Posted on 09/30/2014 9:04:16 PM PDT by Marie
Things seem to be looking up for rats. After more than 500 years, rats may be off the hook for causing the Black Death, the horrible plague that claimed up to 60% of the European population. In virtually every textbook the Bubonic Plague, which is spread by flea-ridden rats, is named as the culprit behind the chaos. But mounting evidence suggests that an Ebola-like virus was the actual cause of the Black Death and the sporadic outbreaks that occurred in the following 300 years.
At the forefront of this theory are two researchers from the University of Liverpool, Dr. Christopher Duncan and Dr. Susan Scott. Let's look at six small pieces of this puzzle.
(Excerpt) Read more at nature.com ...
#5 raised an eyebrow with me.
I guess we’ll find out?
Not with the lying goons who are running things now.
Ping!
Thanks for digging this up. I mentioned it to another FReeper who I’d, well, have to go dig this up for. thx
Black....Death? can we still say that?
Good find, thanks!
Here it is on Amazon
What is your opinion of point #5?
#5 does seems to fit the bill.
Wow, great read, by a high schooler no less. Let’s hope she lasts through this plague, she’ll have a bright future.
They must have had ‘Rats back then too.
Today we call them democrats.
Paralysis and virus and now ebola brought to you by the modern ‘rat party.
Via Wiki:
After being transmitted via the bite of an infected flea, the Y. pestis bacteria become localized in an inflamed lymph node, where they begin to colonize and reproduce.
So, we know that Ebola isn’t infectious until symptoms begin, but the first symptoms are fever, sore throat and muscle pain. (just like the flu)
This guy didn’t seek treatment until he was two days into that period. The doctors examined him, presumably diagnosed him with the flu, then sent him home.
Two days later, he was finally sick enough that the meds could (while factoring in travel) finally figure out that he had Ebola and admitted. Considering that the CDC had a team on route before the lab tests came back, his symptoms must’ve been definitive by that time.
Two days later, he’s critically ill.
I think that the danger with this outbreak is going to be those two days when a person is sick, but the symptoms haven’t clarified as Ebola. The worst part about that is a repeat of the scenario that this guy went through. Go to the ER or clinic, infect the other patients and staff, then go home and continue to infect your family.
But, what may help us is that the flu feels pretty horrible. Most people will call in sick and do their best to stay home. Nobody’s going to be running far if they feel that lousy.
Killjoy! :)
They’re questioning if it was Plague at all. (And the book was written in 2004)
Just to be clear, she was writing about a book, “Return of the Black Death: The World’s Greatest Serial Killer” by Duncan and Scott.
The theory is not from a high schooler.
There were three forms of the disease: bubonic, wherein the major symptom was a highly swollen lymph node, septicemic, a blood infection, and pneumonic, where the disease was contracted from inhalation of infected droplets. All of these can be caused by Yersinia pestis, and that isn't true for the alternates. So either we're dealing with more than one simultaneous plague, perhaps as many as three, or we're dealing with one disease organism that causes all three. For the latter, Y. pestis seems the best, but not the only, fit.
Historical epidemiology has another couple of mystery plagues: the Plague of Athens (429 BC) that has never been convincingly identified and that has been theorized to be an Ebola sort of virus as well as Yersinia pestis, typhus, smallpox, measles, etc, etc; and the Plague of Justinian (AD 541) that most authorities think to be a strain of Y. pestis that became extinct afterwards, but in fact could have been nearly any of the others. These plagues were world-changers: the first determined the eventual outcome of the Peloponnesian War and hence much of the subsequent history of the West, and the second, one of the factors that so depopulated north Africa and Asia Minor that the onslaught of Islam in the next century became possible.
Fun stuff to read about and consider in the comfort of one's study, not so much fun to live through. I don't think we're about to do any such thing, but then there were people who said that in the 14th and 6th centuries AD, and 5th century BC that probably said the same.
On FR is no need to read and understand an article before commenting. It’s in the by laws somewhere I am sure of it. ;-)
“Not with the lying goons who are running things now.”
Exactly. Post of the day.
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