Dr. Drew: Los Angeles Faces Imminent Outbreak of Bubonic Plague

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Dr. Drew Pinsky said Friday that Los Angeles faces an imminent outbreak of bubonic plague because of the growth of the homeless population and the failure of state and local authorities to deal with rodent problems.

Dr. Drew made his comments during a Periscope broadcast by Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams, who has become a popular political pundit with a daily live audience of thousands of people.

Talking with Dr. Drew about the Los Angeles apocalypse, then on to Trump’s tweet, Iran, and coffee https://t.co/2sx040Ldj6

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) July 19, 2019

Dr. Drew told Adams that he had predicted the recent typhus outbreak in Los Angeles, which was carried by rats, transferred by fleas to pets, and from pets to humans.

Bubonic plague, Dr. Drew said, like typhus, is endemic to the region, and can spread to humans from rodents in a similar fashion.

Though commonly recognized as the medieval disease responsible for the Black Death in the fourteenth century, which killed one-third of the population of Europe, the last outbreak of bubonic plague in the U.S. was nearly a century ago, from 1924 to 1925 — also in Los Angeles. Only a “heroic effort” by doctors stopped it, Dr. Drew recalled, warning that conditions were perfect for another outbreak of the plague in the near future.

Los Angeles is one of the only cities in the country, Dr. Drew said, that has no rodent control plan. “And if you look at the pictures of Los Angeles, you will see that the homeless encampments are surrounded by dumps. People defecate there, they throw their trash there, and the rats just proliferate there.”

Moreover, he said, homeless people were defecating directly into city drains, which flowed to the Pacific Ocean. “We have the sewage of 60,000 people hitting the ocean every day,” he said.

Though there were adequate financial resources, Dr. Drew said, homelessness would not be solved by building more housing, because the fundamental problems were mental illness and drug addictions, which created an “attachment to this lifestyle” on the streets.

Read the rest from Joel P. Pollak HERE.

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