Is Ebola the Same Virus as the Black Death? Historical Similarities are Striking

Most people assume that the fourteenth-century Black Death that quickly ravaged the 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 where it was too cold for fleas to survive. Biology of Plagues. Evidence from Historical Populations 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 is correct, the future medical and economic impacts from Ebola have been vastly underestimated.

Authors Dr. Susan Scott, a demographer, and Dr. Christopher J. Duncan, a zoologist at the University of Liverpool point out that the Bible used the term “plague” to describe a catchall of afflictions resulting from divine displeasure. The researchers analyzed the “Four Ages of Plague”, including the “Plague of Athens” from 430 to 427 BC that killed about a third of the city; the “Plague of Justinian” from 542 to 592 AD and killed 10,000 a day in Constantinople; the Black Plague from 1337 to 1340 AD that killed a third of Eurasia; and a series of plague outbreaks in Europe from 1350 to 1670 that killed about half a number of city populations.

Historical records of the Athenian plague paint a very similar picture to the Black Death and the accelerating Ebola pandemic. Like Ebola, the plague is believed to have originated in Africa and then travelled northward.

Athenians suffered a sudden onset of severe headache, inflamed eyes, and bleeding in their mouths and throats. The next symptoms were coughing, sneezing, and chest pains; followed by stomach cramps, intensive vomiting and diarrhea, and unquenchable thirst. With flushed skin burning from fever and open sores, 50-90% died

Well one big difference that’s not even a debate. Our politicians allowed it to come into the country instead of containing it.

Now it’s starting to creep out. They can still stop it now, but they are refusing to do so. I guess they can’t let a good crisis go to waste?

How this is not criminal is beyond me?

Its why I don’t think Ebola will be a grave concern for the USA. YES - we need common-sense steps (like banning travel from West Africa), but Ebola mostly finds a foothold where poverty, ignorance, stupidity, and superstition combine with corrupt government and lack of basic medical knowledge or scientific common sense i.e) west africa.

you said it better than me..

there was no way Ebola could get here on its own..

our government invited it to “immigrate”

and then to get a green card...

Only one problem: scientists have actually exhumed the bodies of Black Death victims from much of Europe and determined the cause of death was the Yersinia pestis bacterium. It's not hard to figure out why: the sanitary conditions in Europe by the early 1340's made it very easy for the Y. pestis bacterium to spread in no time flat. And the not-improving sanitary conditions was why when cholera arrived in Europe in 1829, it spread very quickly and killed huge swaths of the local population until modern sewage systems were built across Europe to finally end the problem.

Ebola mostly finds a foothold where poverty, ignorance, stupidity, and superstition combine with corrupt government and lack of basic medical knowledge or scientific common sense i.e) west africa.

Sounds like most deep-blue urban precincts in the U.S., methinks.

The symptoms of Plague are well described in historical accounts and bear no similarity to Ebola.

The authors of this piece are neither virologists nor microbiologists nor medical researchers. One is a demographer, the other a zoologist.

I don't say this because of a false credence in credentials, but because, if they were actually familiar with the literature they would know that the plague genome has been sequenced, and the symptoms accounted for long ago.

These are people who are simply trying to cash in on the current interest in Ebola.

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