Typhus Breaks Out in Los Angeles
Richard Moorhead
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Residents of Los Angeles have been surprised to witness an outbreak of the infectious disease known as typhus, a bacterial infection thought to be largely limited to medical history.
The problem is reportedly being accelerated by the presence of the city’s large homeless community. Los Angeles has one of the largest homeless populations for a big city in the country, in great part because of high levels of income inequality and policies that are permissive to homeless encampments.
City residents have spoken up hoping to have municipal laws enforced to remove the encampments as a threat to public health, only to be rebuked for perceived hostility to the homeless community. It appears the alternative of having the homeless, many of them drug addicts, live in squalor in public at risk of contracting the serious disease is preferred by the city government.
Rats and fleas are essential to the spread of the disease, and the complexity of some of Los Angeles’ homeless tent cities is said to provide an unsanitary environment for the pests to thrive.
While typhus is commonly spoken of in medieval history, war movies, and novels about the 19th century, it comes as more of a surprise to see the disease surface in strength in a major American city in 2018.
While the problem is centered in the city’s homeless population, the mere pervasiveness of it is meaning that wealthier people with more means for decent sanitation are being affected by the outbreak. A Los Angeles City Attorney, Elizabeth Greenwood, says she contracted the disease from the presence of typhus-infected fleas near the city’s municipal hall.
Tucker Carlson covered the tragic and shocking medieval epidemic in the Golden State’s biggest city on Friday night.
Homeless people and drug addicts need compassion. Yet it’s clear that living in a filthy and typhus-infected camp is not going to enable them to progress to a more decent quality of life.
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