Los Angeles has any number of problems: crime, homelessness, and productive people are leaving due to the idiot policies of the city and the state of California. Now, we can again add that ancient curse of big cities: Disease.
The other thing Los Angeles shares with so many other large cities throughout human history is rats. Rats have accompanied humans almost everywhere, and they bring disease with them. That, too, is happening right now in Los Angeles.
In Los Angeles County (L.A.), rats abound. You may see only an occasional rat dart across an alley or root through a restaurant dumpster, but make no mistake: they are everywhere, from Skid Row to Koreatown, from Boyle Heights to Santa Monica. They are always nearby, even if sometimes out of sight: scurrying in storm drains, walls, crawl spaces, and alleyways.
Rats, and the fleas that live on them, can be carriers of deadly diseases—including, most notably, the plague, which, in bubonic form, killed tens of millions of people and laid waste to cities in the Middle Ages. In L.A., however, the main concern is a different medieval disease: typhus.
Since 2009, the number of flea-borne typhus cases in L.A. has increased by a staggering 2,300 percent. Last year, the county recorded more cases than at any point in its history. Some patients have died. Behind the scenes, the authorities responsible for protecting the public admit that they lack the resources they need to get the situation under control.
The city is providing a nearly-perfect habitat for rats. The sprawling homeless enclaves and the rampant drug use, with all the trash and waste that surrounds those encampments, are giving rats a paradise they haven't seen since the Dark Ages. And here's the really stupid part of all this: the state of California has placed tight controls on the very materials that are most effective against rats.
To make matters worse, more and more tools are being removed from the pest-control toolbox. In 2020, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed A.B. 1788 into law, sharply restricting the use of potent anticoagulant rat poisons in hopes of protecting “mountain lions and other wildlife.” Four years later, Newsom signed A.B. 2552, further expanding those restrictions.
And this guy wants to be president?
Read More: Bubonic Plague "Imminent" in Los Angeles, Says Dr. Drew Pinsky
As Two LAPD Officers Are Treated for Typhus, Here's How LA City Gov't Helped Create the Problem
Humans have fought rats for thousands of years, and the best we've ever been able to do is to fight them to a holding action. Rats have too many advantages. A female rat can throw litters of from six to 12 pups, after a gestation period of only about three weeks. The pups can breed at five to six weeks of age. They can have four to seven litters a year. Female rats can come into season and mate again while still nursing the last litter.
And every one of those rats will grow up to harbor its own complement of fleas, which are primary vectors of diseases like the bubonic plague. Rat droppings can spread typhus. Every rat carries its own helping of sickness, and the state of California has regulated the single best weapon humans have against them, that being the various anticoagulant poisons.
Of course, cleaning up the homeless enclaves and cleaning up the garbage would help, too.
Los Angeles is, in this matter, slipping back into the Dark Ages, and it even has, in Mayor Karen Bass, its very own Typhoid Mary.
Editor's Note: President Trump is leading America into the "Golden Age" as Democrats try desperately to stop it.
Help us continue to report on President Trump's successes. Join RedState VIP and use promo code FIGHT to receive 60% off your membership.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member