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New Study Claims That the 'Black Death' Was Spread By Humans, Not Rats (bbc.com)
dryriver shares a report from BBC: Rats were not to blame for the spread of plague during the Black Death, according to a study. The rodents and their fleas were thought to have spread a series of outbreaks in 14th-19th Century Europe. But a team from the universities of Oslo and Ferrara now says the first, the Black Death, can be "largely ascribed to human fleas and body lice." The study, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, uses records of its pattern and scale. The Black Death claimed an estimated 25 million lives, more than a third of Europe's population, between 1347 and 1351. "We have good mortality data from outbreaks in nine cities in Europe," Prof Nils Stenseth, from the University of Oslo, told BBC News. "So we could construct models of the disease dynamics [there]." He and his colleagues then simulated disease outbreaks in each of these cities, creating three models where the disease was spread by: rats, airborne transmission, and fleas and lice that live on humans and their clothes. In seven out of the nine cities studied, the "human parasite model" was a much better match for the pattern of the outbreak. It mirrored how quickly it spread and how many people it affected. "The conclusion was very clear," said Prof Stenseth. "The lice model fits best. It would be unlikely to spread as fast as it did if it was transmitted by rats. It would have to go through this extra loop of the rats, rather than being spread from person to person." Plague is still endemic in some countries of Asia, Africa and the Americas, where it persists in "reservoirs" of infected rodents. According to the World Health Organization, from 2010 to 2015 there were 3,248 cases reported worldwide, including 584 deaths. And, in 2001, a study that decoded the plague genome used a bacterium that had come from a vet in the U.S. who had died in 1992 after a plague-infested cat sneezed on him as he had been trying to rescue it from underneath a house.
Humans are disgusting! Shooting DNA at each other, like savages. I FIND IT OFFENSIVE!
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Stop the infect people from wondering around globally and such issues stay more local.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
It wasn't the rats, it was from the fleas carried by the rats. A rat bite is a rare thing, comparatively to a flea bite.
Study was funded by the Coalition to Clear Our Good Name As Rats. Iâ(TM)m not sure we can take their conclusion at face value.
Our knowledge of plague pandemics is largely drawn from observations made since the germ theory of disease gained ascendancy in the 1880s, which coincided with the world-wide Third Plague Pandemic. There are multiple potential routes of plague bacillus transmission, so the processes observed during the recent pandemic (1855 to 1959) were used to interpret the records we had from the Second Plague Pandemic (the Black Death, from the 1340s to the late 1700s).
We have not seen a plague pandemic like the one that affected Late Medieval Europe, the conditions of living are radically different from the time and so this provides a model that matches the historical data we have.
In other recent historical plague news, population genetic analysis of modern day plague survivals, have recently provided confirming evidence that the Plague of Justinian (541–542), which was possibly even more catastrophic than the Black Death, was also due to the plague bacillus Yersinia pestis. The world-wide distribution of genetic variations is best explained by two gigantic events of adaptive radiation -- about 700 years ago and 1500 years ago.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
A new study just indicated we need a new study.
Some time ago (a decade?) I saw a TV documentary calling into question whether the Black Death was caused by the Y. pestis bacterium.
Y. pestis was shown to be the cause of a plague outbreak in 1894. Because that plague outbreak was very similar to the symptoms of the Black Death, it was believed to be the same disease.
Eventually (around 2000?) this was questioned. Arguments against that I remember include that, where available, records of who caught the disease when in a given village were more consistent with human-to-human spread; that the 1894 plague was accompanied by very many dead rats, but medieval descriptions do not mention this; and that the required rat species wasn't actually around in most of the European places hit by the plague.
Shortly thereafter, ancient DNA evidence conclusively showed that Y. pestis was indeed the cause of the Black Death. However this research fits nicely with the objections from above.
This is a fine example of science questioning old assumptions/results, and gaining better understanding by doing so, even though a false conclusion (that BD was not caused by Y. pestis) was reached along the way by some scientists.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Nuf said.
It was WITCHES that had cats, that killed rats, that had lice, that had plague. But the Witches were killed off, for being - Witches.... and now the X-spurts want to blame people? C'mon - it was Witches that caused the 'cleansing' that got rid of cats that allowed lice to breed on rats..... what myth are you trying to kill, and WHY? Conspiracy Rewels.
N/T
The old conclusion that it was from fleas on rats was a good explanation based on many things, but was never a proven thing. Now, along come these people who claim to have compelling evidence that the old explanation was wrong. That's fine, up to this point, and only as long as we leave it in the realm of suppositionn.
Nobody has built a time machine and gone back to see first-hand what really happened. Nobody has seen all the ticks, fleas, mites, etc that were alive then and the people and animals that were infested to varying degrees. We know there were people and animals with varying degrees of cleanliness and varying exposure to bugs of varying varieties and carrying various diseases. The vast majority of the remains of all those people, animals, bugs, local vegitation, buildings, clothes, food, etc are all gone and cannot be sampled, studied, and evaluated. This new study is just another in a mountain of studies that present interesting ideas, possibly good alternate views on what MAY have happened long ago, etc but there's very little here with any actual proof. This MAY have happened, that MAY have happened, certain things were LIKELY or UNLIKELY, etc - in other words: lots of unproven speculation and there is simply not enough solid evidence to ever prove the case one way or the other.
We have a hard enough time right now using all the tools of modern science and all the evidence right in front of us to trace CURRENT diseases happening right before our eyes. Just look at how hard it is to trace the seasonal flu outbreaks in Asia, figure out which strain is spreading, whip-up the right vaccine and get the population protected NOW when lives are on the line and researchers can go to the places involved and sample everything involved.
The further problem with science supposedly proving historical stuff like this is that proving something MIGHT have happened and that it could POSSIBLY have happened is a very different thing from having proved it DID happen. It is scientifically proven that one of the founder of the USA, John Adams, could possibly have been a captain of a sailing ship - he was smart enough, connected to the right people, in the right place, interested in the subject, and actually is documented to have sailed on such vessels across the Atlantic. It's all PROVEN POSSIBLE. John Adams was, however, a lawyer and not a sea captain. THAT is what is historically proven to have actually happened.
So... humans are the REAL rats?!
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
I don;t know why people are against plague, black death and the spanish flu both had huge positive social consequences, lets go again we certainly need something good to happen
Samuel Adams, second cousin of John Adams, inherited a brewery and is the founding father (both were involved in the revolution) after whom the modern beer is named. AFAIK there is no actual connection between the man Samuel Adams, and the modern beer company.
Both Adams men were very interesting and any American, or other freedom loving person, would do well to study them, but I used John as a quick example of a serious argument about the difference between proving that a thing COULD have happened and proving that a thing actually did happen.
You dirty brother, you killed my rat!
Table-ized A.I.
From their abstract:
Our results support that human ectoparasites were primary vectors for plague [...]ultimately challenging the assumption that plague in Europe was predominantly spread by rats.
Basically, once there is an outbreak the speed of the outbreak can best be explained by a human-human parasite transfer. Human to rat to human would be too slow for the disease to have spread that quickly.
- But that's only half the story and the rats still play an important role:
They are the slow transfer and form the reservoir for the disease. Without a second, much slower transfer method, the plaque wouldn't have been able to cross oceans and jump from continent to continent.
People don't sleep with rats in the same bed, they don't cuddle them, share their icecream cone with them or kiss them, like I've seen them doing with dogs. Rats are therefor the perfect low infection risk reservoir. But once the number of humans increases, the total risk increases and an infection will occur and spread quickly through the faster method. Once the majority of the population is wiped out, the disease can travel with rats to a new place or stay in the rat reservoir till the population has rebound.
in a different way.
I'm a dog person and fairly well disposed to cats as well and my family members often give me grief over the fact that I'll let my dog lick my face or the cat walk on me with with its "litter box paws" and yes intellectually I have to acknowledge that these are not the most hygienic of things.
But my father works in a profession where he regularly shakes hands with hundreds of people every week and thinks nothing of it. In terms of actual disease being spread, that is far far more "dangerous" than what I let my dog and cat do.
Sounds like a cheap monster movie.
There are written records of Mongol Empire (and their successor kingdoms) delivering plague infested corpses to the cities being under siege. Obviously they did not know about the bacteria, nor they had microscope, but they knew about contagious and lethal nature of the disease. Source: Wheelis M. (2002), "Biological warfare at the 1346 siege of Caffa." There are written records and there are many undocumented instances of humans transmitting disease, intentionally or unintentionally.
Are you being ironic or ignorant?
Blank until
You can't quarantine a rat flea -- no, the rat flea doesn't care.
If your quarantine's successful, then the virus spreads by air.
If the Black Death were bubonic, then the quarantines would fail,
And the fact that they succeeded tells a very different tale.
The Black Death hit hard in Iceland, and there's something you should know:
That there are no rats in Iceland, 'cause the temperature's too low,
And without rats, there's no rat fleas to infect you with a bite,
So the Black Death had to spread by means beyond their appetite!
In this case the song is arguing that it's droplet based transmission rather than fleas on humans, but they both agree that rats as a vector is problematical.
Source
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
don't let a cat sneeze on you.
Apparently not.
In the fourteenth century, the rats were considerably cleaner than the humans.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
We know that the citizens back then thought it was the cats. Cats were thought evil so they killed off the cats. Since cats were the predators of the rats, rats began to thrive. They got into everything. They were everywhere. We know that people would dump their chamber pots in the streets and that would flow into the rivers, streams and lakes. We know that personal hygiene was terrible as there were few facilities for running water. Using precious water on bathing was considered bad. So yes, we know humans were partially the cause. Still, fleas would jump onto clothing when the rats rustled through them. Rats would get into the food supplies.
As people became sick fewer and fewer people were available to wash and clean clothes, beddings, and homes. Since it isn't disputed that the disease was spread from human to human and that was due to ignorance about personal hygiene and clean living plus ignorance about how disease was spread (they killed the natural predators of the rats and other rodents) we can't just conclude it was only human to human but instead it was that theory and the past theory combined that resulted in the black plague. Humans have lived with filthy hygiene for millennia and I'm sure there were plenty of lesser plagues but because people were living closer together during this period that's what made it worse.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
i had a flea last year in my bedroom for like 3 weeks until i could finally kill it, if that thing would have had the plague i would have died many times over since it would bite me 3 times every night. True story, that thing would only appear when i turned off the lights, and jump out of the way as soon as i turned them on, it was the most ninja thing i have ever seen. It bit me so many times i will live my entire life without ever forgetting that FUCKING THING