Sicko is one of Michael Moore’s many movies, focusing on the U.S. health care system, costs, the uninsured, and the usual liberal talking points. Despite his many criticisms of U.S. health care, when Moore was sick with pneumonia, he chose hospitalization in a New York City hospital rather than in one of those countries with a supposedly far better health care system, say, Cuba.

He could make a sequel to Sicko, this time focusing on the southern border of the U.S. and the hordes of sick men, women, and children invading America, bringing all sorts of exotic diseases on top of the many other problems they bring, including crime. These diseases are making many Americans sicko.

It’s more than simply lice or scabies, annoying conditions, but hardly a mortal threat to Americans. Instead it’s contagious diseases that we haven’t heard much about in decades or since many of us were afflicted as children. These diseases are making the news, but as predictable as sunrise and sunset, the media and government officials are at a loss to explain the resurgence of these mostly once-eradicated conditions.

Much as when a swarthy young man enters a gay nightclub in the U.S. shouting 'Allahu Akbar!' and shoots the place up, the media and law enforcement are puzzled for days as to motive. Same with the appearance of these resurgent contagious diseases.

Temple University in Philadelphia had a mumps outbreak, now at 140 cases. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported the story nonchalantly, avoiding their namesake with zero inquiry as to the cause and origin of this outbreak. Nearby University of Pennsylvania had three cases of mumps on campus with no explanation as to why.

If 140 MAGA hats suddenly appeared on students’ heads at any major university, the schools would request the assistance of the National Guard to create safe spaces, with endless tolerance committees and focus groups to address the sudden epidemic of racism, bigotry, white nationalism, and everything else associated with MAGA. Yet for mumps, mum's the word.

A cousin of mumps is measles, also returning to the scene just like the crummy remakes of one-time successful television shows. New York City  declared a measles emergency after 285 cases occurred since last fall, including 5 individuals earning a trip to the ICU, perhaps in the same hospital bed Michael Moore visited after his movie bashing our health care system.

Mayor Bill de Blasio blamed the outbreak on a lack of vaccinations “in ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities in Brooklyn.” Sure, blame the Jews. Rep. Ilhan Omar was unavailable for comment and her office could not confirm any association with “Benjamins.”

Mayor de Blasio also defends New York as a sanctuary city and is happy to provide free health care to one and all, regardless of immigration status. With the rise in infectious diseases, he and other sanctuary mayors may get their wish, providing free hospital care for those sick with nasty infectious diseases.

One more similar disease, acute flaccid myelitis, is a polio-like condition affecting 218 children in 2018 in the U.S., leaving some with residual arm or leg weakness. It’s origins are still “a mystery” to the germ sleuths at the National Institutes of Health.

Researchers and epidemiologists are overlooking the obvious modes of disease transmission. When they are not befuddled, their convenient excuse is vaccinations. Although that’s a controversial topic, the Centers for Disease Control reports: “In 2017, coverage with most recommended vaccines among children aged 19–35 months remained stable and high,” generally above 90 percent with only about 1 percent of children receiving no vaccinations.

Most kids are being vaccinated, as they were in recent past years, meaning that’s not the answer. Will the media search harder for what might be making our kids more sicko?

How about a look at immigration, both legal and illegal, and where immigrants are coming from? Immigration has been rising since 1970, and showing no signs of slowing down, despite the White House and Congress being under the control of each political parties at different points in time over the past 50 years. It seems that open borders are the one thing both Democrats and Republicans can agree on.

Chart from Migration Policy Institute

The illegal immigration problem is obvious to anyone paying even a small bit of attention to the news. There are ongoing stories of migrant caravans from Central America streaming northward to the U.S. border. Recently border control forces have been overwhelmed, Cloward-Piven style, to the point that illegal immigrants are just pouring in, without scrutiny, including medical screening, then quickly disappearing in the vastness of America.

What diseases are these refugees and illegal immigrants bringing? Measles, mumps, drug resistant tuberculosis, polio, hepatitis, rabies, and so on are supposedly being screened for in refugees by the CDC, but how often or accurately in a system that is overwhelmed?

Venezuela may be a source for many of these infectious diseases, as Monica Showalter recently described in these pages. But it’s beyond just there. Refugees are coming from Congo, Burma, Ukraine, Bhutan, Eritrea, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Russia. It’s far more than just Mexico and Central America.

How many of the diseases do the refugees bring from their home countries versus picked up along the way, whether in Central America or wherever? When you bring there here, here becomes there.

President Trump acknowledged the obvious a few days ago when he announced, “The country is full, so turn around.” Is anyone listening? Congress certainly isn’t, nor are U.S. judges, quick to rule against any Trump initiative to slow the flood.

Even open borders propagandists in the media acknowledge the crisis, as NBC wrote, “Border crossings by undocumented migrants in March hit 12-year high.” Yet the same media want nothing done, instead repeating the lie of “Trump putting kids in cages” despite glaring evidence to the contrary.

Note the photo below, courtesy of Fox News, of one of President Obama’s detention centers, with cages in the background. This was in 2014, before Donald Trump was even a candidate for president,

Meanwhile, CNN reports 300 new cases of mumps in the U.S. in March, with nary a word about potential causes, blissfully ignoring the obvious association between a refugee onslaught and bringing there here.

Perhaps the only way to get the attention of the D.C. open borders elites is to bring a bunch of refugees to Sidwell Friends School to experience a day of privilege. This is where members of Congress and news anchors send their children, safe and clean, far from the riff-raff and chaos they inflict on less privileged America. When the children of the ruling class come home with mumps, measles, or head lice, something finally might be done to seal the border.

Until then, expect to see continued rare diseases making a comeback in the U.S., with no explanation, making many of us sicko.

Brian C. Joondeph, M.D., MPS, is a Denver-based physician and writer. Follow him on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Image credit: Greg Gutfeld/Fox News report, via YouTube, screen shot