The Los Angeles typhus epidemic

FWIW, bat, this is a good and fascinating thread.

I have to go to LA occasionally, and I sure as shit don’t want typhus.

 

Great post, Smash. My first thoughts on this thread were actually WW2, POWs camps and concentration camps. Thanks for clearing that up.

 

I have my first big licensing test in in a few months, so I'm all about knowing extraordinary detail of uncommon diseases right now. The most interesting thing about the real typhus diseases to me is that they're related to Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, a tick-borne disease more often found out in the Carolina region. To bring this back to sports, that's what Shane Doan ended up having some years back when no one could figure out why the hell he was so sick. He was getting worked up out in Arizona where RMSF isn't endemic, so no one thought of it for quite some time.

Micro is weird. Don't get me started on parasites and why one of the great public health initiatives of the 20th century was to get everyone to wear shoes all the time.

 

Good stuff. My initial thinking in comparing the two was with the transmission method, and that if this isn't checked we might eventually see the more severe of the two.

 

To wear shoes? Hmm. To stop stepping in horseshit?

Actually, a neuron just fired. This has something to do with nasty tapeworm transmission or some such disgusting shit.

 

Hookworms, not tapeworms, but yes. Little bastards bury through the sole of your foot.

Tapeworms have a fun (?) recent connection to sports as well: 'Absolutely freaking out!': Blue Jackets prospect Carson...

 

Interesting thread as a matter of public health.

Not strictly sure what it has to do with politics.

 

There are no politics between hookworms and tapeworms.

If there were, they’d have to go into the other thread.

Same for typhus and lupus.

 

That's what I've been trying to tell...oh...well, nevermind.

 

Well, I think the local politics are tied to it by way of a root cause.
The trashification of California, Southern California in particular, has become a big issue out there. Not just the overwhelming presence of the homeless, but other things like allowing them to dump trash wherever they want and living in large encampments. Instead of cleaning it up, cracking down or finding realistic solutions, local politicians for years have fostered a culture of tolerance and acceptance -- but not in a good way. Minor crimes that they tolerate from the homeless such as trespassing, loitering, drug use, public dumping and petty theft, they'd happily ticket and fine the average person for doing.
The best solution they've come up with is to relocate the homeless to other cities in the area. That creates a NIMBY backlash, especially since they've tried to do it under the radar with little public debate. When average citizens protest they don't want a couple hundred drug-addicted homeless people dumped into their neighborhoods, they're accused of being insensitive to the plight of the homeless.
In the middle of all this, we have this typhus outbreak. Last year there was a hepatitis outbreak in one of the larger homeless encampments that they did finally bust up. So you're starting to have a pattern develop, and it's not that the local governments are necessarily unable to come up with the answers. It appears that they're more unwilling.
All of this is happening in what is supposed to be a model city for progressive thought and politics.
That's what politics has to do with it. And that's why it's such an interesting story to me.
But others, apparently, disagree.

 

There is nowhere you can go in the huge LA metropolitan area without seeing homeless encampments. It's in LA proper and every surrounding town, the Downeys and the Torrences and the beach cities.

The progressive politics of the City of LA often don't jibe with a Downey or Anaheim. Yet they all have a huge problem.

I don't know one way or another if politics is the reason.

 

This is bigger than homelessness...it is inevitable that a growing global population will foster more and wider spread disease as Nature seeks a corrective balance.