This July 12, 2019 photo shows a U.S. Immigration and Border Enforcement detention center in McAllen, Texas. (Josh Dawsey/The Washington Post via AP, Pool)
Let’s think about this. You have a bunch of people, including children, whom you are keeping in very close quarters. But you don’t want to vaccinate them against the flu. Gee, what could possibly go wrong?
According to Jessica Bursztynsky writing for CNBC, the U.S. government will not be vaccinating migrant families who are being held at the border. Her article includes the following quote from a Customs and Border Protection spokesperson: “In general, due to the short-term nature of CBP holding and the complexities of operating vaccination programs, neither CBP nor its medical contractors administer vaccinations to those in our custody.” CBP stands for Customs and Border Protection and not something cannabis-related.
Short-term nature? How about short-term thinking?
Who established this policy? Flu viruses? Holding a number of unvaccinated people in a crowded space could be like maintaining an amusement park for flu viruses. The viruses could rapidly spread among the migrant families and also to those people who work at or visit the detention centers. This then would give the viruses an opportunity to ride elsewhere, where they could cause more trouble and spread even further. Thus, the detention centers could fuel the fire for a flu epidemic.
This phenomenon is what our computational modeling study published Health Affairs demonstrated. Protecting more densely populated lower income communities against the flu can end up benefiting high income communities and all of society. That’s because, like it or not, we are all connected with each other and flu viruses can help do the connecting. A virus may start spreading in one location such as a low income location or a detention center but like a viral Internet challenge, it is hard to confine it to one place once it has started spreading.
What’s that you say? The virus won’t spread beyong the detention centers because people outside are vaccinated? In the words of Cher in the movie Clueless, as if. Usually less than half of the U.S. population ends up getting the flu vaccine each season, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). That gives the virus plenty of ways to spread.
Moreover, even if you want to get the vaccine, you may not get it until later in the flu season, like October, November, December or even January and beyond. That’s because you may be busy doing stuff like working, parenting, and texting. Unless you are Cable, the character in Deadpool 2 and not a cable TV company, and can time travel, you have to get the vaccine before you are exposed to the virus to then be protected from the virus. A large number of un-vaccinated people in detention centers could help the virus spread faster and earlier before you’ve even had the chance to get the vaccine.
Plus, have you heard about herd? Herd immunity, that is. How effective the vaccine is in protecting you against the flu depends on how many people around you get the vaccine as well. A flu vaccine will not offer 100% protection. Even if you are vaccinated, your chances of getting the flu go up with the number of un-vaccinated people around you. That’s because the more un-vaccinated people around, the more chances flu viruses have to find hosts, hang around, and jump from person to person.
If the CBP’s decision to not vaccinate is supposed to be a “cost-saving” measure, let’s save you from the notion that not vaccinating can be cost saving. The flu can be a very costly disease, leading to both medical costs and productivity losses. If people get sick with the flu in the detention centers, guess who has to pay for their care? You, assuming that you pay taxes and pay for health insurance (which, as we have been reminded recently, is not always the right assumption.) Our computational modeling studies, such as one published in Vaccine, have shown how flu vaccination programs not only are usually cost-effective but also often end up saving money. In other words, such programs end up paying for themselves and then some. Wouldn’t it then be wiser to spend a little extra time and resources to protect the detainees from getting sick? Treating people well can actually end up saving you money.
Speaking of treating people well. Squeezing people into confined locations is not treating people well, no matter how short the duration. They are people, after all. Denying them vaccines is adding insult and potentially viruses to such injury. In the following tweet, Peter Hotez, MD, PhD, Dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine, called denying vaccines a human rights violation:
I’m being asked about #flu vaccinations on border ANS: 1) Flu = leading infect disease killer in US, in 2017-18 80,000 Americans died (600 children) 2) Cost of vaccinating ridiculously cheap 3) Cost of NOT vaccinating ridiculously high 4) Denying vaccine = human rights violation pic.twitter.com/2cO52s7SjR
— Prof Peter Hotez MD PhD (@PeterHotez) August 21, 2019
In fact, Bursztynsky’s article mentioned that at least three children among the detained migrant families have already died as a result of the flu.
Again, who made this “no vaccination” decision? Did they really run the numbers and account for the cost and the harm that the flu could do? It doesn’t seem like they did, unless of course they are flu viruses themselves. Flu viruses can’t run such analyses and computer models because they can’t type and do have a vested interest in keeping people un-vaccinated.