posted on Mar, 10 2020 @ 09:38 AM
All right, this actually *is* a valid concern for the west coast cities in the US and for any other city in the US that openly allows for what is
politically correctly called "urban camping" (which means allowing the homeless to build shanty towns wherever they wish). And in this day and age
where I see an increasing call for quarantines and house arrests, how do you accomplish that in a place with populations that have no homes to
self-quarantine in?
How do you reduce the risk of infectious spread when you allow people to poop where they wish and discard freely provided needles wherever they happen
to be? Sure, some cities will pay workers over $100K/year to clean up the poop, but we are talking about a disease that has been isolated in fecal
matter.
Portland sees
the risk at least. I'm not sure their guidelines will help much though.
KGW-TV reports that city and county officials have requested that homeless shelters ask "houseless" people to stay six feet from each other in
the shelters and if they won't do that, send them back on the streets and demand they separate themselves there.
The city of Portland wants their homeless shelters to ask their residents to stay 6ft away from each other all the time. That's assuming they will or
can comply. It also will have the effect of possibly reducing the numbers those shelters can serve, meaning more people on the street where their
health will be impacted by possibly poor conditions in addition to whatever challenges they may already face (like possible addiction). And if their
residents refuse to comply, the shelters can kick them out ... but ask them to stay 6ft away from other people on the streets once they're out.
I'm not sure that's going to work out well, either. If they weren't going to stay 6ft away from people in a supervised space, what makes anyone think
they'll do it in the freedom of an unsupervised world? But it also calls into question the larger picture --- What good does a quarantine do if you
have a large, roaming population you cannot quarantine because they have nowhere to go?
edit on 10-3-2020 by ketsuko because: (no reason
given)