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The Black Plague Batted .500 Its Rookie Year
ElDuderino44137 writes "Hey, kids, got the summer blues? The CIA isn't the only one with a kids' page to keep you busy. The Centers for Disease Control have the full set of collectible infectious disease trading cards. Mix 'em, match 'em, trade 'em, recoil in abject horror from 'em."
Something to go with my stuffed microbes!
MOM! Tommy got Ebola again! Tell him to share!
... gotta catch 'em all ;)
I don't know about you, but I am *so* not eating the bubblegum that comes with these!
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
More or less. The Black Death wiped out one-third to one-half of [any given European / West Asian / Middle Eastern geographical area], with the exceptions of Poland and Scotland, which didn't get touched.
Something to tell the next kid you find singing "ring around the rosey," a nursery rhyme about the Plague. :-)
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
I don't get their criteria for giving out the cards. Some major-league diseases are missing like tuberculosis and cholera, but they give some small-time (yeah yeah it's not small if you've got it) diseases their own card. Damnit, I want a 1918 influenza card! It killed millions worldwide--a very pricey card I'm sure.
not all deaths attributed to the Black Death were from yersinia pestis, no argument there. With people dying in droves, almost any death at that time was attributed to The Black Death.
As for a hemorragic fever being responsible, it is of course possible but highly unlikely. It would have to be an extremely exotic fever as no known hemo fever can survive through the cold european winter.
Europe also was coming out of a time of extreme famine just prior to the onset of the Black Death, so its likely that many individuals were chronically malnourished with weakened immune systems. So, it wouldn't take anything more exotic than a foreign plague bacillus to really wreak havoc.
Moo.