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Black Death Discovered In Oregon
redletterdave writes "The Black Death, a strain of bubonic plague that destroyed nearly a third of Europe's entire population between 1347 and 1369, has been found in Oregon. Health officials in Portland have confirmed that a man contracted the plague after getting bitten by a cat. The unidentified man, who is currently in his 50s, had tried to pry a dead mouse from a stray cat's mouth on June 2 when the cat attacked him. Days later, fever and sickness drove the man to check himself into Oregon's St. Charles Medical Center, where he is currently in 'critical condition.'"
Why the hell did he think it was a good idea to try to get the dead mouse away from the cat in the first place?
Maybe you shouldn't be screwing around with wild animals and their food . . .
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While an exciting headline, certain to raise the blood pressure of the angst brigade, this isn't terribly newsworthy. Bubonic plague has been found in animals (mostly prairie dogs in Colorado) for decades and apparently is the sixth case of plague in Oregon since 1995. It's easy to treat with antibiotics. The hardest part is actually thinking that Yersinia pestis is the causative organism.
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Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Really though, from TFA:
it is treatable with antibiotics
the bacteria thrives in forests, grasslands and any wooded areas inhabited by rats and squirrels
Without the help of modern medicine, Europeans in the Middle Ages could do little to combat the plague.
So this is a bacterium that is common in the wild, which can be contracted by humans but is treatable with modern medicine. It is not as though we are facing another plague here...
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Bubonic plague has been endemic (sustaining itself permanently, in this case in the animal population) in the western part of the US for years, although it is news to public health officials when a human contracts it. There was a case two years ago, also in Oregon.
The reason it doesn't sweep the nation the way it swept Europe is advances in hygiene, public health and medical treatment. Rats and fleas in the house aren't unheard of these days, but they're no longer universal. If people are getting bit by fleas they'll call the exterminator or the board of health; they won't just accept it as a fact of life. If they contract plague they'll go to the doctor who will cure it relatively easily.
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True, many of the hiking trails in New Mexico have signs warning that rodents may be carrying the plague. What surprises me, though, is the man is in critical condition. I thought the plague was easily treatable with antibiotics today. Is this a new antibiotic resistant strain?
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
No, must be confirmation bias on your part.
Black Plague is rare, but still happens you just usually don't hear about it because it's treatable with antibiotics and preventable by controlling rodent populations - neither antibiotic treatment nor effective prevention were known in europe during the middle ages.
I can has worldwide pandemic?
Wrong, it's a new zombie strain, carried by rodents and cats from Japan; I suspect it is entirely distinct from the zombie strain seen in Florida, originating in Cuba.
A professor once told us, "It's around, and yes, occasionally kills someone. You just see, 'person died of severe bacterial infection'."
Actually, epidemiology is entirely unsure about the matter. (Also, don't anthropomorphize inanimate objects, they hate it when you do that.)
Some people think it was the bubonic plague because that matches _some_ of the symptoms reported at the time and y. pestis has been found in mass graves from the period. (Obviously people who disagree are pulling out the "correlation does not equal causation" card.)
Other people believe it was ebola, anthrax, or something else because the incubation period, the rate and nature of the spread, and some of the symptoms don't match those of the modern bubonic plague.
Some people believe it was the y. pestis, but it behaved differently back then because humans had zero immunity when it was introduced, and both humans and the bacteria have had a few centuries to evolve since then.
And some people believe that it wasn't just one disease that was responsible for the black death but a number of different diseases sweeping through around the same time. They didn't know much about disease at the time, and if everyone has heard of the black death and a bunch of people get sick and die, everyone is going to blame it on the black death.
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Yep, it was a 50-year-old men. People in that demographic are infamous for avoiding medical treatment until it's too late.
That is because by the time we are that old, we know that most doctors don't actually know as much as they think (meaning they tend to guess alot), and don't want to pay the high price for that.
Be seeing you...
"I can survive with the Plague for another 15 years and get on medicare"
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There are 1-2 cases of bubonic plague in the US every year. "Yersenia pestis" is part of the normal body flora of several animals, especially underneath the nails of the armadillo. Now when we see cipro resistant plague, then you can panic.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
One big cause of plagues in the Middle Ages was therefore situations that caused huge increases in the rodent population. This happened whenever there were food shortages, because people would stop being able to spare food to feed dogs and cats. When you stop feeding your dog, pretty soon you have to kill it (and then you may as well eat it). Without dogs and cats around, the rat population would take off. That's why in famines, as soon as people get done eating dogs and cats they start to eat rats. But of course the combination of lots of rats with underfed, weakened people means that plague can kill a lot of people. Indeed, the worse food security you had in your town, the more people tended to die of plague.
Actually they did have rodent population control in those days, but it's effectiveness was severely curtailed as they associated cats with witchcraft and so went around killing them. An enlightening glimpse of how perpetuating a climate of fear with no sound basis can backfire!
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My brother-in-law is a veterinarian in southeast Utah, and he found one of those "every few years" cases of bubonic plague a few years back. He told me the same thing - a case pops up every few years.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
You are wrong. Black Death DNA was extracted from teeth of victims in the Tower of London and it's the same Y. pestis as we have today: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/13/science/13plague.html?_r=1
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From the linked article:
Even though there are about seven cases of the Black Plague in the U.S. each year, most cases have been in the West and the Southweset, the bacterium is considerably less fatal than it once was. According to the CDC, 1 in 7 cases are fatal, but the disease can now be treated with antibiotics.
I know, I know I'm not supposed to read the article...
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