While some experts say the lockdowns and lost income in combating the Wuhan flu are unnecessary, there’s a question that would provide relevant insight but is too politically incorrect to ask:
What percentage of Wuhan virus hospitalizations and deaths are accounted for by the homeless?
In many large American cities, in California in particular, vagrancy has been turned into a lifestyle (deathstyle?), with Third World-like homeless encampments blighting some metropolises. It’s no secret that these pockets of misery breed illness, either; in fact, medieval-type and other diseases — such as typhus, typhoid fever, hepatitis A, tuberculosis, and staph — have re-emerged in various West Coast cities (e.g., Los Angeles) for this very reason.
This isn’t surprising given that vagrants endure poor sanitation and hygiene, generally have wanting nutrition, and are often mentally ill and/or addicted to drugs or alcohol. In other words, they’re a population highly vulnerable to disease, having weakened immune systems and great exposure to pathogens.
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As to the latter, it also isn’t surprising that many vagrants aren’t helping their cause and are ignoring basic Wuhan virus-prevention principles such as “social distancing,” as the picture below of L.A.’s skid row illustrates:
(Image credit: American Thinker.)
The video below, courtesy of commentator Alexandra Datig, tells the same story.
Right Now: Social distancing not happening on Skid Row. #COVID19 pic.twitter.com/dnsFWSG83W
— Alexandra Datig (@alexdatig) March 24, 2020
So as American Thinker editor in chief Thomas Lifson points out:
We need to know if people in suburban and rural locations really are at serious risk, or if the restrictions and resources ought to be concentrated on the populations that are spreading the virus the most. Millions of people who may be at little risk in California, New York, and other jurisdictions are being confined at home. In my suburban California neighborhood, there are many dog-walkers about, and none of them gets close to anyone else. It isn’t that hard to maintain social distance, and I think most people able to pull off a middle-class lifestyle are able to maintain social distance and wash their hands after touching anything that might have been touched by others.
I am worried that responsible people, in other words, are being over-restricted, while those most likely to spread the virus are still on the streets ignoring commonsense practices.
In fact, not only could the vagrant population be skewing the hospitalization and mortality statistics, causing us to lose perspective, but they could also prolong this situation by facilitating the Wuhan virus’s mutation. Radio host Michael Savage — a trained epidemiologist who wrote 17 health and nutrition books in his younger years — warned of this on the March 6 edition of his show, The Savage Nation.
“Common sense would indicate to me that the coronavirus will mutate in the homeless populations in America. You have diseased people in the streets of America — New York, Chicago, San Francisco, mainly on the West Coast… — festering with illness,” Savage explained in his usual blunt manner.
“And they are a Petri dish with depressed immune systems from the overuse of illegal drugs, shooting up drugs, snorting drugs, not eating properly, laying in their own feces, eating their own feces in some cases,” he continued. “There is a high likelihood that the coronavirus will latch onto some of these people and mutate in the homeless populations.”
Note here an interesting possible connection: The majority (perhaps 60 to 70 percent) of Wuhan virus deaths are among men. This is at least partially because men live more unhealthful lifestyles, smoking, drinking, and eating junk food more than women do (e.g., in China, more than 50 percent of men but only three percent of women smoke). Yet it would also help explain this phenomenon if vagrants are over-represented among the Wuhan flu-afflicted — because most vagrants are male.
Some experts are saying that shutting down the economy, which can cause a depression and lead to poverty-related deaths, is counterproductive; some also contend that the Wuhan virus’s mortality rate may end up being lower than that of the flu (which kills tens of thousands of Americans yearly). But we won’t know for sure unless we can ask honest questions — and get honest answers.
Image: MattGush via iStock / Getty Images Plus
Selwyn Duke (@SelwynDuke) has written for The New American for more than a decade. He has also written for The Hill, Observer, The American Conservative, WorldNetDaily, American Thinker, and many other print and online publications. In addition, he has contributed to college textbooks published by Gale-Cengage Learning, has appeared on television, and is a frequent guest on radio.
