There have been several news reports in the last couple days about the disease danger caused by Los Angeles’ extreme homelessness. They may have been prompted in part by a truly alarming report from Dr. Drew Pinksky on the Laura Ingraham show last week.
Dr. Drew is very concerned about the dire public health situation in LA. Years of liberal governance, increased drugs, worsening homelessness and general permissiveness have created a dangerous stew of communicable diseases from measles to bubonic plague. A Los Angeles Police officer has contracted typhoid and the LAPD station located in Skid Row suffers from a vermin infestation.
It can’t help that the current border anarchy has welcomed many thousands of poor Latin American peasants who have received no health screening. The public health threat of open borders has been too little discussed.
LAURA INGRAHAM: Two hot topics and just a short time to get to them. So let’s bring in Drew Pinsky, board-certified internist. OK, Dr. Drew, great to see you. I have to begin with the shocking case out of L.A., and two friends of mine have told me about this. A police officer now has contracted that really rare and life-threatening illness, disease, typhoid fever. Fewer than 350 Americans contract this every year, so what is going on here?
DR. DREW PINSKY: We have a complete breakdown of the basic needs of civilization in Los Angeles right now. We have the three prongs of airborne disease. Tuberculosis is exploding. Rodent-born, we’re one of the only major cities in the country that does not have a rodent control program. And sanitation has broken down. We had a typhus outbreak last summer. We will have a typhus as outbreak this summer. I’m hearing from experts that bubonic plague is likely. It’s already here. It will get onto the rat fleas. And then now finally we have this oral-fecal route contamination, which is typhoid fever — three cases, one confirmed, probably three.
This is unbelievable. I can’t believe I live in a city where this is not third world, Laura: this is medieval. Third world countries are insulted if they are accused of being like this. No city on earth tolerates this. The entire population is at risk. And God forbid if measles — this is a population that is sub-optimally immunized — if measles gets in, I just have an image of myself on knees in the gutter tending to people, because this summer is likely to be a very profound problem.
INGRAHAM: Meanwhile, we are welcoming in tens of thousands into California in the next few months of illegal immigrants, and I’ve had a chance to talk to a lot of these migrants after they crossed the border. They have no papers, they have no identification, but they have a friend or a relative that they are going to go visit. A couple people had nowhere to go. So I don’t know how you check health records, and they are flooding into many cities in California, San Jose, L.A., San Diego.
PINSKY: And we can’t handle our situations such as it is. And there is a very bizarre thing going on where the government is somehow insisting that housing is the problem, when in fact we have chronic mental illness, we have addiction, we have people who don’t want to leave the streets. They literally won’t take the housing if we give it to them. And that is the population that is vulnerable. And it’s going to get so ill this summer, it scares me for their well-being.
Laura, I need your help. I want to pierce their shield of qualified immunity so we can go after them for reckless negligence. This is disgusting. It is reckless negligence. And we have to have a solution to this.
INGRAHAM: I know the businesses are upset, just like they are in San Francisco.
PINSKY: I don’t think you get how dire this is.
INGRAHAM: I do.
PINSKY: I’m telling you as a physician, like I’m standing on a railroad track, saying the bridge is out. This could be a very serious summer.
INGRAHAM: But where are the politicians? The liberal politicians in California care about people.
PINSKY: They are negligent, disgustingly negligent. It’s almost like — I was driving over and I thought, do they want the people on the streets to die? Is that it really, they don’t care if they all die? Is that really where we are now?
INGRAHAM: Dr. Drew, we didn’t have time to get into the six-figure rehab. We’ll have to have you back for that. That’s a shocker.
PINSKY: I’ll do it. You got it.
INGRAHAM: It’s a teaser for your next appearance. But thank you for sounding the alarm. This is not political. This is a health crisis now.
PINSKY: No, no. This is a health crisis that I have not seen in this country for 100 years.
INGRAHAM: Dr. Drew, thank you so much.
