Typhus spreads through Los Angeles; over 100 cases reported
The consequences of prioritizing social justice over public health.
When we reported on Los Angeles in early October, the city was experiencing an outbreak of the bacterial disease typhus. At that point, 20 cases had been reported.
One month later, the number of recorded cases has risen to over 100.
The number of flea-born Typhus cases in Los Angeles has hit 107.
So far this year 72 patients have been recorded by Los Angeles County Department of Public Health with a further 15 in Long Beach and 20 in Pasadena.
In the 2000s there were around 20 cases recorded per year and analysts are putting the dramatic rise down to a 47 per cent increase in homelessness since 2012.
One official in Long Beach told NBC News that almost half a million potential cases are ‘under investigation.’
The explosion of the homeless population is the root cause of this outbreak. Local leaders are clamoring for this epidemic to be treated as an emergency.
Estela Lopez, executive director of the Central City East Association, a business improvement district that overlaps with skid row, said she was informed by city officials that rat and flea eradication efforts, including spreading bug powder in the area, would begin in the days to come.
Still, she said, “I’m not seeing the level of response that matches the emergency that this is.”
…Andy Bales, CEO of the Union Rescue Mission, which has nearly 1,400 beds for the displaced, said the city and county governments can only do so much to alleviate a homeless problem that has sparked outbreaks of Hepatitis A, typhus and gang violence over the skid row drug trade.
He’s calling on the federal goverment and the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to help.
“It’s a FEMA-like disaster and it needs to be treated as such,” he said.
Typhus can cause headaches, fevers, chills, and in more severe cases it can lead to meningitis and death. The current illness is known as “murine typhus,” as it is spread primarily through flea bites or droppings from infected rats and mice.
Those feces have bacteria called Rickettsia typhi, according to the CDC.
When these infected feces are rubbed accidentally into scrapes or cuts in the skin, people become sick. In L.A. County, the health department says, typhus infects fleas found on dogs, cats, rats, and opossums. Animals carrying typhus themselves do not get sick.
In arguably related news, the Southern California housing market is beginning to slump.
Higher mortgage rates and overheated home prices hit Southern California home sales hard in September.
The number of new and existing houses and condominiums sold during the month plummeted nearly 18 percent compared with September 2017, according to CoreLogic. That was the slowest September pace since 2007, when the national housing and mortgage crisis was hitting.
Sales have been falling on an annual basis for much of this year, but this was the biggest annual drop for any month in almost eight years.
I suspect that the fact that our political leaders have prioritized social justice over public health is a contributing factor to this unexpected decline.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
There needs to be emigration reform to mitigate the risk of collateral damage from immigration reform at both ends of the bridge and throughout. That said, immigration should not exceed the rate of assimilation and integration before Planned Parenthood.
Mass public disease spread by flea bites. That sounds strangely familiar.
Good thing they kicked those old western civ courses out from colleges, otherwise borgouis mal-pensants might think disease is a bad thing.
Typhus CAN be spread by flea bites but LA is down-playing the extreme role of lack of sanitary facilities for the homeless plays.
Note that NYC and Philly are full of rats and they are not experiencing a typhus epidemic. But then people generally don’t relieve themselves in the streets in those cities.
And the left doesn’t care if they import even more potential disease and illnesses via “caravans.” We have no idea where some of the caravan people come from. All for potential future votes. The left is absolutely putting politics above the public safety of American citizens.
this story really bugs me…
Then you’ll hate reading about the ‘polio-like’ disease (the Democrat media won’t call it ‘polio,’ which is what it is) making its way through children across America.
Polio, typhus, child rape, murderers, DUI killer… You know, Trump ought to send the military to close the border.
It’s interesting that SF is experiencing third world conditions and a collapse of the housing market during a time of increasing national prosperity.
Seems like there should be a lesson in there somewhere but I won’t hold my breath waiting for the powers that be to shows evidence of having learned it.
Typhus is ALSO spread quite nicely through contact with infected human feces – something the streets of LA and SF are full of. Combine that with homelessness and a lack of toilet/bathing facilities and it is rather miraculous there are only 100 cases.
One official in Long Beach told NBC News that almost half a million potential cases are ‘under investigation.’
contact with infected human feces
Hmmm. Never heard of that one. The various sorts of typhus are spread by the feces of fleas or lice, or their mashed bodies. Infection follows scratching or rubbing the skin, eyes or mucous membranes, transferring the bacterium from the feces or squished fleas or lice in the human blood stream.
Human feces as a vector sound like typhoid, rather than typhus.
What I found laugh-out-loud hilarious is that this ignoramus Andy Bales, the Union Rescue Mission CEO, wants FEMA to come in and fix this!! WTH?!
California has their own Emergency Management state agency, and if it is that big an emergency, then THEY should fix it, not the federal government. (Besides the fact that FEMA’s mission is to help assist people in states, localities, tribes, and territories when ASKED and AUTHORIZED by the POTUS to help MANAGE disaster events, not 197+ cases of typhus caused by a state’s failed policies.)
Correction: 107+ (an edit feature…….please!)
What will fix it is enforcement of vagrancy laws.
Those laws have worked for hundreds of years.
Encourage and invite in an unlimited number of 3rd world illegals to come and live …get a 3rd world state….the only thing shocking is that they are shocked
Fundamentally transforming California into a 3rd world s**thole.
Most comical is the moron mayor of LA (Eric Garcetti) is running for president. What will be his slogan, “Typhus in every pot?”
This moron Garcetti has done for Los Angeles what Odumbo did for every inner city in America.
Btw, it’s comical how the media says “fleas” are spreading the disease. In the concrete jungle of downtown LA, where there isn’t an unpaved area anywhere in sight, “fleas” are spreading typhus, not the hoards allowed to camp on the streets of the downtown skid row area. Unless the frauds of the media really mean to call those people ‘fleas.’
* SHRUG * … Just another day in a liberal paradise
Freedom means that when you cause a problem you shoulder the responsibility to fix it.
California will be lucky if a conservationist group for the misunderstood flea doesn’t spring up to argue against any lethal measures againt one of God’s cretures. They are whack jobs out there. Last thing out of SanFran was something about county commissioners voting against measures to better supply the city with water. ‘Cause I guess they’re giving up showers in SanFran.
Invite the Third World, become the Third World.
Let’s see:
You start living in an open sewer and you are surpised that people get sick?
Classic example of great leadership – BY COMMIECRATS !
While sanitation and immigration may be factors, people should take responsibility for themselves. The government is not in charge of my health. I want to keep it that way.
If you keep your body healthy, you will be less likely to get infected in the first place and more likely to successfully fight off any infection you do get.
Stay off the sugar. Get good sleep. Exercise reasonably.
My favorite: avoid (sick) people.