Flea-borne Typhus Epidemic Hits Pasadena
Downtown Los Angeles is also reporting typhus cases
Legal Insurrection readers will recall that California, and other areas of the country with a significant homeless population, were hit with an epidemic of Hepatitis A last fall.
This year, Pasadena is reporting an epidemic of flea-borne typhus.
Twenty Pasadena residents have been confirmed to have typhus fever in 2018, a significant increase over past years, according to the city’s health department.
Confirmed cases of the disease, spread to humans by infected fleas, normally number about one to five per year, the agency said Friday. The announcement comes a day after the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health said it is investigating an outbreak of flea-borne typhus among downtown Los Angeles’ homeless population.
Two years ago, L.A. County voters approved a $1.2 billion bond measure to build permanent housing for the homeless. But squalid camps are still popping up everywhere, so temporary shower stations are being opened.
Sadly, the open-arms approach doesn’t seem to be contributing to public health. Downtown Los Angeles is also being impacted by an outbreak of typhus.
An outbreak of flea-borne typhus has hit downtown Los Angeles, the county Department of Public Health said Thursday. Health officials say they are investigating several cases of the disease that infected fleas can spread to humans, CBS Los Angeles reports.
While the fleas can come from cats, rats and opossums, pets and animals do not get sick from typhus.
In people, however, typhus can cause high fever, chills, headache and rash. It is not transmitted from person to person and can be treated with antibiotics.
“Although typhus normally occurs throughout L.A. County, we are observing several cases in the downtown Los Angeles area,” Los Angeles County Health Officer Muntu Davis said in a statement. “We encourage pet owners to practice safe flea control and encourage all cities in the county to ensure maintenance of their trash clean-up and rodent control activities.”
Flea-borne typhus (also called Murine typhus), is a disease caused by a bacteria called Rickettsia typhi. Murine typhus is spread to people through contact with infected fleas. People get sick with murine typhus when infected flea feces are rubbed into cuts or scrapes in the skin. Typhus fever can cause serious complications requiring lengthy hospitalization, and rarely, even death.
The first written recordings of typhus came in 1489 and were associated with the Spanish army’s siege of Granada. High fevers, rashes, delirium, and gangrenous sores were reported; and the disease was routinely associated with warfare thereafter. The term typhus stems from the Greek word typhos, meaning “hazy,” which refers the delirium some develop while infected.
Typhus is now considered to be endemic only in certain areas of the world, including Eastern Africa and a few areas in South and Central America. However, that status might change unless California addresses the trash-filled squalor of its homeless camps more seriously.
Other areas with significant homeless populations may want to prepare for a local typhus outbreak. The Hepatitis A outbreak shows that diseases associated with homeless populations will spread.
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I’m guessing Democrats run the joint? This is third world stuff.
What’s next – the bubonic plague? Definitely Middle Ages & third world.
Dr Drew predicted this about 4 months ago. It will get worse.
The poop town of SF is ripe to.
20 Pasadena residents? Sounds like grandma is a irresponsible pet owner! Sure. I believe that.
Hey, pull my finger!
I was born in Pasadena… I had always wanted to visit, someday.
Guess that will wait for another decade or so.
No one is surprised about the “epidemic” of typhoid in LA due to the city’s “investment” in various schemes to make the homeless feel safe and welcome. There are homeless camps everywhere, even next to Disneyland.
But this is the first I’ve heard about a problem in Pasadena. Must be near the Arroyo. The threshold for qualifying as an “epidemic” must be very low. Probably a rise in reported cases from 2 to 10 or something. Epidemic? I doubt it.
I run at 4am and rarely ever see homeless people sleeping in public anymore so I don’t understand why we would suddenly have an “epidemic”. Maybe they are being shipped in from LA and dumped. THAT has been a definite problem for a while already.
Most of the animals I see are peacocks, squirrels, and an occasional coyote, raccoon or skunk. They aren’t necessarily afraid of me but they never show any interest. Except for the peacocks who can materialize out of anywhere, I never get closer than maybe 30 feet to any of them.
The article states 20 Pasadena residents have been diagnosed with typhus.
This is what happens when you allow (and encourage) people to live on the streets. (Remember, people living on the street in California get about 800 bucks a month in welfare money, fee cell phones, virtual immunity from police action for just about anything they do, free health care, free clothing (among other things). Most of them are drug addicts, drunks, and many are mentally ill.
The mentally ill street people are one thing, but the addicts and drunks continually make decisions that keep them on the street – and they are enabled by democrat politicians.
Welcome to the democrat dream of ‘America The Third World,’ where the likes of cortez, pelosi, schumer, Kavannaugh protestors and the odumbos – who are worthless in the private sector – become elites in the leftist/Soviet hell hole they want to create here.
LA Mayor Eric Garcetti is running for president. What a frigging joke, huh?
“Most of them are drug addicts, drunks, and many are mentally ill.” I bet that they collect them to vote, and that they reward them when they vote (D).
I miss Ellis Island.
I miss the fact that undesirables did not get past Ellis Island, and that they were efficiently held and deported. None of the catch and release crap we have today.
The decline of Athens, the death of Pericles and the path to defeat to Sparta has been suggested to be due to this vector. Welcome to the Third World. California is probably the best third world “nation”, but it is in a death spiral from neglect of reality. I guess “Make California Mexico Again” is on schedule… blurring border, culture, language and now disease.
I thing the EPA ban on Dursban may be a contributing factor.
Note: If your state legalizes marijuana, you will be getting this too.
I live in Wa and since pot has been legalized, we’ve had a giant influx of addicts, homeless, tent city / gypsy types. Olympia and Seattle were bad before, but anecdotally the problem is 4-fold now that pot is sold everywhere.
I know correlation is not causation, but these junkies standing on every corner pan handling are not FROM here, these are not locals… this problem has been bussed in from elsewhere. Some have admitted that state’s like New Mexico and California simply bought them bus tickets and sent them here. Others are living out of RVs and cars and came here from the free shit.
Incidentally- youtube is piping pot ads into childrens content- so your 5-6 year old kid watching videos on Lego or Minecraft will get inundated with 5-10 pot ads in an hour. Funny YouTube has plenty of resources to shut down conservatives, but can let pot ads run in children’s content for months.
If you think this is unrelated- it’s not. Broken windows.
Step one: allow 18 year olds to vote.
step two: corrupt the US educational system.
Step three: legalize pot.
Step four: waltz into office and impose tyranny.
Jerry Typhus Brown
Wait till you see who replaces him. We’ll yearn for the days of Jerry Brown.
You are making this news because — how dare you Nazi KKK Rethuglicans impose your white, western imperialist ideas about hygiene on oppressed people of color?
“unless California addresses the trash-filled squalor of its homeless camps more seriously” … are they serious, or just blowing smoke up our back holes, that California legislators would seriously consider dealing with homelessness? That’s a problem that no amount of money can “fix”, unless you have a go at the root of the problem, which is allowing families to fix themselves through encouraging the traditional nuclear family with a male father and female mother who have children AND are committed to raising them in a traditional manner, where the father and mother puts aside their respective selfishness and work for the betterment and survival of their family. It’s a pattern that worked successfully for millennia, it can work again ’cause it’s obvious what’s being tried now is an utter disgrace and failure.
Well, you given the obvious response to the ‘long term’ issue, broken family networks and communities. BUT, what can be done in the next 3-6 months to find a solution?
One thing is all the FREE cramp available to the homeless and addicts. STOP giving out free money, food stamps, food packages, medical, rent, etc. Support is only offered to citizens who can prove they’re suffering from a short term problem. AND, no fricken ‘bus tickets’ (aka get out of town checks). These folks got themselves into this problem, time to get themselves out of it. California isn’t the responsible party for their misuse and abuse of the system – THEY ARE!
If they refuse to deal with their issues, pass and enforce stringent vagrancy laws…AND…while in jail they can break rocks, dig ditches, etc.: the free ride on the train to utopia is over.
OR…the mentally/physically healthy people can just leave and let Mexico and the deadbeats have California, once the jewel of the American West.
Invite the third world, become the third world.
All that is needed is a tiny genetic mutation to make that typhus 98% fatal for its human host. SEVEN-BILLION-PLUS is far too many. The human herd needs culled. This may be the start of nature seeking a balance.
They say it has absolutely nothing to do with the homeless pooping all over.