Did California plastic bag ban result in San Diego's current hepatitis outbreak?

https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2017/sep/08/stringers-plastic-bag-ban-led-hep-health-crisis/

by subroutine • 9 years ago

59 71 9 years ago

santaclaus• 9 years ago

Seems like a good opportunity to design and distribute plastic bags specifically for people poops (sort of like the bags for dog poops).

simcop2387• 9 years ago

from the article, that seems to be exactly what some of the groups are doing. I have to believe there's a better way to deal with this but I'm not sure what it is. I know other places (notably europe) it's more common to have public restrooms but I don't know how they deal with the problems associated with them (perceived or real).

BlackjackCF• 9 years ago

Unfortunately, the plastic bag ban is only a side effect of the real problem. California has a homeless problem and there aren't enough resources made available in California to address this. The homeless don't have access to resources to readily dispose of waste.

antnisp• 9 years ago

One of the richest and largest polities on earth doesn't have the resources to guarantee basic sanitaion for all residents.

djsumdog3• 9 years ago

Or maybe fix the low cost housing problem and maybe create better homeless day centers and public bathrooms? Just an idea...

subroutine5• 9 years ago

Hang up doggy bag distributers on telephone poles downtown - sure just give me an afternoon.

Also, fix the homeless problem. - https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/tasks.png

prostoalex9• 9 years ago

Anaheim has decent homeless day centers and has actually invested into container-based housing to accommodate the homeless population by the riverbed, but the issue is not as binary. It also has a decent share of large churches doing all sorts of outreach programs to help the poor.

For a variety of reasons - fear of government control, previous negative experience, fear of harassment or violence, conspiracies conjured up by someone with a mental condition - many homeless refuse "the system" and prefer the riverbank.

dottrap• 9 years ago

Related: Plastic Bag Ban Responsible For Spike In E. Coli Infections, Study Says

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/07/plastic-bag-ban_n_2...

ass3r7• 9 years ago

Wait until the first flu season in Chicago with the bag tax it will be this year.

The politicians will have dead babies and elderly on their hands. It will be obvious in 5 years when some researchers realize that suburbs nearby don't have the bag ban vs other idential demographically areas within city limits do but somehow flu rates are statistically significantly higher and since they won't be able to find any other explanatory variable. ... oh shit.

I just watch people for 30 mins and saw some crazy ass shit so people could save themselves 7c.

gertef• 9 years ago

and the rebuttal, which argues that nearly all of the increase in infections is due to a bacteria wave that started before the ban and was international in breadth:

http://berkeleyblog.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/...

thenewwazoo• 9 years ago

How many public health crises in the USA can be boiled down to "the USA fails to provide a safety net that ensures a certain standard of living"? If this plastic-bag hypothesis bears out, it'll be yet another.

frogpelt2• 9 years ago

There people living in the streets pooping in bags.

And you think we just need more safety nets?

SomeStupidPoint• 9 years ago

....Yes?

The support system in the US is drastically underfunded, which leads to it being understaffed and underprovisioned for the tasks it tries to accomplish. There's a second layer of ideological opposition to helping poor people that exacerbates the problem.

Proper funding and removing ideology-driven sabotage for safety nets would remove a sizable amount of street bag pooping.

dsfyu404ed• 9 years ago

You could boil them down to "prefers to spend it's money on other things"

CA fails to provide a safety net that ensures a certain standard of living

CA prefers to spend its money on green energy.

rossdavidh• 9 years ago

Does it seem to anybody else that having widely available public restrooms would be a way better (including way more hygienic) way to address this issue?

cbhl• 9 years ago

But nobody wants to build (and keep clean) a bathroom in their backyard (the for homeless people is implied). And anyone who did would have protests from their neighbors.

Lava Mae addressed this by building portable showers out of old buses (to the tune of ~$1M per bus) and trailers (cheaper).

djsumdog3• 9 years ago

That makes me think of Rick and Morty:

Beth, do you still love me?

Ugh, what kind of question is that?

The "yes or no" kind?

Jerry, do you want homeless people to have homes?

Yes.

Are you gonna build them?

No.

Then what good was the "yes"?

Wait, is loving me the house or the homeless people?

Loving you is work, Jerry hard work, like building a homeless shelter nobody wants to say no to doing it, but some people put the work in. So, what do you say? Do you see me working here? Does this conversation seem tedious to me?

Sort of.

Then I obviously sort of love you, don't I?

netsharc• 9 years ago

I would think hygiene should be part of the government's responsibility.. like security (police) or clean water.

But oh well, at the moment the philosophy is Make America Great Again by defunding everything...

tareqak2• 9 years ago

I would include public showers, and public baths like some parts of France.

Edit: Actually wouldn't public washrooms, showers, and baths help everyone in that if they are located frequently enough, businesses wouldn't have to be built with public washrooms in mind, or pay for the cost of cleaning and maintenance. They would have to pay for the public washrooms through taxes though.

narrator• 9 years ago

At the train stations in Paris, they have pay toilets and people beg for change outside them so they can use them.

prostoalex9• 9 years ago

Santa Monica and Venice have those and "hygienic" is rarely the word used to describe them. The handicapped ones are usually overtaken by homeless as an impromptu residence, the rest have various amounts of dirt, toilet paper, drug paraphernalia, broken glass, urine and feces spread throughout the floor.

erentz• 9 years ago

No. Lack of universal health care and a proper social safety net resulted in the Hepatitis outbreak.

Hepatitis can be prevented through vaccination, which a universal health care system would provide. Through treatment, which a universal health care system would provide. And proper sanitary conditions, which taking care of people so they don't have to live on the streets would provide.

djsumdog3• 9 years ago

Exactly! We need better homeless support. Day centers with real bathrooms and showers, better public bathrooms, and better safety nets for those who are struggling. We need more programs like Utah's where they try to get homeless people into homes first, then work on job training, drug addiction and integration into society. If we had housing first, many of these people could have accessible toilets.

Plastic bags are terrible for the environment. They're not recyclable unless that type of plastic is in demand. Even then, it's often shipped to China. Most companies don't touch it because there is so little return and things like staples or food particle can contaminate whole batches if they get through sorting.

mattnewport4• 9 years ago

We still get hepatitis outbreaks here in Canada despite our universal healthcare. Universal healthcare does not automatically solve the problem of getting vaccinations to vulnerable populations or prioritizing the right interventions at the right time given limited resources.

Maybe our situation is better here in this regard, I don't know the statistics, but it's demonstrably false that universal healthcare automatically prevents hepatitis outbreaks.

seanmcdirmid• 9 years ago

Some people might not vaccinate their kids for dumber reasons than not having insurance.

ethnic_throw• 9 years ago

So I take it you implicitly agree with the original article's thesis?

guelo3• 9 years ago

For whatever reason Canada doesn't require childhood HepA vaccinations, though they could.

coldtea3• 9 years ago

Universal healthcare does not automatically solve the problem of getting vaccinations to vulnerable populations

A well functioning society, where people don't live like dogs in the street, does.

or prioritizing the right interventions at the right time given limited resources.

I doubt nations that can spend billions on pet food have "limited resources" for things as insignificant budget-wise as hep vaccines.

gdulli• 9 years ago

Those things could have prevented it, like giving everyone housing could solve homelessness.

But given the actual conditions San Diego started in, did the lack of plastic bags cause this specific outbreak? Which is the actual prompt. Seems inconclusive from the article, but not casually dismissable.

irrational• 9 years ago

They tried that in SLC, but it turns out that not everyone who is homeless wants to live in a home. I would imagine this is related to mental illness, but you can't just force people to move into a home who don't want to just so homelessness is "solved".

jdminhbg• 9 years ago

Vaccinations are free, per TFA.

eveningcoffee• 9 years ago

Were not before the outbreak.

mindslight• 9 years ago

Or aim lower and just build and maintain some proper public toilets we all can use. One shouldn't be guilted into purchasing more diuretic just to relieve themselves while out.

frogpelt2• 9 years ago

If we just had the right system we could solve the problems.

Some people just don't want us to have the right system.

The right system is the solution.

touchofevil• 9 years ago

Completely agree. Future generations will marvel at the fact that we didn't figure out that having large populations living in poverty would create hot zones for contagious disease to spread from. The Ebola outbreak that showed up in Dallas a few years ago comes to mind. Poverty needs to be eliminated worldwide ASAP to prevent the next pandemic.

subroutine5• 9 years ago

They may also look back and marvel at our inability to implement even simple solutions because they fail to seem optimal. It's debatable whether the hepA outbreak is due to the scarcity of plastic bags the homeless were accustomed to using to do their business. But it's plausible; and it's an easy fix. But it's possible that future generations will look back and wonder- why did they spend all that time debating 1000-lightbulb ideas about how to care for the homeless, never reaching any consensus, when they could have just hung up plastic bag distributors downtown.

kylehotchkiss• 9 years ago

US's positive view of globalization after World War II did wonders in reducing extreme poverty (via our aid programs, charities, etc). Sadly, many in our country are turning their backs to globalization when the world really needs more investment.

katastic• 9 years ago

I'm standing here, in awe, that you literally wrote that on a comment.

Like... you actually believe merely having UHC will somehow stop stupid people from either 1) being disgusting or 2) being too stupid and forgoing vaccinations.

Like, you actually think that EVERYONE who suffers is doing it simply because they can't walk into their local hospital and be like "hook me up with them needles." People like Jenny McCarthy talking about how vaccinations cause autism don't actually exist.

And I say all this as a freakin' liberal. Come on guys. Up your brain game. Because this is one step above the political discourse equivalent of a a bumper sticker. Just chant and shoehorn in whatever catchphrase / slogan that's barely applicable into the conversation.

A bumper sticker has never changed the world.

bllguo• 9 years ago

You're clearly being intentionally provocative. I don't even know what you're railing against. Vaccinations have basically eradicated many diseases in the Western world. Certainly if these people were vaccinated a hep outbreak would not have occurred. Furthermore, if these people had access to proper facilities thru social safety nets, they also wouldn't be in situations where the loss of plastic bags means increased risk of hep A. UHC and more resources for the homeless would have helped prevent this, objectively.

You rant about changing the world yet propose no solution or alternative of your own.

guelo3• 9 years ago

vaccination doesn't have much to do with universal health care. About half of states currently require childhood HepA vaccinations, the others don't http://www.immunize.org/laws/hepa.asp

prostoalex9• 9 years ago

Hepatitis can be prevented through vaccination, which a universal health care system would provide.

Most of the the homeless people are likely eligible for California Medicare.

dragonwriter• 9 years ago

Most of the the homeless people are likely eligible for California Medicare.

“California Medicare” is not a thing that exists. You are perhaps thinking of Medi-Cal, which is California’s Medicaid program (Medicaid is for the medically indigent, and is partly federally funded and administered by the states; Medicare is federally administered, and for seniors and certain disabled.)

tareqak2• 9 years ago

From the article:

The best defense is getting vaccinated — which is free because of the epidemic. The vaccine used to cost about $100. If you’ve traveled to the third world, you’ve probably gotten the two injections a month apart. It’s good for life — no boosters needed.

kazinator• 9 years ago

Maybe bio-degradable bags would work for the purpose referred to in the article? The kind from a material that can be used for kitchen waste (food scraps).

guelo3• 9 years ago

As usual the answer to the question in the headline is no. You can read the article for more.

otakucode• 9 years ago

Grumble grumble grumble... the description of Hepatitis A as a 'hardy virus' and claims "It thrives in cold temperatures and you have to heat it to 185 degrees to kill it" are idiotic and contribute to ignorance. Viruses are not alive. You can not kill a virus. You can destroy it, but it is already dead. All viruses are this way.

"It can live for months outside the body." is simply straight-up patently false. It is not alive, and unless it is somehow destroyed, it can remain infectious effectively forever. This is how viruses work. They can't move, they can't reproduce, they have no metabolism. They are not living things. They are merely a fortuitous compilation of parts that, if put in contact with a particular kind of cell, cause that cell to begin producing copies of the jumble of parts until the virus explodes.

I'm sorry, but this sort of thing bugs me to no end. We can never expect people to learn the basics of infectious disease if we actively lie to them. And no, the intent of making it 'easy to understand' by lying is no excuse. "Good intentions are the opposite of good actions."

subroutine5• 9 years ago

Define 'life'. (bonus points for not using wikipedia)

trapperkeeper74• 9 years ago

If enough people are sleeping rough, Hep A is an issue among others.

wrycoder• 9 years ago

/me search thread for "paper"

No hits

subroutine5• 9 years ago

Did California plastic bag ban result in San Diego's current hepatitis outbreak?

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