SEATTLE NEWS ARCHIVES & FEATURES

Dori: Inslee worries about coronavirus, not medieval diseases in encampments

Jan 22, 2020, 2:58 PM

homelessness crisis, Ann Davison Satler, sweeps, homelessness conference, coronavirus...

Seattle's Navigation Teams cleans up a homeless encampment in Northgate in January 2019. (Carolyn Ossorio, KIRO Radio)

(Carolyn Ossorio, KIRO Radio)

As you’ve no doubt heard, the first U.S. case of the Chinese coronavirus happens to be here in the Puget Sound, in Snohomish County.

Governor Jay Inslee is all over this one. He wrote on Twitter:

Where was Jay Inslee when we had a hepatitis A outbreak in King County homeless encampments last year? Hepatitis A is a very contagious liver infection that is caused by a virus. There were 72 confirmed cases of hepatitis A last year.

It just strikes me as odd that we have all these public officials congratulating each other because they found one guy who came from China with this virus, while at the same time there are all kinds of diseases running rampant in the homeless encampments that local governments encourage.

Dori: We only look through the lens of what’s best for the heroin addict

As KOMO 4 showed in its “Tale of 3 Cities” documentary, homeless camps in L.A. have history book diseases like tuberculosis, typhoid fever, typhus, and possibly even bubonic plague, the illness that killed a third of Europe’s population in the 14th century. These are medieval, third-world diseases in modern America. And since the Seattle City Council refuses to conduct homeless encampment sweeps, attracting homeless people from around the country here, you can bet it’s only a matter of time before those diseases come to the Puget Sound.

Even though 13-year-old girls are being gang-raped in our local homeless encampments, even though there are outbreaks of dangerous diseases, the city council is willing to tolerate it. The council members probably think, “Those girls were just runaways, let’s just let them be.”

It is such hypocrisy. The politicians are posting all of these self-congratulatory tweets because they quarantined one guy with a respiratory virus. And yet the homeless encampments — where there is child rape and hepatitis, and other diseases no doubt on the way — are allowed to continue without government intervention. That is because the camps are a means to an end — raising taxes for the sake of the homeless. The end goal is not helping people or saving lives; it is making more money for government.

Listen to the Dori Monson Show weekday afternoons from 12-3 p.m. on KIRO Radio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.

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Dori: Inslee worries about coronavirus, not medieval diseases in encampments