Posted on 10/12/2014 12:22:25 PM PDT by Texas Eagle
Most assume that Black Death quickly ravaged the fourteenth century western world was a bacterial bubonic plague epidemic caused by flea bites and spread by rats. But the Black Death killed a high proportion of Scandinavians -- and where they lived was too cold for fleas to survive. A modern work gives us a clue into this mystery. The “Biology of Plagues” published by Cambridge University Press analyzed 2,500 years of plagues and concluded that the Black Death was caused by a viral hemorrhagic fever pandemic similar to Ebola. If this view is correct, the future medical and economic impacts from Ebola have been vastly underestimated.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
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http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/3214141/posts
“Not BY 500 million. TO 500 million. “
The increasingly rapid progress is being made because there are so many people. The incredible spread of more and more sophisticated technology of all types is due to the huge marketplace represented by the billions of current and potential users. Drop the number of users to 500 million and progress will stumble and fall. Large areas would probably drop down to a pre-technological society as in may countered there wouldn’t enough people to make technology practical.
Ping a ling!
Never let a good crisis go to waste.
My apologies. I usually do "match any word" search but I was too lazy to do so this time.
It shan't happen again.
Unless it does.
And, you have those telling others not to become worried.
For goodness sakes, Obama will not even stop the flights from these hot spots / ground zero in Africa, until the virus is contained as best as humanly possible to contain it, that is.
Not a big deal.
The current theory of the spread of black plague via the Asian Rat Flea is a good one. Rats were effective as an animal vector, traveling with humans and taking advantage of their means to travel to go to less hospitable climates, where they would live around humans in their warm, dry abodes.
The flea is only about a 10th of an inch long, about 2.5mm.
The best confirmation of this is found by comparing the presence of cats with plague events. They are inversely proportional. Conversely, whenever people tried to exterminate cats, the plague would be close behind as the rats returned.
Post to me or FReep mail to be on/off the Bring Out Your Dead ping list.
The purpose of the “Bring Out Your Dead” ping list (formerly the “Ebola” ping list) is very early warning of emerging pandemics, as such it has a high false positive rate.
So far the false positive rate is 100%.
At some point we may well have a high mortality pandemic, and likely as not the “Bring Out Your Dead” threads will miss the beginning entirely.
*sigh* Such is life, and death...
Of course they are overlooking the Medieval Warm Period from 800-1400 AD.
The warming is why there was an increase in rainfall in east Africa in the first place, which lead to an increase in rat population, which lead to an increase in infected fleas.
Trade between east Africa and Yemen which tracked up through the Levant to Byzantium is a well known and well studied vector of the Plague.
Byzantium at this time had direct trade with Scandinavia and the rest of Europe.
Somebody is trying to take advantage of an Ebola outbreak to jinn up some new research grants.
Fleas don't just wander around by themselves. A friend shot a coyote in the dead of winter, here in North Dakota (ambient temp between 20 and 30 below). When the carcass cooled, the fleas bailed looking for a warm place to go. Good thing it was still in the back of his pickup... Fleas go from one warm critter to the next or they die, but they are remarkable survivors, even where the cold gets extreme.
A link to this thread has been posted on the Ebola Surveillance Thread
That is Ted Turner’s goal.
Joe Biden says all public librarys should be closed as it was reported Librarians may carry the Obola virus,,,,
Hmm, dogs (all cannines?) can carry E in an asymptomatic manner. If the dog is infected can any of the fleas / ticks on the animal carry the disease to other animals / humans if they bite them?
I call BS on out of Africa for the black death. Plague deaths dropped in the winter but rats live indoors and the fleas can survive even in Winter.
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