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

The great tragedy of science: a beautiful theory slain by an ugly fact.

That was old science, back before Global Warming™ when there was something called the scientific method.

Basically you would construct a hypothesis and then come up with an experiment to test your hypothesis. Your hypothesis would be either supported or disproved based on empirical and measurable evidence. It was all very tedious.

Now, thanks to the wise Nobel Prize Winner Algore, scientific theories are established based on the consensus of people collecting government grants.

You construct a hypothesis, collect a government grant to study it, tell all your friends about it so that they can collect government grants to study it, and then all vote on whether you should all continue to collect government grants. If most of you agree that you should continue to collect government grants, then the science is settled.

Well, Obama did promise Americans shovel-ready jobs.

My vote for post of the day!

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