7 ms·

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

59 points by subroutine 9y ago

santaclaus 9y 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 9y 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 9y 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 9y ago
    One of the richest and largest polities on earth doesn't have the resources to guarantee basic sanitaion for all residents.
    - StillBored 9y ago
      No, its because in theory we have religious organizations providing that service in exchange for large tax breaks... http://bigthink.com/21st-century-spirituality/how-to-make-71-billion-a-year-tax-the-churches http://bigthink.com/21st-century-spirituality/how-to-make-71... I'm perfectly ok with churches getting tax breaks as long as they can prove to be doing more good in the community they they are saving on all that prime real estate that generally sits vacant 6 days a week. If churches were forced to have 24-hour open door policies, then homeless people would always have a place to sleep and use the restroom. But of course we can't have "bums" wandering around church property, lets call the state/police to arrest them.
    - zeveb 9y ago
      One of the richest and largest polities on earth has a large number of mentally-ill people who would befoul basic sanitation facilities were they given access to them.
    - prostoalex 9y ago
      The definition of rich is "having a great deal of money or assets", California's tight budget doesn't leave much room for a large reserve - what comes in gets spent the same year, and it's always a mystery whether or not the state will be solvent next year.
      - crdoconnor 9y ago
        Thank prop 13 for that.
        prostoalex 9y ago
        Or high-speed rail. Or unreasonable pension obligations.
        crdoconnor 9y ago
        Just prop 13. If a less well off Europe can handle all 3 so can the richest state in the richest country.
        prostoalex 9y ago
        While statutory property tax increases are exclusive to California, homeless populations are not.
        crdoconnor 9y ago
        Being so spectacularly wealthy and having such a large homelessness problem at the same time is unique to California though. Hence "wealth distribution" problem, not "not having enough wealth" problem.
        prostoalex 9y ago
        Again, what number are you looking at to call California wealthy? California state budget revenues are $4,366 per capita, which is fairly low-end. North Dakota, Wyoming, Washington, Kentucky, Minnesota and Oregon are all in solid five digits a head. California's is richer than Georgia's $2,320 per capita for sure, but if it were a person in a company of 49 other friends, it would be a low-income friend always trying to borrow money.
- djsumdog 9y ago
  Or maybe fix the low cost housing problem and maybe create better homeless day centers and public bathrooms? Just an idea...
  - subroutine 9y 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 https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/tasks.png
    - ModernMech 9y ago
      It's interesting to me that now the "figure out if the picture is of a bird" task is becoming "gimme a few hours"
  - prostoalex 9y 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 9y 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_2641430.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/07/plastic-bag-ban_n_2...
- ass3r7 9y 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 9y 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/SF-Health-Officer-MEMO-re-Reusable-Bag-Study_V8-FIN1.pdf http://berkeleyblog.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/...
thenewwazoo 9y 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.
- frogpelt 9y ago
  There people living in the streets pooping in bags. And you think we just need more safety nets?
  - SomeStupidPoint 9y 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 9y 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 9y 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 9y 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).
  - djsumdog 9y 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?
    - subroutine 9y ago
      While we are on jokes about this, could you imagine if someone raised the argument back in November... "If California bans plastic bags obviously bums will poop everywhere, and hundreds of people will get Hepatitis until we bleach the streets."
  - netsharc 9y 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...
- tareqak 9y ago
erentz 9y 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.
- djsumdog 9y 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.
- mattnewport 9y 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.
  - guelo 9y ago
    For whatever reason Canada doesn't require childhood HepA vaccinations, though they could.
  - javajocky 9y ago
    I have no idea why you're getting downvoted for stating facts, and not in an argumentative or derogatory way. You're stating the truth, perhaps one people don't want to hear, but it's immature for them to downvote you.
tareqak 9y 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.
ass3r7 9y ago
Yes 100%. They imposed 7c bag tax in Chicago and I happened to wait 30 mins near the checkout lanes. Just observe the insanity. People bring the dirtiest nastiest bags and put them right on the conveyer belt. It must be literally a massive exponential increase in physical transmission of microscope matter between shoppers compared to issuing every shopper new bags. This stuff is insanity. Planners gone wild trying to save us or the planet I guess and basically killing people instead. Dumb as rocks liberal politics.
- djsumdog 9y ago
  Yea bag taxes are dumb. They should just ban plastic bags entirely like in Seattle or Portland. You can just get paper bags. Some stores charge 5 cents, but some stores its free. And you can always bring your cloth bags. I do that all the time. If you're complaining about reusable bags at the store, you should take a good long think about every questionable surface and hand those groceries touched on the way to the store and your cabinet.
  - ass3r7 9y ago
    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 irrelevant. what the relevant issue is measuring the baseline transmission effectiveness from a outbreak source prior to the behavior change vs after. It is a physical fact that a shopper, for example a horder, who can provide source bacterial matter has been increased in likelihood to bring a bag with such matter and then when checking out has an exponential increase in contact with others. There are documented cases of people using hospital bags for their groceries.
    - mindslight 9y ago
      FWIW, your initial comment had two substantive and astute points. But much like the countless unsung plastic bags, you loaded it with shit.
kazinator 9y 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).
guelo 9y ago
As usual the answer to the question in the headline is no. You can read the article for more.
otakucode 9y 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."
- subroutine 9y ago
  Define 'life'. (bonus points for not using wikipedia)
trapperkeeper74 9y ago
If enough people are sleeping rough, Hep A is an issue among others.
wrycoder 9y ago
/me search thread for "paper" No hits
- subroutine 9y ago
  ?

59 points by subroutine 9y 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 9y 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 9y 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 9y ago
  One of the richest and largest polities on earth doesn't have the resources to guarantee basic sanitaion for all residents.
  - StillBored 9y ago
    No, its because in theory we have religious organizations providing that service in exchange for large tax breaks... http://bigthink.com/21st-century-spirituality/how-to-make-71-billion-a-year-tax-the-churches http://bigthink.com/21st-century-spirituality/how-to-make-71... I'm perfectly ok with churches getting tax breaks as long as they can prove to be doing more good in the community they they are saving on all that prime real estate that generally sits vacant 6 days a week. If churches were forced to have 24-hour open door policies, then homeless people would always have a place to sleep and use the restroom. But of course we can't have "bums" wandering around church property, lets call the state/police to arrest them.
  - zeveb 9y ago
    One of the richest and largest polities on earth has a large number of mentally-ill people who would befoul basic sanitation facilities were they given access to them.
  - prostoalex 9y ago
    The definition of rich is "having a great deal of money or assets", California's tight budget doesn't leave much room for a large reserve - what comes in gets spent the same year, and it's always a mystery whether or not the state will be solvent next year.
    - crdoconnor 9y ago
      Thank prop 13 for that.
      - prostoalex 9y ago
        Or high-speed rail. Or unreasonable pension obligations.
        crdoconnor 9y ago
        Just prop 13. If a less well off Europe can handle all 3 so can the richest state in the richest country.
        prostoalex 9y ago
        While statutory property tax increases are exclusive to California, homeless populations are not.
        crdoconnor 9y ago
        Being so spectacularly wealthy and having such a large homelessness problem at the same time is unique to California though. Hence "wealth distribution" problem, not "not having enough wealth" problem.
        prostoalex 9y ago
        Again, what number are you looking at to call California wealthy? California state budget revenues are $4,366 per capita, which is fairly low-end. North Dakota, Wyoming, Washington, Kentucky, Minnesota and Oregon are all in solid five digits a head. California's is richer than Georgia's $2,320 per capita for sure, but if it were a person in a company of 49 other friends, it would be a low-income friend always trying to borrow money.
djsumdog 9y ago
Or maybe fix the low cost housing problem and maybe create better homeless day centers and public bathrooms? Just an idea...
- subroutine 9y 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 https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/tasks.png
  - ModernMech 9y ago
    It's interesting to me that now the "figure out if the picture is of a bird" task is becoming "gimme a few hours"
- prostoalex 9y 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 9y 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_2641430.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/07/plastic-bag-ban_n_2...

ass3r7 9y 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 9y 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/SF-Health-Officer-MEMO-re-Reusable-Bag-Study_V8-FIN1.pdf http://berkeleyblog.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/...

thenewwazoo 9y 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.

frogpelt 9y ago
There people living in the streets pooping in bags. And you think we just need more safety nets?
- SomeStupidPoint 9y 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 9y 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 9y 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 9y 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).
- djsumdog 9y 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?
  - subroutine 9y ago
    While we are on jokes about this, could you imagine if someone raised the argument back in November... "If California bans plastic bags obviously bums will poop everywhere, and hundreds of people will get Hepatitis until we bleach the streets."
- netsharc 9y 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...
tareqak 9y ago

erentz 9y 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.

djsumdog 9y 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.
mattnewport 9y 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.
- guelo 9y ago
  For whatever reason Canada doesn't require childhood HepA vaccinations, though they could.
- javajocky 9y ago
  I have no idea why you're getting downvoted for stating facts, and not in an argumentative or derogatory way. You're stating the truth, perhaps one people don't want to hear, but it's immature for them to downvote you.

tareqak 9y 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.

ass3r7 9y ago

Yes 100%. They imposed 7c bag tax in Chicago and I happened to wait 30 mins near the checkout lanes. Just observe the insanity. People bring the dirtiest nastiest bags and put them right on the conveyer belt. It must be literally a massive exponential increase in physical transmission of microscope matter between shoppers compared to issuing every shopper new bags. This stuff is insanity. Planners gone wild trying to save us or the planet I guess and basically killing people instead. Dumb as rocks liberal politics.

djsumdog 9y ago
Yea bag taxes are dumb. They should just ban plastic bags entirely like in Seattle or Portland. You can just get paper bags. Some stores charge 5 cents, but some stores its free. And you can always bring your cloth bags. I do that all the time. If you're complaining about reusable bags at the store, you should take a good long think about every questionable surface and hand those groceries touched on the way to the store and your cabinet.
- ass3r7 9y ago
  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 irrelevant. what the relevant issue is measuring the baseline transmission effectiveness from a outbreak source prior to the behavior change vs after. It is a physical fact that a shopper, for example a horder, who can provide source bacterial matter has been increased in likelihood to bring a bag with such matter and then when checking out has an exponential increase in contact with others. There are documented cases of people using hospital bags for their groceries.
  - mindslight 9y ago
    FWIW, your initial comment had two substantive and astute points. But much like the countless unsung plastic bags, you loaded it with shit.

kazinator 9y 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).

guelo 9y ago

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

otakucode 9y 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."

subroutine 9y ago
Define 'life'. (bonus points for not using wikipedia)

trapperkeeper74 9y ago

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

wrycoder 9y ago

/me search thread for "paper" No hits

subroutine 9y ago
?