Donald Trump skittles tweet

Although I like the creativity of Mr. Trump’s skittle analogy I think how we respond to the threat of measles gives a better grasp of common sense solutions to vetting Syrian refugees. Mr. Nowrasteh over at Cato makes a good point in discussing this analogy that of the approximately 3.25 million refugees from 1975 to the end of 2015 only 20 of the refugees intended to do harm and only three of those 20 were actually fatal. He goes on to conclude that based on these statistics he would accept the refugees. The problem I have with his conclusion is that if he has a child, he is probably responding to the measles threat completely differently. Despite the recent notoriety over a measles outbreak associated with Disneyland, we are averaging about 1 death every 12 years. Despite measles being a lesser threat than terrorism most people in the United States are following Benjamin Franklin’s advice of “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” and immunizing their children from measles. Based on the CDC statistics the immunization policy seems to be working. So I wonder why we have such a problem with an ounce of prevention in vetting Syrian refugees.