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

It’s not the same virus. However, viruses do go through periods where they are very virulent and contagious.

That’s where Ebola and the black plague viruses have in common.

Bump. The plague of the Back Death has been firmly fixed on the bacterial taxon Yersinia pestis, q. v.

Justinian's plague and the epidemic that Marcus Aurelius's legions brought home from the wars in the East in the 160's have been assigned to the same agent.

"But the Black Death killed a high proportion of Scandinavians where it was too cold for fleas to survive."

The Black Death plague (1348-1350 AD) occurred at the tail end of the Global Warm Period (800-1400 AD) when it was much warmer than it is today.

I meant to refer to the “Medieval Warm Period,” which occurred from 800-1400 AD and allowed Vikings to farm in Greenland, not the “Global Warm Period,” which occurred from 1970 to 1998 and allowed Algore to make big bucks on the Global Warming scam.

At some point when the number of infected people in a area became high enough, the Black Death’s vector changed. It began as an infection from the bite of a flea, but, according to what I remember reading, it later became airborne and infected the lungs as a pnuemonic plague. That’s when it became much more deadly.

Black plague isn’t anywhere near certain death. People get it all the time, we have areas in America where it’s known to be in the animal population. There’s usually signs up that say it’s a known plague zone and if you have flu-like symptoms in the next week or so run to your doctor and tell them you were in a plague zone. Follow the advice and you’ll almost certainly live.

“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 just described the entire Democrat base. Plenty of “footholds” here, too.

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