Posted on 07/23/2019 12:52:11 AM PDT by Windflier
Dr. Drew Pinsky, a California-based physician who now hosts a talk radio show, correctly predicted the current typhus outbreak in Los Angeles about 18 months ago. Now he is sounding the alarm about a potential outbreak of the bubonic plague in the Los Angeles area, saying that unless conditions change quickly and drastically, Southern California will be dealing with a horrific epidemic.
The last outbreak of the bubonic plague, ironically, was in the 1920’s in Los Angeles. Yersinia pestis, the organism that causes the plague, is endemic to the valleys Southern California and comes down through the foothills on squirrels and raccoons, Pinsky explained to Scott Adams on a Thursday podcast.
“[Then] It gets into the rats. When the rats proliferate, it gets into the humans. And we now have somewhere between 12 and 20 million rats in Los Angeles, and we’re one of the only cities in the country with no rodent control program.
“If you look at the pictures of Los Angeles you’ll see that the homeless encampments are surrounded by dumps. People defecate there, they throw their trash there, and the rats just proliferate there.
“The last outbreak was in the 1920s. It was only because of some heroic efforts by a group of physicians that it didn’t become a massive problem. It killed everyone who came in contact with the case zero.”
With the sheer volume of people now in Los Angeles, compared to 100 years ago, this is a terrifying prospect.
Downtown Los Angeles is now infamous for its trash piles, and while those are definitely part of the problem, Pinsky said the homelessness issue is the main driver of the potential disease outbreaks. Pinsky, who has worked as a physician at psychiatric hospitals, believes the homelessness issue has been caused by an inability to properly treat the chronically mentally ill and drug addicts. The people in this population, he asserts, will not voluntarily take up offers of housing.
Surprise,surprise,surprise!
Those poor souls in downtown LA should move their
homeless encampments to cleaner areas like Beverly Hills
and Bel Air. Let’s hear from the Democratic presidential
candidates on the matter.....
I’m with you....!
4th generation Californian.
The good news is that plague is readily treatable by antibiotics once diagnosed. So what happens when the antibiotics run out? Take a look, for example, at what the CDC says about treatment (scroll down a bit). That little notation "not widely available in the United States" is a clue that maybe we're not as equipped to address a disease breakout as we assume.
Plague isn't transmissible directly between human beings in the early stages of an epidemic. It becomes so when it proceeds to the pneumonic form and is blasted into the air by coughing. Note from the World Health Organization: "the pneumonic form is invariably fatal unless treated early." Serious stuff.
Sure is scary. Have friends who have complained about rats in San Francisco, and the homeless situation there is getting worse.
Sure is scary. Have friends who have complained about rats in San Francisco, and the homeless situation there is getting worse.
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