EV-D68 marches on

One of the many stories the U.S. media doesn’t want to examine too closely is the spread of EV-D68, a “non-polio enterovirus” that’s been acting an awful lot like polio lately.  I’ve written about it several times here at The Conversation, as the outbreak spread far beyond early estimates, in defiance of reassurances from the authorities.  Watching them get EV-D68 wrong, while the national media stubbornly refused to promote the story to Big Effing Deal status, is one of the reasons I’m skeptical of their breezy reassurances about Ebola.

EV-D68, to recap, is a very nasty version of the common cold that’s been spreading between children during the traditional back-to-school cold season.  Most people who catch it experience nothing worse than a nasty headcold.  But children with existing respiratory problems have been hospitalized by it.  Some of them have experienced disturbing neurological problems, with loss of strength in their limbs and strange spinal tissue problems.  And as Sharyl Attkisson – one of the last true investigative reporters in the age of lapdog media – reports, at least five children have now died from it:

The lastest confirmed victim was a four-year-old New Jersey boy, Eli Waller. He died at home on September 25. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) confirmed the cause of death Friday night. But health officials say they have no idea how he contracted the virus. A health official says Eli was “asymptomatic and fine” when he went to bed but died overnight. He had no known preexisting immune weakness.

A 10-year girl Rhode Island girl infected with EV-D68, Emily Otrando, died less than 24 hours after being rushed to the hospital with breathing problems. Three other patients with EV-D68 also died in September.

The CDC reports that in the past month and a half, at least 538 people in 43 states and the District of Columbia have become ill with EV-D68. Most of them are children and some developed limb paralysis. Polio, which can cause paralysis and death, is a type of enterovirus. EV-D68 is one of more than a hundred “non-polio” enteroviruses.

The actual number of EV-D68 infections is likely significantly higher than reported since some state health officials are not testing every suspected case.

Attkisson does not shy away from mentioning the reason national media are reluctant to turn this into a big story:

The CDC hasn’t suggested reasons for the current uptick or its origin. Without that answer, some question whether the disease is being spread by the presence of tens of thousands of illegal immigrant children from Central America admitted to the U.S. in the past year.

The origin could be entirely unrelated.

However, a study published in Virology Journal, found EV-D68 among some of the 3,375 young, ill people tested in eight Latin American countries, including the Central American nations of El Salvador and Nicaragua, in 2013.

Though the U.S. government is keeping secret the locations of the illegal immigrant children, there are significant numbers of them in both cities in which the current outbreak was first identified, Kansas City, Missouri and Chicago, Illinois, according to local advocates and press reports.

I’ve gone on record as being guardedly skeptical of the immigration theory, mostly because there are areas that received shipments of illegal aliens without developing EV-D68 outbreaks.  But that doesn’t rule them out as the source, since it could be a subset of the aliens who brought the virus with them.  It does seem to have started small and blossomed quickly.  There’s no doubt that EV-D68 was virtually unknown in the United States before this year – not completely unheard-of, but rare – and suddenly it’s everywhere. 

What I find truly disturbing about this story is that so much important information is being deliberately kept from the American people – including, as Attkisson mentions, the ultimate location of the children swept into the country by Barack Obama’s manufactured border crisis.  The data needed to correlate EV-D68 outbreaks with illegal alien distribution by the Coyote-in-Chief, or disprove such correlation, exists – it’s just being hidden from us.  There are also complaints that health authorities have been less than forthcoming with parents about the exact location of EV-D68 outbreaks, presumably for the same reason the government justifies keeping so much from us: to prevent people from “panicking.”

Which reinforces something that’s bothered me since the first Ebola stories: the one thing you can absolutely rely on our current system of government to do in a crisis is be less than honest about it.  I guess another thing you can count on is the bureaucracy coming up with excuses for why they were less than honest, once the truth gets out.