It seems the only law California follows is the one related to unintended consequences. In addition to voting overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton, our state also approved a ban of single-use plastic bags being offered by stores to contain purchased items.
This move may have been one of the factors that has contributed to San Diego’s Hepatitis A outbreak. The virus is spread via human feces in San Diego, as those bags were a readily available sanitation article for the homeless.
“The reason the outbreak has spread so rapidly is because homeless are living in more concentrated areas,” said Dr. Jeffrey Norris, the St. Vincent De Paul medical director who has been managing the charity’s response to the public health threat. “They often have to defecate in their tent, or next to their tent, and that exposes their neighbors on the street. Hygiene becomes incredibly difficulty.”San Diego banned plastic grocery bags last year, taking away a manageable alternative to defecating outside a bathroom. County health workers are now handing out thousands of “hygiene kits” that include plastic bags.
The disease has claimed another life this week, and The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will be in San Diego next week to assess the response to the outbreak.
Seventeen people have died and 461 cases have been confirmed, according to county officials. Of those cases, there have been 315 hospitalizations.A third of the cases involved people who used illicit drugs and are considered homeless. Of the cases, 25 percent are neither homeless or drug users.
A few miles north of San Diego, Orange County officials are scrambling to determine how the second case in their region occurred. The CDC performed genetic testing of the person’s virus, which was found to match the strain seen in San Diego, but the unidentified individual was not homeless and not known to have visited America’s Finest City.
Meanwhile, some San Diego residents are on-edge when they use our public transportation.
Waiting in line to catch the San Diego Trolley on C Street on Friday afternoon, Wanda Hermes said she can’t help but think about the city’s ongoing hepatitis A outbreak in those moments when she’s touching the rails, seats and other surfaces that she encounters in the course of commuting to work in the morning and home at the end of the day….“It makes you think, maybe, you need to pay a little more attention more than you used to,” said Hermes, a city worker from La Mesa. “The people that are dirty, filthy, I don’t necessarily want to sit next to them.”
I was a guest on Canto Talk today, along with American Conservative Warrior Princess Teri O’Brien. We talked about California, the NFL, and Teri’s upcoming “Dangerous Minds” podcast program! Check it out…listening to us is infectious!
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