruses are funny that way. They don’t look or care about a person’s immigration status before “deciding” whether to mutate or not.
Ping to you as I’d like to hear your opinion.
As Ian Fleming once said,
“Once is happenstance.
Twice is coincidence.
Three times, it’s enemy action.”