In 1345, the Mongol hordes besieging Kaffa were being decimated by the Black Death. Desperate, the leaders of the Mongol army figured it would take only a few plague-ridden corpses to infect and destroy all the inhabitants of the city. Everyone would die, Mongols and Christians together.
Eye witness Gabriele de’ Mussi tells us what happened next:
“Whereupon the Tartars (Mongols), worn out by this pestilential disease, and falling on all sides as if thunderstruck, and seeing that they were perishing hopelessly, ordered the corpses to be placed upon their engines and thrown into the city of Kaffa. Accordingly were the bodies of the dead hurled over the walls, so that the Christians were not able to hide or protect themselves from this danger, although they carried away as many as possible and threw them into the sea.”
Historians later would quibble over the accuracy of de’ Mussi’s account. Experts in medieval warfare along with knowledgeable army tacticians would dispute the logistics of catapulting decaying, disease ridden bodies over high city walls.
Nonetheless, the idea that it only takes a few diseased humans to infect entire cities was correct then and now, academic arguments aside.
The fact is that communicable diseases know no boundaries.
This is why Americans, particularly those who have decided not to vaccinate their children against the most common communicable diseases, should be very concerned about the almost entirely unregulated transportation of third world children (and adults) into the midst of crowded population centers. It is why all parents should be concerned about the fact undocumented aliens are being flown all over the United States to God knows where.
The truth is that unvaccinated children with communicable diseases rampant in the third world are being catapulted into centers of populations and will inevitably infect unvaccinated American children first.
Fantasy? Unwarranted and unreasoning racial prejudice against the “dazzling, sparkling array” of children seen and so described by our addlebrained former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi?
While she is correct about the seed of divinity in each child, perhaps she should consider the seeds of disease carried by more than one of the children. There is such a thing as being so heavenly minded one doesn’t see the earthly realities.
As the Daily Kos documented, one unvaccinated two-year-old wound up infecting an entire community of unvaccinated immigrants from Somalia living in Minnesota. Researchers investigated a measles outbreak in Minnesota in 2011:
“Researchers determined the outbreak began when an unvaccinated 2-year-old travelled to Kenya, where he contracted the measles virus. Upon returning to the United States, the child developed a fever, cough and vomiting, some of the early signs and symptoms of measles. Unfortunately, prior to a diagnosis of measles, the child passed the virus on to three children in a child day-care center and another household member. The measles then spread from individual to individual within a low vaccine uptake area, a Somali immigrant community in the Minneapolis area. Eventually, more than 3,000 people were exposed to the disease.”
It turned out to be the largest outbreak of measles in Minnesota in over 20 years.