I never heard that anyone blamed rats
It was the fleas on the rats
This is new?
BTW just posted about how the Japanese during WW2 perfectec a bio warfare bomb capable of delivering millions of plague infected fleas- and planned to use it against California as soon as they got a long range delivery system- which was only months from happening before we put an end to the madness at Hiroshima and Nagasaki
The Japanese had tested their bio weapons on our POWs and Chinese to find the most lethal weapon ( plague) and delivery of plague by fleas -
The Japanese field tested their biowarfare- by seeding Chinese cities when they withdrew
The Chinese death toll from Japanese bio warfare was estimated at 250,000
So this research has been around for decades
Thanks History Channel “ Secrets of the Axis”
Several additional factors made the situation worse. Because of the witchcraft fears cats were killed in a number of areas in Europe. The rats at the time were not the gray Norway rat which lives in cellars and sewers, but the black and brown rats which were upstairs rats. Some time ago I read that plague is endemic in 17 US western states, often in the prairie dog population. A few people catch it here every year. Also, while the bubonic form is the most common and more recoverable, there is the pneumonic form which can be spread by coughing and sneezing and like the septisemic form is almost always fatal. This may be why the death rate was so high in some epidemics.