Typhus Crisis In Los Angeles Worsens
Deputy City Attorney who contracted typhus “believes the city should fumigate City Hall and City Hall East to protect the thousands of workers and visitors”
Late last year, I reported that the Los Angeles area was battling a typhus epidemic.
Now, a Los Angeles City Hall official is one of the latest victims of typhus, and the disease continues to spread across Los Angeles County.
For months, LA County public health officials have said typhus is mainly hitting the homeless population.
But Deputy City Attorney Liz Greenwood, a veteran prosecutor, tells NBC4 she was diagnosed with typhus in November, after experiencing high fevers and excruciating headaches.
“It felt like somebody was driving railroad stakes through my eyes and out the back of my neck,” Greenwood told the I-Team. “Who gets typhus? It’s a medieval disease that’s caused by trash.”
Greenwood believes she contracted typhus from fleas in her office at City Hall East. Fleas often live on rats, which congregate in the many heaps of trash that are visible across the city of LA, and are a breeding ground for typhus….
Last October, Mayor Garcetti vowed to clean up piles of garbage throughout the city to combat the typhus epidemic.
The Mayor allocated millions of dollars to increase clean-ups of streets in the Skid Row area, known lately as “the typhus zone.”
But four months later, the I-Team documented huge piles of garbage just outside the “typhus zone.”
The California Department of Public Health reports a 55% increase in reported cases of typhus for 2018, with over 160 cases reported across the state.
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Centuries of experience – and SCIENCE! – down the drain. Perhaps this is one way for Reality to make its presence known to those who ignore it in favor of rainbows and unicorns.
I generally don’t promote the Bible as a science book. Because it isn’t. If you’re looking for science, the Bible is the wrong place to start. There’s so much truth in the Bible, though, it basically punches you in the face.
Matthew 19:
3 Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”
4 “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’[a] 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’[b]? 6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.””
“
Jesus, mansplaining human sexuality. We don’t have enough of that.
Bikini hiker is dead. So what, you might say. And you may have the same initial reaction I did. Taiwan is a subtropical island, but if you hike high enough into the mountains you can still freeze to death. So I was initially thinking that if you climb mountains in a bikini you deserve what you’re going to get.
Ladies, if a tree falls in a forest and a woman isn’t around to thell the man he’s an idiot is he still wrong?
Understand, I don’t go dove hunting without at least two methods of starting a fire, a survival blanket, map, compass, at least two means of signaling for help, a full canteen, a knife, saw…
https://www.amazon.com/Survival-Chainsaw-29-inch-Gardening-Emergency/dp/B07JJ521Q8/ref=pd_lpo_vtph_201_tr_img_2?_encoding=UTF8&refRID=ZMEFTRSN5GZ4689M7HW5
…candy for energy, and a prayer book. Grenades, if they’re available.
This is what I carry when I don’t plan on getting out of sight of the truck. Where, by the way, I carry enough tools and parts to rebuild the engine. I used to fly in SH-3 Sea Kings. I basically live in fear. Imagine what I pack when I’m leaving the trail head.
Also, as an aside, if I am going dove hunting I also have a shotgun, enough ammo to serve the Mexican army for a year, a dog to retrieve the doves (and plenty of bacon in the cooler) and a block of ice. The need for the ice may not be immediately apparent. But if you’re a reasonably good shot your retreiver may overheat and even kill him/herself. A nice, damp, cool, spot of melting ice water is the least you can do for your dog. Or your friend’s dog.
But I digress. I started to get angry. The way the press wrote about the story of her death was salacious and wrong. I started to learn I was reading about one of the coolest chicks most-together chicks in the world. I had just read the sad story of an Indian couple (Indian, as in from India; hubbie was a software engineer in Silicon Valley). The maintained a travel blog. And people kept warning them, don’t stand that close to the cliff. A strong gust of wind can blow you right off.
The autopsy revealed they had been drinking. I’m not against drinking. But the shotgun and ammo will be locked up and I won’t be standing near any cliffs when I start mixing the Martinis.
So from the headline I figure bikini hiker died of hypothermia because, she’s bikini hiker. But for some reason I’m curious. No, it’s not what you’re thinking. So I learn more about her. I discover that she could have poked all kinds of holes in my survival planning. She was that thorough and prepared. And all I could have done was agree with her.
She also looked good in that bikini, in my opinion.
https://torontosun.com/news/world/famed-bikini-hiker-freezes-to-death-after-fall
Maybe a Chinese girl kissing a rock isn’t your thing. To each their own. Finally I get to the point. I am a huge admirer of the female form. Not that I am about to make a fool of myself for a woman just because she’s good looking. And I’m not going to to try to convince you that Ms. Wu was good looking because I don’t know your tastes. In my estimation all that hiking did her a lot of good. But if you show me the hottest chick in the room, I’ll show you some guy who is sick and tired of her. Do you really need, can you afford, a Kardashian?
But I can look at a Kardashian and understand there is a God and he wants me to be happy. I feel the same way about beer. But now bikini hiker is dead and I have to wonder, does God really want me to be happy? Because now all I have is the typhus and the leprosy. OK, also the gangrene.
I believe in Jesus’ admonition, but what does this have to do with the subject of typhus?
I wasn’t limiting myself to typhus MattMusson notes that a Kali school district sent a letter to parents that their children may have been exposed to leprosy.
Typhus? Leprosy? Jesus used to walk around healing people afflicted with this kind of ****. There used to be a leper colony on an island in Hawaii but it was closed down in 1969. I thought we were done with this. What’s next? Are we going to start importing polio and small pox?
Sadly, such diseases are being reintroduced along with a number of tropical diseases. Part of the problem we face is that due to the “eradication” of such diseases in America, many are foregoing vaccinations they believe are unnecessary.
I am disappointed I was down-voted. But I’ll live with it. I’ve lived with worse. Maybe I come across as flippant. But what I’m trying to express is bikini hiker was beautiful. And now she’s dead. One less beautiful thing in this world. I honestly wonder if God is angry at me, because she was too young and gorgeous to die. Typhus and leprosy? Burns and dismemberment? I’ve been dealing with that all my life. I was a Coast Guard brat. Coasties get (or at least back in the sixties they got) Navy benefits. If you can call them benefits. Navy medicine nearly killed me. I thought it was normal to grow up around the horribly burned and terribly maimed. The passageways at the Naval hospital was lined with wheelchairs full of men who had been nearly destroyed in combat.
So go ahead; down vote me. I will spring back up with a sense of humor. It may seem a sick sense of humor if you haven’t lived the life. But it’s a sense of humor and it has carried me through.
I was reflecting on the fact that the world is a lesser place because bikini hiker is dead. And, typhus. And Jesus.
Maybe it comes across as sacrilege. But really if’s deeply religious.
I still don’t see what a woman hiking in a bikini has to do with this story about typhus and other diseases, but I like your precautions when going hunting. It makes for sensible advice, even for just going hiking in the wilderness. Military survival training taught me that.
typhus? seriously? typhus? what is next in California – bubonic plague? Dysentery? cholera? Good Heavens, California seems determined to make itself a third world nation!
Just like south of the border.
Morning Sunshine obviously missed this whole thing: “The outbreak began in San Diego County in November 2016 and spread to Santa Cruz, Los Angeles, and Monterey counties. To date, San Diego and Santa Cruz have reported the greatest number of cases, and in addition to cases in Los Angeles and Monterey counties, other counties have reported 17 outbreak-associated cases. The majority of people who have been infected with hepatitis A virus in this outbreak are people experiencing homelessness and/or using illicit drugs in settings of limited sanitation.” https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/Pages/Immunization/Hepatitis-A-Outbreak.aspx
What part did he/she miss? I’m totes cool with everything Morning Star said.
A California elementary school recently sent home a letter telling parents the kids may have been exposed to leprosy.
Haven’t you heard? Measles. Which had been eradicated in the US. It’s showing up in the schools, and the newspaper write-ups pretend it’s international travelers coming in on airplanes, instead of illegal immigrant children placed in the school populations without adequate vetting or preparation. The origin in Venezuela, which has been passing it on to other countries in South America, and to the US.
https://www.precisionvaccinations.com/venezuela-contributed-68-measles-cases-reported-americas-during-2018
You know, if my great grandfather had showed up at Ellis Island with the measles the USG would have kicked him back to ItalyI
Now all of a sudden I’m a racist for wanting to hold Mexicans and Central and South Americans to the same standards I would have expected my own ancestors to meet?
Liberals have been trying to return humanity to the Dark Ages. To a simpler time when mankind was closer to nature. The fact that the life expectancy of the average person was 35 – 40 years is one that is never considered.
Oh, I think it has been. Remember “population control”? The people who pushed “global warming” and later “climate change” are the same ones who wrote the 1970’s hysterical claptrap on “overpopulation”……..
They know. It’s a feature, not a bug.
Or in this case, bugs are the feature.
Maybe if it rains frogs they will get the message.
But probably not
Frog rain will be another billion dollar project right up there with high speed rail and if you oppose the new tax to fight frog rain you hate black children (says the party dedicated to infanticide, especially against black children) and are therefore worse than Hitler. So, there, Chimpy McBushHitlerTrumpyHaliburton.
I told you!
So once a bureaucrat gets infected…then it is an issue….but primarily because it affects more bureaucrats and city workers. The great unwashed were one thing but now this is different. Athens declined and Pericles died .its likely from typhus. Quarantined them and let them experience the third world they want to change this country to. Karma has come to LA.
My thoughts went more for “it’s medieval?!” (not!) and more to the point, “you have FLEAS in your LA office?! why was that not addressed long ago?! how many RATS do you have in your LA offices that your offices are infested with FLEAS?! what ARE you people doing with all that money you’re confiscating from the people of CA?!?!”
Karma, indeed!
Four or two legged rats, illegal rats?
So how did this city hall person contract it?
Greenwood believes she contracted typhus from fleas in her office at City Hall East.
Fleas in the office? That sounds a bit primitive even for LA.
The CA outbreak is murine typhus, a tropical and semi-tropical variant spread by fleas, but it doesn’t seem to be terribly particular about which fleas. It may be possible to get it from fleas hitching rides on domestic cats. But our American cats aren’t notorious for being flea-infested.
Cats, dogs, birds, ground squirrels — just a few species that carry fleas, in addition to mice and rats.
That’s nice. However I’ve never seen the rest of the animal kingdom mentioned as vectors in the epidemiological literature. Murine typhus may sometimes be associated with fleas found on cats. The data is apparently not definitive. But it should be of interest to people who have contact with cats but not with rats. All the other animals which might have fleas don’t seem to be part of the problem.
At least one of the stories mentioned that a local police station was also badly infested.
Police station infestation is understandable. The transient populations of a police station and a town hall are different. Fleas are not too unlikely in one, but should be rara avis in the other.
Can you not use the term “rara avis,” just as a courtesy. Christopher Buckley applied it to Barack Obama and it’s made me sick ever since. I realize I have to get over it, but it’s still too soon.
Uh, no. In LA, the City Attorney’s Office prosecutes misdemeanors. I’d bet that there are scads of marginal humans in and out that office all day long.
as a Lost Angels native, i’m all in favor of fumigating City Hall AND City Hall East.
just make sure that when we tent the two buildings, the mayor, the council members, and all the other people who allegedly “w*rk” in those buildings are inside.
kill the fleas, the roaches and the rats, all at once.
The only cities possibly more deserving of a filthy third world disease like typhus would be Seattle, San Francisco, or New York City. Let’s hope many bureaucrats and progressives get sick.
What to do, what to do? I know! Let’s have unlimited migration from the third world.
So I am guessing the city attorney, who no doubt believes global warming is settled science, didn’t get a typhoid vaccination.
Wouldn’t do much good for typhus.
Not any good at all. These are two different diseases, though there is a similarity in names and symptoms. Typhoid is a food/drink born disease, no insect vector. In 1965 in Italy I suffered with a mild case of Typhoid and I can say I never want to have a full blown case. I had my Typhoid booster immunization and within hours I was down with high fever, aches and pains. The doctor speculated I had picked up a “live” case of Typhoid eating in town and it was acting as a booster immunization until I had the booster shot overload my immune system. With antibiotics it was only a few days before I was back to normal health.
Fleas from rats,even Demorats,that infest state and city government of Commiefornia.
It’s a shame our public health apparat is too busy talking about gun violence and ‘toxic masculinity’ as public health problems rather than actually dealing with … public health problems. Such as typhus.
It’s not as if typhus is some newly discovered or emergent illness; references to it go back centuries.
It’s somehow reminiscent of an EPA that is more worried about governing non-polluting atmospheric gasses than lead in the water.
Quarantine the counties involved as a public health hazard.
What’s the mission of the CDC, if not to contain and eradicate infectious disease?
Apparently, it’s to study gun violence.
Well, gun violence is a form of lead poisoning which disproportionately affects kids in the ghetto.
What bothers me the most about recent public health announcements is that they are all devoid of statistics, or use statistics in a blaringly meaningless way. For instance, a report a few years back stated that “the highest rate increase in new HIV cases was in those over 60.” It went up like 20%, but the actual numbers were on the order of 40 to 48, where IV drug users only went up 15%, but the numbers were like 10,000 to 11,500. Guess which one got their panties in a twist.
I miss my old biostats prof at UNC because he was always saying “Does it make any sense? Look beyond the numbers.” One can chug away at numbers all day, but they arise only after assumptions and conditions have been set in place, and if those are wrong, then the numbers mean dick.”
They need this guy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjebAlfrexA
LA is on the path to be a dystopian shithole.
pro tip: we’re already there.
at this point, we’re just gilding the lily.
I used to work in this same building, City Hall East, where she contracted this. I’m not surprised.
After a couple years working in that building, I started working for LAPD across the street from City Hall East in the old Parker Center Building. I started working a watch which ended around midnight.
When you’d walk outside the building after the sun went down there would be a parade of rats all around the guard post adjoining the sidewalk. I was once coming back from dinner and almost stepped on the rear end of a huge rat which was momentarily stuck while trying to go down through the grating.
We heard that cats would be released and then heard later the cats were completely ineffective as the rats were too big and numerous. I never saw any of the cats supposedly released, so I guess they scrammed when they sized up the strength of their opponents.
Meanwhile as this was going on, I was one of a select few chosen to give a test run to a new, completely revamped computer system we used. We’d heard the city got a couple million dollars to develop it and after vaguely hearing about it for a few months, it was ready for us to try out.
It was a complete disaster. Completely unworkable. As I remember it would have increased the time for us to complete our most important tasks five- to 10-fold.
I went to our supervisor after hearing the city’s tech people had been working on it for a couple years or so and asked her how it was possible they never once visited us to see what we do and how we do it and ask us for our input.
She just kind of shrugged and smiled. After that one day of trying it out, we never used it and never heard anything about it again. A few million tax payer dollars down the drain.
Few years later, then Mayor Villagairosa came out in support of the Occupy Wall St. freaks who occupied the City Hall grounds for a few weeks. (City Hall is across the street from City Hall East and they are joined by a skywalk on the third floor.)
The damage the did to the building and the grounds cost a few million dollars to repair. I was working the night our officers finally cracked down on the occupiers. Our Chief actually went outside with our officers as Mayor Villagairosa, who had encouraged the occupiers, cowardly waited in our lobby.
I have a million stories about wasted taxpayer money I have seen that would blow your minds. A coworker and I often joked that the average taxpayer thinks government wastes their money. If you saw what goes on you’d see it’s even worse than you imagine.
Sometimes you just want to throw up your arms and yell, “Oh, rats!”
“A coworker and I often joked that the average taxpayer thinks government wastes their money.”
I forgot to say that we’d then say how incensed they’d be if they ever found out that’s it’s much worse than they think. We liked to muse about taking undercover videos but …
so public schools are terrified by the prospect of some idiot setting foot on their campuses with a weapon(s)and killing students but apparently have no qualms about exposing the same students(via unvetted/unvaccinated immigrants)to diseases we’ve spent decades of research/effort/$$$ to irradicate in this country–some of the diseases being potentially lethal–and this is the “public education as usual” practice in a first-world country in the 21st century?–how and by whom can such a fundamental responsibility of GOVERNMENT(public health), indeed one of its few raissons de etre, be so willfully disregarded/ignored?
In the mid-1950s I was vaccinated against typhus (as well as typhoid) because I was getting ready to travel to some primitive parts of the world.
I didn’t get typhus, but it’s quite likely I wasn’t exposed to it. My point is there is a vaccine against typhus.
Where you a military person? I was vaccinated for w whole slew of possible diseases while in the Air Force including plague. I felt like a pincushion. 😉
I wasn’t in the military service. Because technically the naval service is different. Somewhere along the way I lost my shot record. And, no, this time it wasn’t a joke. Once I pissed off a corpsman who “lost” my entire medical file when I transferred.
So I had to get all my immunizations again.
So, ha ha, that’s not a mistake I make twice. I made a complete copy of my entire medical record. And I kept updating it. So I don’t have my shot record. But I have been inoculated for everything from Yellow Fever to Rubella to Kennel Cough. It’s kind of like how I made a copy of me attending SERE school.
You wouldn’t believe how polite I am now.
I know exactly what you mean. Don’t piss off the med techs with the scary instruments. About as bad as pissing off a marine or Navy Seal. 😉
I made a copy that I kept went to SERE in my gun safe in my parent’s house, my apartment in Japan, my sister’s place, My lawyer’s office, …
Maybe you haven’t noticed, but SERE school made an impression on me.
The Air Force version did the same for me although I doubt it was as rough as the Marine/Navy school. But then they sent me to a very special survival school as I flew in recon aircraft. Now that was, well…
My arm still hurts from that corpsman throwing away my shot record.