Rats Are the Tip of the Iceberg

By Rich Kozlovich 

My regular readers know I was an exterminator for over 40 years, and owned my own company. The pest control industry, just like the rest of the world, without really paying attention to what's going on has been going woke, slowly but inexorably.  We're now Pest Management Professionals, Entomological Consultants, and Environmental Specialists, many embracing and specializing in Integrated Pest Management or Green Pest Control, which is a lot of hooey.  

But Mike Royko, the legendary Chicago journalist,  wasn’t impressed with anyone’s image of professionalism unless they “kilt” the bugs saying:

“I preferred exterminators because that was specific. Pest control could mean anything from a school teacher to a tavern bouncer.” 

On April 22, 2024 Milt Harris published this piece Politicians Are Not The Only Dangerous Rats In New York City saying:

We can only pray that in future elections, the memory of these deliberately deceitful and politically motivated money dumps will be remembered, and more responsible people will be elected.

Well Milt, while I think everyone agrees, I also think that's a prayer that's going to be wasted as this is New York City, and it's a mess that can't be fixed. His article deals with the massive rat infestation that has always .....always ..... plagued NYC, and every major city in the world.  The sewer systems are nutrient rich environments, and the sewers give them totally unrestricted access to every street and every building in these cities, and so what did NYC do to fix this?  They banned rodenticides.  

The National Pest Management Association has an annual Legislative Day in Washington D.C. and I went the year after the city passed a ban on rodenticides and guess what.   There were rodent burrows in the lawns everywhere.  Imagine that.  

Well, now NYC is facing a public health issue, and we need to outline a bit of history and reality.   The bubonic plague.  We have plague cases every year in the United States, and if diagnosed correctly and quickly, it can be treated effectively.  If not, people suffer, or even die.  But that's not the biggest concern.  There's a genetic difference between the form of plague the world is now experiencing and the Black Death, which is far more virulent.  Harris writes:

In October 1347, the second pandemic, also known as the Black Death, arrived in Messina, Sicily. It is believed to have spread from Central Asia through fleas on rats that were on board Genoese ships. This caused a rapid and widespread wave of plague infections that swept across most of Europe like wildfire.

Rats carry diseases, and fleas!  Fleas transmit those diseases such as typhus.  In 2018 it was reported there were "57 cases of flea-borne typhus in Los Angeles County.... nine cases of flea-borne typhus associated with downtown Los Angeles, and six of those cases were in people experiencing homelessness."

All these anti-pesticide initiatives come at a cost, and that cost is in human life.  

Multiply that with the vast amount homelessness in these major cities, combined with mass unrestricted immigration the Biden administration is imposing on the nation, many of whom are bringing diseases with them, and we're going to see very real pandemics, not like the false covid pandemic which had a 99.7% recover rate.   As Kelli Ballard reported:

Diseases that had been eradicated in the US  are going through shelters and into neighborhoods once again.  The swarms of migrants flooding into the US are bringing much more than just financial problems and a rise in crime. They’re also causing a resurgence in diseases that America has mostly eradicated. Sanctuary cities are reporting outbreaks of measles and tuberculosis among the undocumented in shelter facilities and schools, where illegal immigrant children are not required to be vaccinated. Some officials are concerned that this is only the beginning..... 

As of April 5, there have been 57 confirmed cases of measles since March, Newsweek reported. “The majority of cases have been linked to the city’s largest migrant shelter in the Pilsen neighborhood.” The Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH) said there are plans to give second doses of the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine to affected shelters and that of the 57 cases, 33 are children under five years old.

In Chicago they're now seeing cases of TB.  Understand this.  In the rest of the world they face a more virulent and vaccine resistant variety of TB, and I have no doubt that's the form they're facing now. 

In New York, TB and measles aren’t the only diseases to worry about. Polio is popping up, as well. The last confirmed case, prior to last summer, was in 1990. Commissioner Ashwin Vasan said only about 50% of migrants arriving in the Big Apple are vaccinated, but when it comes to polio, the vaccination isn’t the only concern, it’s how they received it.   In the US, polio vaccines are injections, but a lot of other countries use an oral vaccine that has the live virus and can be spread through feces into the sewer system.

 “When we see one case of paralytic polio, that means there are probably hundreds and hundreds of cases that are out there in the community but not diagnosed, because 75% of the cases are asymptomatic”...... In the Big Apple, the TB rate is 6.1 cases per 100,000 and is more than double the national rate, detailed The Post. “Close to nine out of 10 (88%) of these TB cases are people born outside the United States.”.....We have open borders with all sorts of people coming in from countries from all over the world bringing in various illnesses, viruses, disease and bacterial infections.”

We need to stop being stupid and recognize all these leftist agendas are abject failures, unless of course the goal is to eliminate 7.5 billion people in the world.  If that's the goal, then they're right on track.