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

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

#61

Post by subroutine »

touchofevil wrote: post #34
erentz wrote: post #7

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.

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.

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.

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

#62

Post by subroutine »

otakucode wrote: post #60

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 n…

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

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

#63

Post by ModernMech »

subroutine wrote: post #36
djsumdog wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

It's interesting to me that now the "figure out if the picture is of a bird" task is becoming "gimme a few hours"

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

#64

Post by bllguo »

katastic wrote: post #39
erentz wrote: post #7

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.

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 McCart…

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.

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

#65

Post by svend »

irrational wrote: post #28
gdulli wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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".

Actually you can. That's what they do in the rest of the western world. Not saying it's a good idea, but it's far from impossible. It's more of a "do you want to".

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

#66

Post by mattnewport »

coldtea wrote: post #57
mattnewport wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 automatic…

> 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.

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

I guess I've never lived in or visited a well functioning society then. I have lived in two countries with universal healthcare and visited many more and they all have homeless populations living on the streets. Whether they live "like dogs" would be a subjective call I guess.

I don't think you understand the term 'limited resources'. The opposite would be 'unlimited resources', not 'a different allocation of limited resources than I would prefer'.

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

#67

Post by [deleted] »

mindslight wrote: post #56
ass3r7 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No your cloth bags are not the solution. It's a trade off between immediate needs and future costs. I don't dispute plastic bags have many negative externalities however they are profoundly immediately useful to humans. There are massive unintended consequences whenever you impose a designed objective function on reality as a planner. In regards to the questionable surfaces I don't dispute that either but it is irrel…

FWIW, your initial comment had two substantive and astute points. But much like the countless unsung plastic bags, you loaded it with shit.

[deleted]

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

#68

Post by dsfyu404ed »

thenewwazoo wrote: post #5

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.

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.

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

#70

Post by coldtea »

mattnewport wrote: post #66
coldtea wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> A well functioning society, where people don't live like dogs in the street, does. I guess I've never lived in or visited a well functioning society then. I have lived in two countries with universal healthcare and visited many more and they all have homeless populations living on the streets. Whether they live "like dogs" would be a subjective call I guess. I don't think you understand the term 'limited resources'…

>I don't think you understand the term 'limited resources'. The opposite would be 'unlimited resources', not 'a different allocation of limited resources than I would prefer'.

Then you maybe don't understand that it doesn't take "unlimited resources" to vaccinate people, and that not all "allocations of limited resources" make sense or are to be respected or are inevitable like the laws of physics.

Like one can't use the excuse that they have "limited resources" for feeding themselves if at the same time they spend 10 times the money in trivial BS like fancy clothes or the latest and greatest smartphone -- they'd be (rightly) laughed off. Sure, they can spend their money wherever they want (it's a free country, after all) -- they just don't get to invoke "limited resources" afterwards as the reason they didn't do something that should have gotten a much bigger priority.

The same goes for societies. They can opt not to vaccinate people, but unless they are some dead poor developing world country, they don't get to use "limited resources" as the reason for doing so. Twisted sense of priorities would be a much better fit.

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