Tuberculosis is a reasonable thing to at least think about. In general, folks arriving from less developed countries are tested for TB. In my experience, it is unusual for anyone to test positive. If they do test positive, they are treated even if they do not yet have a contagious form of the disease. This keeps it from progressing to an active form that is contagious to others.
I have never seen a case of leprosy, now commonly referred to as Hansen disease. Approximately 95% of people are genetically resistant to Hansen disease if exposed. If one does acquire the disease, it can be cured with antibiotics. The prevalence of Hansen disease in Central America is less than .001%. So when factoring in all of those numbers, it seems like the risk of me catching leprosy from someone from central America is probably significantly less than my chance of dying in an accident on the way to work.
But the one that really made me scratch my head was the assertion that one had to worry about smallpox. The last case of naturally-occurring smallpox was in Somalia in 1977. There were two cases in the UK in 1978 after someone was exposed in a lab and spread it to another person. Even though I will be a grandfather in a few months, I am young enough that I never received the vaccine because it was no longer considered a threat by the time I got to the age when the vaccine was normally given. I seriously doubt that anyone fleeing poverty and violence in Central America has been working with smallpox virus in one of the few labs in which it still exists. Anyone who says there is a risk of smallpox from immigrants from Central America is either hopelessly uninformed or lying.
Meanwhile, influenza kills thousands of people every year in the United States. So if you want to keep yourself and your family safe, do not waste time worrying about getting smallpox from an immigrant. Get a flu shot.
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