Los Angeles's homelessness epidemic has created a typhus epidemic

Mars.

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Ugh, what a time to be alive.

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Just distribute bootstraps and the problem will solve itself.

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:musical_note: The tables will turn, we can but stall them
Every empire on this earth has fallen :musical_note:

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I think I know some countries which would definitely fit this description in SE Asia. Romania, OTH? AFAIK, research facilities are in a pickle there, too.

Hungary. As a researcher for a pharmaceutical company with limited ethical standards I’d go to Hungary.

"Disease must be attacked, whether it occurs in the poorest or the richest man or woman simply on the ground that it is the enemy; and it must be attacked just in the same way as the fire brigade will give its full assistance to the humblest cottage as readily as to the most important mansion. "

  • Winston Churchill, championing universal medical care for the UK.

Churchill was always pro-NHS, but his Conservative party was not trusted to implement it, because most of them were not. So they were thrown out of power in 1945 - Britain treated WInnie winning WW2 as “15 minutes of fame” compared to the more-important issue of installing universal medical care, I guess. Back in power 3 years later, Churchill kept the Tories from killing off the new service, partly with the above speech.

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I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the Mighty don’t figure out the cheapest way to handle this. A rifle bullet is only about 20 cents after all, and it won’t be long before they do the sums. It can’t be beyond even their stunted brains.

Yes, of course they would be a lot worse under conservative government. It is a complicated issue. Many of the homeless have arrived after the Dem’s took over and made the problem worse. But they come mainly because of the climate. The economy and housing in So. Ca. obviously makes the problem worse. But I believe eventually, California will lead the way, as they do in many situations, and show the nation how to handle homeless issues. It will never be completely eradicated because some people just choose to be homeless. Also, many of them are mentally ill. which is a result of Lord Ronnie Raygun allowing mental hospitals to release mental patients into the streets. Our social services for mentally folk are woeful and inadequate. But it sure ain’t gonna be trump or the conservatives that will solve the problem. They only know how to make it worse and they do so with smiles on their faces.

Is Reagan controlling this from the grave? We have had sixteen years of Democratic presidents and twenty years of Democratic CA governors since he left those offices.

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As a researcher for a pharmaceutical company with limited ethical standards I’d go to Hungary.

They didn’t need limited ethical standards - what they were proposing was pretty clean from that point of view. What they needed was somewhere where it’s easy to find and recruit people who use drugs (ie people at risk of getting hepatitis C), and where there’s really limited infrastructure for preventing them from getting HCV (ie comprehensive needle exchange and comprehensive evidence-based drug treatment), so that they’d be looking at a population with a high rate of seroconversion and could test whether their vaccine was preventing seroconversion with an n which was logistically (and economically) feasible.

I agree with you that there’s places in SE Asia that I’d think would meet those standards, and I have also heard (but have no direct experience with) that the research infrastructure in Romania isn’t all that hot, but I’m just quoting them, not judging it.

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Adding to this sentiment…

… it won’t matter how much y’all turn your back on global warming when whichever global pandemic sweeps into your burbclave or surround areas to take out your help, your staff, your family or yourselves.

https://www.contagionlive.com/news/the-ripple-effect-of-climate-change-on-epidemic-risk

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/05/the-deadly-diseases-being-released-by-climate-change/

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Thanks for the explanation. That clarifies a lot. Sorry for misunderstanding, which exposed my bias and and uncomfortable hybris. I’ll have to work on that.

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