I’VE NOTED BEFORE that “public health” folks seem to have gotten more interested in political crusading than in, you know, public health. Here’s another example:

Rats! New York City has become a national laughingstock.

Indeed, while Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden has kept busy as a beaver designing new paradigms for public health – databanks for diabetics and trans-fatless fast food – the rats have been running amok.

That’s rats as in Rattus norvegicus – a legendary dispenser of disgusting diseases and the bane of traditional practitioners of public health for centuries.

Video footage of Rattus – a whole herd of them – flitting about a Village fast-food joint made national news last week.

Before they start with their bureaucrat-empowering agenda of 21st-century health initiatives, maybe they should get a handle on the 19th-century health problems first. . . .

Some related thoughts on public health here.