[Daily Wire] The city of Los Angeles is suffering from an outbreak of a "middle ages" and "pioneer days" disease ‐typhus ‐ typically found in homeless populations.The outbreak began in October, according to CNN, with 57 cases of the flea- and flea feces-borne disease in downtown Los Angeles, not typically a hotbed of rare diseases. That was up from around 6 cases over the summer, all found in people "experiencing homelessness."
According to L.A. public health officials, there were more than 120 reported cases of typhus in 2018, and that number is increasing steadily in the first months of 2019.
A local NBC affiliate says city officials assumed that the disease would remain largely within the homeless population, but lately, cases of typhus have been cropping up among an unexpected group of people: city officials.
"It felt like somebody was driving railroad stakes through my eyes and out the back of my neck," Deputy City Attorney Liz Greenwood told Local 4 news. "Who gets typhus? It's a medieval disease that's caused by trash."
Greenwood speculates that she got typhus fever from fleas riding on the rats that occasionally infest Los Angeles city buildings. Those fleas get their typhus from piles of garbage surrounding homeless encampments throughout the city.
"There are rats in City Hall and City Hall East," Greenwood told NBC. "There are enormous rats and their tails are as long as their bodies."
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, who recently announced he would not pursue a presidential campaign in 2020, has been trying to control the typhus epidemic largely by allocating funds for trash cleanup, particularly in areas where homeless people gather to live for extended periods of time, including the city's famous Skid Row.