This notion of the disease-riddled immigrant will apparently always be with us, or will at least be with us so long as there's
a Republican running for something.
In an interview with NH1, [New Hampshire carpetbagger running for something Scott Brown] rejected the idea that he was running on "fear"–Ebola, he said, was the "No. 1, 2, and 3" issue on the minds of voters he talked to.
"Carrying diseases doesn't need to be Ebola," said Brown. "but the whooping cough and polio and other types of potential diseases are coming through."
There hasn't been a case of polio in the Americas in a very long time, thanks to our good friend Childhood Vaccinations; suspecting border-crossers of having
polio seems to be a trope invented by some far-right conspiracy theorist and spread to fellow conservatives via unvaccinated Twitter feeds. As for whooping cough, that and diseases like measles
have seen a resurgence in the United States the past few years, but that's because more people in places like, ahem, Texas
are refusing vaccinations. Immigrants are less likely to have whooping cough than Americans in some parts of the United States because most of the other nations in our hemisphere know to vaccinate their children against deadly but preventable illnesses.
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As an aside, if Ebola is really the only pressing national concern that people talking to Scott Brown can come up with, New Hampshire must be a magical wonderland that hardly needs senators
at all. Let's just appoint Scott Brown the New Hampshire Ebola czar and call it done. He can watch out for Ebolas trying to carpetbag their way into the state and club them to death with a big burlap sack full of SuperPAC money. Put the man to work at something he'd be good at, for crying out loud.