Reports from the migrant motel, three months in
With a new excuse for xenophobia: Tuberculosis
“I don’t think it’s really all that complicated,” said Hillard Boskey, MD, chair of the Yarmouth Board of Health, mid-way through a long hearing at town hall on Monday evening, December 18. The discussion was meant to focus on health conditions at a South Yarmouth motel (Harborside Suites) that now houses more than 100 migrants deposited by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts:
“There are no problems with people having infections at Harborside.”
For the small crowd he was facing, and more zooming in, Dr. Boskey’s assurance wasn’t satisfactory. They kept circling back to unfounded suspicions that these arrivals are endangering the community, that they could be spreading, of all things, tuberculosis.
“We have had no communicable (tuberculosis) disease confirmed at the site,” repeated Meg Payne from the Visiting Nurse Association of Cape Cod, which acts as a rapid response team assessing people when they arrive, staying in contact.
Dr. Falah Hashem, chief of staff at the Office for Refugees and Immigrants at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, was as clear as possible regarding this non-existent tuberculin threat:
“If you are not symptomatic (and no one living there is), you are not infectious.”
“This is the eighth meeting (since September 10, when migrants first arrived) that the board has talked about this” among other health issues, said Jay Gardiner, Yarmouth’s point person. “Misinformation and misinforming can lead to fears.” His hope was that airing facts could “immunize the community” from falsehoods.
But for the group they were facing, there was a pervasive sense that conspiracy or coverup continues, that migrants represent a health threat to us all.
People demanded to know why children were allowed to start school without a full suite of vaccinations (which many students born here do not have). Dr. Marc Smith, superintendent of the Dennis-Yarmouth school system, explained that state law is clear:
“We are not allowed to deny entry for any student … based on vaccination status or any other reason.” And again, there have been no cases of disease spreading through classrooms from 28 children of migrant families attending pre-K through grade 12.
There was outrageous irony in hearing demands that government not only require vaccinations but also control how families allow their children to play in the motel parking lot, how they walk along busy Route 28, whether they should buy heads of cabbage in the supermarket that they must be cooking somewhere — perhaps in their rooms! These concerned citizens surely come from the same part of the spectrum who see government as intrusive and evil, who opposed wearing masks and remain deeply suspicious of COVID vaccinations.
If that looks like hypocrisy — “I don’t want any government until I want government to do what I want” — so be it.
If it looks like thinly veiled racism, so be it.
And now xenophobia is justified by phantom tuberculosis.
A few facts:
· One quarter of the world’s population, 1.8 billion people, would test positive for tuberculosis. In the United States, that would include around 13 million people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
· Almost all of these people have “latent TB,” meaning you test positive but you have no symptoms and you can’t spread the bacteria. You aren’t infectious, period.
· Immune systems wall off TB organisms. If a person’s health is compromised, then it’s possible TB can overcome the immune system and become active. For people with AIDS, this is a big problem; those infected with the HIV virus carry the highest risk of getting TB.
· In the United States in 2022, there were only 8331 active tuberculosis cases reported. Virtually all of them involved other health compromises.
· To spread tuberculosis, people need to be in close prolonged (as in hours) contact with someone who has symptoms like a high fever, coughing — active TB. Tuberculosis is far less infectious than, for example, COVID or the flu.
Here’s another fact from me, not the CDC, but I’m sure it’s accurate:
· Some of the people trying to drive migrants off the Cape because of the possibility of latent TB have latent TB themselves.
And one more fact that unfortunately needs to be stated:
· Tuberculosis is not more or less dangerous depending on the color of a person’s skin.
But let’s not leave this story this way, because there is more to it than focusing on a subset of ugly, paranoid people.
Linda Kimbell, site coordinator at Harborside, reported that there has been “a wonderful outpouring” of support. “It’s so wonderful to see the love that has been given,” she said, thanking Yarmouth and the Cape generally for clothes donated, retired educators volunteering to teach English to parents, play groups started for kids not yet in school. “So many different things have happened … It’s pretty phenomenal.”
Then there was Joyce from South Yarmouth, who arrived carrying a brown paper bag filled with books written in or translated into Haitian Creole, meant for children, young adults, and adults. She asked the Board of Health to please deliver them to Harborside. After all it’s Christmas, she said, and the story of people coming to a place where they know no one, trying to make their way in a foreign land while others offer hope, spoke to her of “the essence” of the holiday.
These arrivals remind her, she told the board, of a baby who arrived in a manger.
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I'm guessing there maybe 7-8 churches in Yarmouth. If they would get together and "adopt" these unfortunate people in a demonstration of true Christianity, helping them with food, clothing, transportation needs, etc., the problem would go a long way to being solved. Instead, there are too many so-called people of faith, who in the words of that song, "The Eve of Destruction," display the attitude of "Hate your next-door neighbor but don't forget to say grace."
It's also ridiculous that there is anger over these people crossing route 28 - not anger that the government hasn't put more crosswalks to allow pedestrian access across the cape. The purpose of transportation infrastructure is to allow people to get around safely, and if that's not happening we need to redesign it. Many areas of the cape lack good pedestrian infrastructure, and we need to change that.