Fox News host baselessly asks if migrants are connected to a case of bubonic plague in Oregon
Steve Doocy: “Is there a connection between the number of migrants who are coming in the country, not being health screened, and the takeoff of some of these things like plague?”
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From the February 12, 2024, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends
STEVE DOOCY (CO-HOST): They have suggested that maybe the person caught it from their cat. Is there a connection between the number of migrants who are coming into the country, not being health screened, and the takeoff of some of these things like plague?
MARC SIEGEL (FOX NEWS MEDICAL CONTRIBUTOR): There will be with plague. There are already with other things like tuberculosis, like syphilis, like flu. Plague isn't there yet, and you read my mind because I have been thinking about this. Here's how plague works: There's about seven cases a year in the United States, a thousand around the world. It usually is fleas — fleas from rodents like rats, like mice. That cat might have got it from a rodent it was playing with in the field. Then, an owner of that cat could have gotten it from spit from the cat or from the fleas — can jump from the cat onto a human. But again, you know, we're not monitoring this stuff coming into the United States; we're not monitoring animals coming into the United States either. So you're right, we could see an uptick of this. This one case isn't an alarm bell — although we haven't had one in Oregon since 2015 — because we get seven a year in the United States, but we're increasing the risk. Now, the homeless encampments in California, with rats running around, or even here in New York with rats running around, they carry fleas, and fleas can carry plague.