The headline reads: "LA is suffering from a typhus outbreak at 'epidemic levels.'" Long Beach has suffered from 12 incidents of typhus this year. In Pasadena, 20 cases of the "rare, flea-borne infectious disease" have been recorded over the last couple of months. We're a long way from "the little old lady from Pasadena." Nine other cases have been observed countywide. All of these are confirmed by the Los Angeles County Health Department.

TV doctor, radio host and California resident, Dr. Drew Pinsky has sounded the alarm that thousands of lives may be at risk this summer due to deadly epidemics. "We have tens and tens of thousands of people living in tents. Horrible conditions. Sanitation. Rats have taken over the city. We're the only city in the country, Los Angeles, without a rodent control program. We have multiple rodent-borne, flea-borne illnesses, plague, typhus. We're gonna have louse-borne illness. If measles breaks into that population, we have tuberculosis exploding. Literally, our politicians are like Nero. It's worse than Nero."

Longtime LA business owner Karen Hix has personally documented conditions in and around her part of LA -- framing her remarks within the progressive context of the current "sanctuary status for illegal aliens and vagrants." Exacerbating the problem is LA County's progressive economic policy with respect to regulations which greatly limit the supply of affordable housing.

In the past, there were effective dousing agents used to combat the spread of diseases like typhus. DDT was initially used with great effect to combat not only typhus, but also malaria and other insect-borne human diseases. Of course, DDT was later banned due to health and environmental concerns (such as a decline in the bald eagle population). Before DDT, there was Zyklon-B. There are presumably modern, effective techniques to eradicate many of these health risks -- all it takes is money and political/administrative will.

Doubling down on an already-serious predicament, we now have nine Congo migrants with confirmed cases of ebola around Laredo, TX. There's also the current ebola situation in San Antonio. One wonders: How exactly did penniless migrants from the DRC get to the US border? Just swim across the Atlantic? Or did they have help? The CDC is quietly setting up ebola "quarantine centers."

Whether all this is occurring in Democratic cities is not really material; this goes far beyond politics: it's a national health/security matter.

But to the extent that this is political, we've had tens of trillions wasted/lost/stolen in the Pentagon. Trump has egregiously added to this deepest part of the so-called swamp. We need more of the existing resources (both political and financial) here -- NOW.