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Sunday, March 24th, 2019

“Medieval” Diseases Flare as Unsanitary Living Conditions Proliferate

Author:     Anna Gorman
Source:     Scientific American
Publication Date:     March 15, 2019
 Link: “Medieval” Diseases Flare as Unsanitary Living Conditions Proliferate
Stephan:   You don't want to be poor in America. There is only a pathetic social support network. Why is this? Three reasons, I think. First, because in complete contradiction to what the Founders' intended, we have become an every person for themselves culture. Second, a large part of the population, the part that isn't poor, think the poor should be punished for being poor -- "why should I support those losers". Third, because the poor are very profitable for corporate and government entities. All kinds of people depend on the poor for their own wellbeing. Here is the real truth that few want to hear: A homeless person costs society much more than a person to whom you give decent housing, and it is not a little difference, it runs to tens sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars. Universal healthcare, instead of an illness profit system would save American society over a trillion dollars a year. Is that my conjecture? It is not, it is based on facts.

Jennifer Millar keeps trash bags and hand sanitizer near her tent, and she regularly pours water mixed with hydrogen peroxide on the sidewalk nearby. Keeping herself and the patch of concrete she calls home clean is a top priority.

But this homeless encampment off a Hollywood freeway ramp is often littered with needles and trash, and soaked in urine. Rats occasionally scamper through, and Millar fears the consequences.

“I worry about all those diseases,” said Millar, 43, who said she has been homeless most of her life.

Infectious diseases—some that ravaged populations in the Middle Ages—are resurging in California and around the country, and are hitting homeless populations especially hard.

Los Angeles recently experienced an outbreak of typhus—a disease spread by infected fleas on rats and other animals—in downtown streets. Officials briefly closed part of City Hall after reporting that rodents had invaded the building.

People in Washington state have been infected with Shigella bacteria, which is spread through feces and causes the diarrheal disease shigellosis, as well as Bartonella quintana, which spreads through body lice and causes trench fever.

Hepatitis A, also spread primarily through feces, infected more than 1,000 people in Southern California in the past two years. The disease also has erupted in […]

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1 Comment

  1. Dariel Garner on Sunday, March 24, 2019 at 6:57 am

    I tend to define systems by their results. I also recognize systems are not broken per se but simply create the results of their design.

    Did the founding fathere want to create a democratic state devoted to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? The signers of the Declaration of Independence did…but not the counter-revolutionist federalists that created our current constitution. That second group of “founding fathers” became the richest people in the nation and created a constitution that first protected commerce and war-making and then only added the few basic rights in the Bill of Rights to squeak approval through ratification by other landed white European males.

    The rich still control the nation. We are still devoted to profit and expansionary war. People are still subservient to a ruling gentry.

    Looks to me like we are still paying a debt of servitude to our “founding fathers” and clearly the system is not broken but working maybe better than ever…for some.

    To argue that health care or war powers or climate change are broken issues is to overlook the fundamental nature of the entire system. That is what must be changed.