[rwfromkansas]

No, it’s not.

[hometoroost]

That’s racist.

[Tennessee Nana]

the outcome is similar..

certain death..

and both due to ignorance and stupidity ...

[BitWielder1]

It's not too cold in Scandinavia for fleas to survive indoors or under people's clothing.
It's not winter all the time either.

[Enlightened1]

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?

[rdl6989]

ping

[dinodino]

No, it’s not. Plague DNA has been sequenced.

[Brother Cracker]

[RayChuang88]

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.

[GrandJediMasterYoda]

Well the only difference is back then they didn’t have a Kenyan Muslim hellbent on seeing it spread.

[Kartographer]

FR's own 'Dr. Nancy Snydermans' has discounted that theory already. You need to listen to her and stop worrying about 'Obola'.

[FredZarguna]

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.

[Sans-Culotte]

I’ve always thought the “Black Death” was always known to be the Bubonic Plague. However, I don’t think anyone has ever definitively explained what the Athenian virus was.

[Jonty30]

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.

[Bubba_Leroy]

"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.

[RegulatorCountry]

The short answer is: Bubonic plague is not a virus. So ... no.

[discostu]

Lots of things have “flu like symptoms” at the outset. That’s because those symptoms are really your body saying “oh crap we’re being attacked”. They’re really just your immune system kicking into overdrive.